Vacant inheritance, heirless inheritance and claims from Warsaw Decree (part I)

Abstract

In the reprivatisation procedures, conducted in Polish courts and before public administration bodies following the restoration of independence, it is increasingly frequently necessary to determine the person currently holding the right to restitution or compensation due to the death of the past owners. This means a necessity of determining the legal successors to people who held the right to nationalised (communalised) property, including – for individuals – their inheritors. Due to the principles of the international law applicable to people assigned during or immediately following the conclusion of World War II, it is connected with the necessity to apply the principles of then-current inheritance law. These will therefore be – in the western and northern regions of Poland, applicable provisions of the German civil law of 1896 (BGB), in the southern regions – the Austrian code of civil procedure of 1811 (ABGB), while in the central regions – the Napoleonic Code of 1804.The latter applies to the area of application of the decree dated 26 October 1945, which provides for the communalisation of land in Warsaw (on the ownership and usage of land within the boundaries of the capital city of Warsaw, so called Bierut’s Decree). This paper comprising two parts presents the basic solutions that refer to the institution of heirless inheritance (in the Napoleonic Code, also in ABGB), and so called vacant inheritance (les successions vacantes), which is a solution specific to French law, adopted in the territory of the Russian partition and which remained in force until 1947. The second part of this paper (in the next issue of the quarterly) will be devoted to an analysis of the consequences of deeming an inheritance to be vacant under the erstwhile art. 811 of the Napoleonic Code, and to the provisions of Polish intertemporal law that applied to this solution following the standardisation of inheritance law after 1946.