ANALYSIS OF COURT PRACTICE IN CRIMINAL INTERPRETATION CASES

Due to the large number of questions on the Consultant's online consultation portal regarding inheritance law, there is a need to analyze case law on specific issues in this area. The courts' practice of suing for a will is ambiguous.

 Analyzing court decisions concerning the interpretation of the will, it can be seen that the practice is not straightforward, and in some cases the courts err.

 Pursuant to Article 1256 of the CC the interpretation of the will can be made after the inheritance is opened by the heirs themselves, and in case of a dispute between the heirs the interpretation of the will is carried out by the court in accordance with Article 213 of this Code. That is, the article establishes that the condition of going to court with a request for interpretation of the will is a dispute. Some courts correctly apply this rule. In particular, in the decision of the Desnyanskiy district court of the city of Chernihiv No. 2506/4404/2012 of August 14, 2012, the plaintiff was rightly denied the claim, since the case file showed that there was no dispute between the heirs. The court stated that the claim should be rejected in its entirety, since the plaintiffs did not provide the court with evidence to prove that there was a dispute between the heirs about the interpretation of the will, as the court did not provide evidence at all about the plaintiffs' request to interpret the will in a certain way and the fact that the defendant insists on the lack of dispute, so the parties can interpret the will themselves according to Part 1 of Art. 1256 CC. In addition, the covenant does not contain any misunderstandings or contradictions that could be used to interpret it.

 Thus, it is possible to establish 2 prerequisites for a court to seek a lawsuit to interpret a will:

1) the content of the will contains contradictions, inaccuracies that complicate the understanding of the last will of the testator;

2) the existence of a dispute between the heirs regarding the interpretation of the will.

 However, the courts in some cases ignore this provision. For example, in the decision of the Baltic District Court of Odessa region №493 / 1122/16-c of August 18, 2016, the following circumstances of the case were stated: PERSON_2 filed a lawsuit with PERSON_3 of the Odessa city council about the interpretation of the will, alleging that 19 his grandmother PERSON_4 died in January 2016. During her life, she made a will, which was certified on 02.11.2015 by the secretary of the Karmalyukivsky village council of the Baltic region of Odesa region at the register number 30. According to the said will PERSON_4, her land plot… bequeathed PERSON_2. The plaintiff appealed to the notary for registration of his inheritance rights to the property, but he was denied a certificate of inheritance right because the testamentary name and patronymic of the testator and the secretary of the village council were recorded as initials. The plaintiff therefore appealed to the court to interpret the will. The court upheld the claim, as it found that when registering the PERSON_4, the secretary of the village council made a mistake in the first and last name of both the testator and the official stated in a reduced version.

 In my opinion, the decision of the court is wrong, since in this case there is no dispute between the heirs, and its presence is a prerequisite for the court to seek a claim for interpretation of the will. The absence of a dispute is confirmed, firstly, by the absence of a reference to its presence in the circumstances of the case, secondly, the claim is filed with PERSON_3 of the Odessa City Council, who is not the heir, and thirdly, the case does not indicate the presence of other heirs. In this case, PERSON_2 would have to look for other options for resolving this issue, for example, by going to court in a separate proceeding with a statement of fact finding of legal value.

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