Conceptual and Ideological Changes in the Czechoslovak Inheritance Law After 1948 in the Broader Context of Changes in Property and Family Law
Conceptual and Ideological Changes in the Czechoslovak Inheritance Law After 1948 in the Broader Context of Changes in Property and Family Law

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on the development of Czechoslovak inheritance law in the period after the end of the World War II, with an emphasis on the years from 1945 to 1951. Inheritance law underwent a significant transformation during this period, which was a direct reflection of the radical political, economic and social changes in the post-war period, which ultimately resulted in the rise of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1948. The inheritance law, which had been for the most part firmly established in the General Civil Law of 1811, was incorporated into the newly adopted so-called Middle Civil Code (No. 141/1950 Coll.). The model for this regulation was the Soviet inheritance law. The newly designed inheritance law thus already clearly reflected all the influences of the socialization of private law, often characterized by a significant departure from the traditional mechanisms and institutes of the regulation of the succession of inheritance known from the previous regulation. Inheritance law was newly linked to the concept of various categories of property – socialist property, personal property and private property. The stated aim was to make the objects of succession primarily objects of personal use and the fruits of one’s own labour. As a whole, inheritance law was intended to be a set of rules aimed in particular at simplifying the transfer of property in the event of death within the immediate family, and should primarily serve the living, not the dead. This corresponded to a substantial restriction on the autonomy of the testator’s will, which became even more pronounced in the following period.The main objective of the article is to focus on the most significant manifestations of the outlined conceptual changes and their real impact on the succession alongside the process of the unification of inheritance law in Czechoslovakia, which took place in the mentioned period.

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