萬國法律事務所

Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed an amendment of Articles 1-1 and 1-2 of the Enforcement Law for Part V, Succession Law of the Civil Code. According to the amendment, heirs will no longer bear the burden of proving that “continuous performance of the inherited obligations is obviously unfair”. Instead, creditors will have to prove that it would be obviously unfair for the heirs to be entitled to claim “limited inheritance”.

Through previous amendments in 2009, the limited inheritance system newly applies to succession without the need to apply or register, and heirs would automatically be allowed to only be obligated to repay debts within the value of the inherited estate. However, for the succession already taking place before 2009, as an exception to apply the limited inheritance system retroactively, the previous Enforcement Law only allows heirs who are under 20 years of age or who are mentally unable to handle their own affairs enjoyed the benefit of limited inheritance when they could prove “continuous performance of the inherited obligations is obviously unfair”. This burden of proof created difficulties to apply such exception. To resolve such difficulty, the amendments this time shifts the burden of proving “obvious unfairness” to creditors.

Under the amendments, creditors seeking debt satisfaction from heirs will have the burden of proving that the heirs should not be eligible for limited inheritance. In other words, such creditors seeking debt satisfaction from heirs will need to prove that it would be obviously unfair if the heirs are entitled to limited inheritance.