Pursuant to the provisions of Section 485 of the Slovak Civil Code (hereinafter referred to as the “Civil Code”), the heir who has acquired the inheritance is obliged to return the property he has acquired from the inheritance to the rightful heir in accordance with the principles of unjust enrichment, so that he does not benefit from the property to the detriment of the rightful heir, if it turns out after the inheritance proceedings that another person is the rightful heir.

At the same time, the unauthorised heir is entitled to be reimbursed by the rightful heir for the expenses incurred in connection with the inheritance and is also entitled to the benefits of the inheritance. However, if he knew or could have known that another person was the rightful heir, he is only entitled to reimbursement of the necessary expenses and is obliged to hand over to the rightful heir not only the inheritance but also the benefits of the inheritance.

An entitled heir is a person in whose favour one of the reasons for inheritance (law or testament) applies and who, although entitled to inherit, was neither disinherited nor renounced the inheritance, but was not involved in the inheritance proceedings. The heir entitled to inherit is the person who has been granted a subjective right to inherit based on a valid inheritance title (law or will), i.e. who should have been the heir entitled to inherit (hereinafter referred to as the “heir entitled to inherit”). An unauthorised heir, on the other hand, is an heir who has not been granted a subjective right of inheritance and who has acquired the inheritance on the basis of a court decision in the inheritance proceedings (hereinafter referred to as the “unauthorised heir”).

However, the provision of Section 486 of the Civil Code stipulates that anyone who in good faith acquires something from an unauthorised heir to whom the inheritance has been confirmed is protected as if he had acquired it from an authorised heir.

In this context, reference should also be made to the provision of Section 100(2) of the Civil Code, according to which all property rights, apart from property rights, are time-barred. It follows logically from this that a legitimate heir who did not become aware of his right of inheritance until after the expiry of the limitation period, or who had no knowledge of the fact that the inheritance proceedings of his ancestors had already taken place, could legitimately assume that his right to the restitution of his inheritance would not be jeopardised by the institution of the limitation period, since the right of ownership is not subject to limitation.

Unfortunately, such an assumption is not correct, as the provisions of Section 105 of the Civil Code stipulate that the limitation period for an heir’s claim to an inheritance begins to run with the legally binding decision on the conclusion of the inheritance proceedings, with the general limitation period being three years. Once the limitation period has expired, the claim becomes statute-barred, i.e. the claim is not time-barred but can no longer be enforced in court. It should therefore be noted that a limitation period of three years seems unreasonably short in this context.

It follows from this that the right of ownership is subject to the statute of limitations in the case of the abandonment of the inheritance in question and that the heir entitled to the inheritance is no longer entitled to assert his share of the inheritance by way of legal proceedings after the expiry of the three-year statute of limitations, as explained above. At this stage, therefore, we can only conclude that the provisions of Sections 485 and 105 of the Civil Code are internally contradictory and that the provision of Section 105 of the Civil Code contains an unconstitutional provision on the limitation of the right of the entitled heir to the property of the inheritance and that we must await the general recodification of Slovak private law and hope that this controversy on the limitation of the right to the return of the inheritance will be resolved. 

The situation is very different if the heir entitled to the inheritance has not been excluded from the inheritance proceedings and the inheritance decision directly entitles him to his share of the inheritance, but the other heir entitled to the inheritance refuses to accept it. In this case, the rights of the other heir also become time-barred, but within significantly different time limits.

According to Section 110(1) of the Civil Code, a claim that has been recognized by a final decision of a court or other authority is time-barred ten years after the date on which, according to the decision, it should have been satisfied. If the debtor has acknowledged the claim in writing, stating the reason and the amount of the claim, the claim shall become statute-barred ten years from the date of the acknowledgement; however, if the acknowledgement sets a time limit for performance, the limitation period shall commence upon the expiration of such time limit.

At the same time, it should be emphasized that a final and enforceable inheritance decree which imposes an obligation on one of the heirs to make a payment to another heir can be regarded as an enforcement order. Based on this final and enforceable inheritance decree, an application can be made within the above-mentioned limitation period of ten years for the enforcement of an enforcement order to enforce one’s own justified claim which the obligated heir has not satisfied voluntarily.

For the sake of completeness, it is also worth mentioning in this context the issue of additional inheritance proceedings, which is regulated by the provision of Section 211 of Act No. 161/2015 Coll., i.e. the Code of Civil Procedure for Matters of Non-contentious Jurisdiction (hereinafter referred to as the “CMP”).

Article 211 of the CMP states that “If, after the order terminating the inheritance proceedings has become final, further assets or possibly also a further debt of the deceased is discovered, the court shall, upon request, conduct additional proceedings concerning this estate. If only a debt of the deceased is discovered, no additional inheritance proceedings will take place. In justified cases, in particular at the request of the court, the notary, a state body or a local authority, the court may also initiate additional inheritance proceedings without an application. The court shall discontinue the additional inheritance proceedings if the property mentioned in the petition does not belong to the deceased”.

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