Browsing by Author "Witczak, Hanna"

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    A Gloss to the Judgment of the Appellate Court in Warsaw of 28 May 2013 (VI Aca 785/13)
    (KUL Publishing House, 2022) Witczak, Hanna
    In the glossed judgement, the Appellate Court examined the possibility of declaring the respondent unworthy of succession should he have committed the offence of avoidance of the duty of maintenance of the testator (Article 209 PC) or the offence of abandonment of the testator (Article 210 PC). The court’s considerations were purely hypothetical, as in the course of the proceedings, it was not proven whether the heir had actually committed these offences. The court allowed the recognition of the heir as unworthy if he had committed the offence of persistent avoidance of the duty of maintenance, but only if it could be proven. The court’s position raises certain doubts. Any conduct that violates familial nexus, in particular, should be verified for the existence of grounds for exclusion from succession, since this bond, in the legal sense, has its source in the relationship of marriage, consanguinity, and affinity, and these determine the legal title to inheritance. In particular, it is not understandable why persistent failure to fulfil family obligations, even if it is not an offence that a civil tribunal could additionally qualify as serious, does not actually produce legal consequences for the parent if the other party to the family relationship is a minor. It seems that wherever we are confronted with malicious and intentional failure to perform family duties, it should be assumed, provided that the statutory criteria of this specific type of offence are met, that in abstracto a serious offence has taken place.
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    The Legal Status of Minor Testator’s Parents Deprived of Parental Authority in Intestate Succession. Some Remarks on the Solutions in Polish, Russian, and Italian Law
    (Wydawnictwo KUL, 2021) Witczak, Hanna
    The legal situation of minor testator’s parents in intestate succession poses a significant legal and social problem. In Polish law, parents who have been deprived of parental authority continue to enjoy their civil-law status; in other words, they maintain the right to inherit from their child under statute. Meanwhile, the reasons for which the court applied the strictest possible “sanction” in the form of deprivation of authority of parents who, in exercising their rights under parental authority, seriously violated the child’s interest or grossly neglected parental obligations, which is noticeable even to an ordinary bystander, seem to be sufficient “proof” that family ties, which are decisive for the statutory title to inherit, do not exist. If these ties are severed or seriously disrupted, the consequences should be seen in all areas of life. Simply put, persons who deliberately break apart the family should not enjoy the advantages that the law provides for testator’s closest relatives. In such a case, to consider the effect of deprivation of parental authority by “releasing” its holders from any obligation towards the child may not be considered a sufficient civil sanction, especially given that in the vast majority of cases, the reason for such deprivation is gross neglect of parental duties by one or both parents. The consequences of this type of negligence should also, if not primarily, consist in the deprivation of pecuniary benefits that the parents of a minor could enjoy after his or her death. The current legal solutions governing this area undoubtedly need to be revised. Such imperfect normative solutions adopted in Polish law prove the need to propose de lege ferenda recommendations. In this context, it is worthwhile to have a look at the normative solutions adopted in foreign legal systems and whether they can be grafted on Polish law. The reference to the Russian and Italian legal systems seems particularly recommendable due to the fact that their normative solutions directly allude to the institution of deprivation of parental authority in the context of admissibility of the title to inherit.