Property Separation. Responsibility of Heirs as a Case Study

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the problem of legal separation of the testator’s property from the property of the heirs. The legal separation of property is understood as giving it a specific legal regime, including the division of property into different pools of assets owed to different creditors. In the comparative legal aspect, the author examines the practical advantages and disadvantages of various models of legal separation of inherited property or the absence of separation. The paper analyzes the problems of Russian regulation of the liability of heirs: the legislative certainty of the liability model; the perception of this model by judicial practice and doctrine; the fairness of the current distribution of risks of insolvency and destruction of inherited property between creditors of the heir and the testator; features of bankruptcy of the estate. Using the case of inherited property, general conclusions are formulated concerning the phenomenon of detached property as an independent phenomenon of civil law, different from the institution of limited liability and the phenomenon of a legal entity.