For example, in presenting a will to the court for its own sake.
This is at the heart of the latest ruling of the ultimate Court, the more crucial that both the law and the established case-law state that who was a associate in the procedure for the declaration of acquisition of inheritance may request a change to the order stating the acquisition, only if he could not establish the basis for his request and the request for amendment is made before the end of the year following the acquisition of that anticipation (Article 679(1) of the CCC).
Documentary and assurance of the daughter
At the succession trial, the daughter of the heiress in the alleged assurance testified that the deceased had not made a will. The husband of the deceased did not attend the trial, but the day before the court received his letter that he could not attend the trial due to serious examinations and infirmary stay. He requested a different date for the trial and joined the letter with a copy of the notarial will in which his wife made him the sole heir, but the letter was not submitted to the justice before the trial. My daughter knew there was a man in the hospital, but she didn't say a word about it.
In this situation, the territory court ruled the acquisition of the inheritance on the basis of the bill, by husband and daughter in half. It was only in the proceedings under Article 679 § 1 of the KPC from the application of the husband that he changed the order and ruled that the inheritance had been acquired entirely on the basis of the will of the husband.
The daughter appealed, and the territory Court in Katowice decided that the husband could have invoked the will earlier. This 1 did not quit and appealed to the ultimate Court, which included judges Mariusz Łodko, Leszek Bosek and Grzegorz Żmij, his cassation complaint was taken into account.
stableness of judgments and exceptions
– It is actual that the deceased's husband was a associate in the proceedings from the outset, but was incapable to show his title to decline due to errors of the territory court. In turn SO has escaped that the daughter of the deceased – the beneficiary of the defective decision – knowing about the beating and hospitalization of her father, did not pay attention to the origin of his justified absence. Finally, it is not doubtful that the applicant has complied with the deadline laid down in Article 679 of the KPC. Thus, although it is about the protection of the validity of the inheritance provisions, this protection is not an end to itself and cannot lead to a manifest, as in this case, violation of the order of succession, guaranteed in Article 21(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland – he pointed out in the justification of the SN.
The SN recalled the order of the SN of 15.1.2016, I CSK 1079/14, Legalis that even the possible errors of the court do not justify a change to the order to establish the acquisition of the inheritance under Article 679 of the KPC, but in that case it was undisputed that the applicant did not comply with the deadline set out in Article 679(1) of the KPC.
Consequently, the SN transferred the SO case for re-examination.
File number: II CSKP 153/22
Prof. Bogudar Kordasiewicz, Legal Advisor
The SN rightly recalled the regulation applied for years in succession cases: the law cannot be interpreted in a way that creates a trap on the citizen. However, there was no crucial aspect in the justification that the court knew from the beginning of the will. The fact that the heir's writings were ‘not planted in the file’ is not external to the court. It is essential to establish a standard in which a secretariat mistake has the same effect as a justice error. The misunderstanding was so the SO’s claim that the heir could have established another basis for inheritance in the first proceedings. He simply called it in his writing. Thus, the ultimate Court of Justice overturned the effects of a clerical error, stressing that the protection of the validity of judgments cannot service to violate the order of succession guaranteed by the Constitution.
