A Study on the Revision of Spouse’s Inheritance Rights: Proposal of the Sliding Scale Method

Abstract

According to the Korean inheritance law, the share of the surviving spouse’s inheritance depends on the number of co-inheritors. This is because the spouse’s share adds 50% to the share of the co-heirs. If there are many co-heirs, the spouse’s share will be reduced. The reason for marriage to end is death or divorce, but the share of the surviving spouse left behind by death is often less than that of divorce. The increase in the elderly population has increased the need to protect elderly spouses, especially female spouses. The diversification of family forms poses a problem with the inheritance ratio that applies uniformly in all cases. The imbalance in the liquidation of marital property by divorce and bereavement shows the need to improve the current spousal inheritance system. As a way to revise the spouse inheritance system to ensure legal stability and fairness, I propose a SLIDING SCALE method that varies the inheritance ratio differently depending on the length of the marriage period. This measure presupposes the assumption that the longer the marriage period, the greater the contribution of the surviving spouse to the formation of marital property. Specifically, surviving spouses with a marriage period of fewer than five years will be granted 30% of the deceased’s estate, while surviving spouses with a marriage period of more than 25 years will be granted 70% of that. The inheritance share percentage increases by 10% every five years until it reaches up to 70%. If an elderly surviving spouse acquires 70 percent of the deceased’s estate, his/her living standard will be maintained. Therefore, I think this has an upper hand in terms of legal stability and fairness over the previously proposed measures (such as a proposal by a surviving spouse to split property on a deceased’s estate or increase the portion of surviving spouse inheritance).