Abstrakt

§ 1. Introduction In the Polish doctrine, the need to amend the inheritance law has been a topic of particular interest recently. It seems that one reason for this is the planned creation of a new civil code, and is connected with the archaic nature of the current regulations, which remain inadequate in the face of modern technological possibilities and socio-economic needs. Another reason for the growing interest in inheritance law in Poland is the increase in society’s wealth. At a time when people are making ever greater savings, they want to have as much influence as possible on the fate of their property after their death. The subject of introducing joint wills into the new Polish inheritance law was slow to get off the ground. Nevertheless, it seems that, with time, the institution of joint wills has found more supporters among the Polish doctrine. This positive trend was reflected, for example, in the draft changes to the inheritance law presented by the Team of Succesion Law to the Codification Committee. It should be recognised that the subject of joint wills in the Polish doctrine still arouses quite considerable controversy. The basic problems related to this institution include: the lack of a uniform understanding of the term joint wills, doubts as to the legitimacy of their introduction into Polish law, the possible scope of the subject, the form of joint wills, and revocability. In this article, I will first present the issues of how the representatives of the Polish doctrine understand the term “joint wills”, the scope of the current regulation prohibiting the drafting of joint wills, and I will also discuss the presented proposals for the regulation of joint wills in Polish inheritance law. Ownership is fully exercised if it is possible to dispose of it both through inter vivos and mortis causa operations. Inheritability, can only be considered if the rightholder can identify the person to whom the right belongs their his death. The existence of testamentary freedom is a result of transferability of certain rights. Therefore, provisions protecting the right of inheritance also explicitly guarantee testamentary freedom. The link between the right to property and succession justifies the obligation to respect the holder’s will as the primary factor in determining to whom the assets making up the property are to be assigned in the event of his death. For this reason, testamentary freedom can be considered as “the core of the constitutional law of inheritance.” The testator’s freedom is undoubtedly the most important element in the content of constitutional right of succession. It should be noted that the Constitution of the Republic of Poland does not determine whether the will of a testator is to be made in the form of a will or in the form of another type of legal act in the event of death. The legislator may determine various ways in which the testator may express his will as to the fate of succession. I am of the opinion that, in making this choice, he should always bear in mind the main principles of inheritance law, i.e. testamentary freedom (disposition) the inheritance assets and favor testamenti, understood as a directive to reflect the will of the testator as fully as possible. Unfortunately, the Polish legislatordecided only to make a will as a legally permissible legal act of disposition upon death. Depriving testators of the possibility of making use of other means of disposing of succession and confining themselves solely to wills does not lead to the optimisation of these principles. This is certainly a restriction of testamentary freedom.