Upon the death of a person, their estate, as a whole set of rights and obligations (i.e., both the assets and liabilities of the hereditary estate), is transferred to their heirs either by law or by will.<\/p>\n
According to the provision of Article 1885 of the Greek Civil Code, \u201cThe claims and debts of the inheritance are automatically divided among the co-heirs according to each one’s share.\u201d<\/p>\n
As accepted by legal theory and case law, this provision introduces the automatic division of the claims and debts of the inheritance among the co-heirs, proportionally to their shares.<\/p>\n
This automatic division of the claims and debts of the inheritance occurs in every case of succession, whether it is succession by will, intestate succession, or compulsory succession.<\/p>\n
The term \u201cdebts\u201d of the inheritance undoubtedly includes the (obligational) liabilities of the inheritance, i.e., the obligations existing at the time of the deceased\u2019s death towards third parties (see G. Georgiadis\u2013M. Stathopoulos, Civil Code according to article interpretation, Law & Economy P.N. Sakkoulas, 1998, volume X, Inheritance Law (article 1885), p. 74 et seq.).<\/p>\n
Following the above, regarding a will clause by which the testator imposes the obligation to pay an inheritance debt on one or certain heirs only, as accepted by legal theory, the testator cannot prevent the division of debts by a provision in their will. This is because, on the one hand, such a provision would contain an impermissible disposition of foreign claims (creditors\u2019 claims), and on the other hand, this would change the debtor of the claims contrary to the regulation of Article 1885 of the Civil Code. The relevant clause of the will cannot affect the right of the inheritance creditor to sue any of the co-heirs for payment of the inheritance debt according to their share (see Chounis, Inheritance Law II, Law & Economy P.N. Sakkoulas, 2004, p. 416, with references to Yilios, Inheritance Law \u00a719 II and Vouzikas, Inheritance Law \u00a7164 I).<\/p>\n
Therefore, the testator may distribute the debts differently among their co-heirs; however, such a provision in the will, which is permitted under Article 1890 of the Civil Code, has only an obligational effect (see Chounis, op. cit., with references to Yilios, Inheritance Law \u00a719 A II, G. Georgiadis\u2013M. Stathopoulos, op. cit. Civil Code 1890 arts. 13-14 etc.) and therefore cannot be enforced against the creditor of the inheritance, i.e., the State, in case of existence of inheritance debts owed to the State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Upon the death of a person, their estate, as a whole set of rights and obligations (i.e., both the assets and liabilities of the hereditary estate), is transferred to their heirs either by law or by will. According to the provision of Article 1885 of the Greek Civil Code, \u201cThe claims and debts of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[526],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-issues-for-individuals"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"spiliopouloslaw","author_link":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/author\/spiliopouloslaw\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Legal Issues for Individuals<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Upon the death of a person, their estate, as a whole set of rights and obligations (i.e., both the assets and liabilities of the hereditary estate), is transferred to their heirs either by law or by will. According to the provision of Article 1885 of the Greek Civil Code, \u201cThe claims and debts of the","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiliopouloslaw.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}