유류분법의 개정방향

A Reform Proposal of Imperative Inheritance Law in Korea

During last 15 years or so, there have been reforms of inheritance law in many jurisdictions. Most of them were driven by the demographic, social, familial, and ideological changes as well as the practical need to protect the continuity of family business. Thus, those reforms have concentrated on the imperative inheritance law. Imperative inheritance was introduced into Korean law in 1977. Its original decision in 1950s not to introduce imperative inheritance was abandoned in about 20 years. The political reason thereof was to guarantee gender equality in inheritance. If it were not for imperative inheritance, allegedly patriarchical testators might neutralize the gender equality in intestate inheritance law, strived for by a series of revisions at that time, so easily by a will or donation to give all or most of the estate to the first born or the sons. In fact, the main function of Korean imperative inheritance law in today’s court practice seems to be to check and correct such a will or donation. In view of the recent developments of imperative inheritance law in many countries and the demographic, familial, and ideological change in Korea also, the only two grounds that can justify the imperative inheritance today seem to be guaranteeing a fair division of marriage property upon one spouse’s death and checking or lessening the testator’s abuse of will or donation, especially gender biased will or donation. The problem is that the current regime of Korean imperative inheritance law goes far beyond the purpose. It is because Korean law adopted an old form of Japanese imperative inheritance law though it did not fit for the above-mentioned purpose of introduction thereof. Korean imperative inheritance law also needs a reform. Though there are various alternatives to lessen the problems the preexisting law has, I believe it is too radical for now to abolish the notion of an uniformly predetermined share of the estate and substitute it with an ad hoc claim against the estate, which should be adjudicated upon each case. It might damage the pedagogical function of family and inheritance law. It would be better to combine the traditional predetermined share approach with a new mechanism to lessen the rigidity of this approach. In this regard, it is necessary to abolish imperative share of the presumed heirs other than the spouse and the children of the deceased, to allow an advance relinquishment as well as a deprivation of imperative share, to reduce ratio of imperative share at least when its amount exceeds a certain threshold, and especially to substitute restitution in nature from the legatee or donee, irrespective of whether he or she is an heir or a third party, with restitution in money only from the heir-legatee or heir-donnee.