The judicial procedure for establishing facts of legal significance for inheritance in the context of civil law reform
Keywords:
Civil Proceedings, Digitalisation of Justice, Inheritance Rights, Legal Bricolage, API Integration of Registers, Legal StabilityAbstract
The European integration course requires the harmonisation of national procedures with the principles of dejudicialisation enshrined in Regulation (EU) No 650/2012. The use of the fragmented experience of Poland and Germany without thorough adaptation to national realities limits the potential of Ukrainian reforms. This paper substantiates a model for optimising the judicial establishment of legal facts in inheritance cases by integrating digital verification and adaptive (“hybrid”) evidence protocols. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was employed. The quantitative analysis covered 350 court decisions from the Unified State Register of Court Decisions (USRCD) for 2022-2024. Regression analysis (R²=0.69) was supplemented by qualitative thematic analysis of 28 semi-structured interviews with judges, lawyers and notaries. The process-tracing method was used to reconstruct the “heir’s path”. A strong negative correlation was found between the level of digitalisation and the duration of proceedings (r = -0.62; p < 0.001). The implementation of digital verification protocols correlates with a 47% reduction in case processing time and a 65% decrease in transaction costs. The Status of Temporarily Occupied Territory (TOT) correlates with an increase in duration (r = +0.51) and the active use of “hybrid protocols” (r = 0.53). At the same time, in 8% of cases, such protocols are rejected due to the absence of a legislative standard.
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