Language Law and State Responsibility for errors in the allocation of estates In a ruling issued on Contreras Muñoz
March 18, 2011 the Supreme Court ordered the Civil Service Registry and Identification compensate for damage arising from misrecognition as an heir to a person, to the detriment of those who had better right.
I
is rare that the state has to face the consequences of a dispute hereditary.
Until about ten years, the actual possession of the inheritance (the formal recognition of the status of heir to the property remained on the death of a person) should be obtained through legal proceedings pending non-contentious, and the judges are limited to granting who justify being in line of succession. The possibility that these efforts a distant relative anticipates the closest to the deceased, and gain and formal qualification to hold the assets of the estate, if it was not common at least into risk regulation. But this risk is minimized because the operation was taking place in terms of advertising and because it generally contradictory in the presence of legitimate non-contentious issues can become contentious, and ultimately, the giving of effective possession left to safeguard the exercise of action of inheritance demand.
But in 2003, 19,903 law transferred to the Civil Registry to handle the actual possession. Suddenly, he became managing administrative, dragging the matter to a public law regime. Thus, the eventual emergence of a state responsibility in these matters was a matter of time (and unlucky for some heirs).
II
On the merits, the law led to 19,903 a few changes from the previous regulation. One of the most significant relates to the circle of stakeholders to whom physical possession is granted:
"Art 6 th [inc. 1]. Actual possession will be given to everyone with the quality of heirs, according to records of the Civil Registry and Identification, even if they have not been included in the application and without prejudice to its right to repudiate the inheritance according to GENERAL RULES " . Thus, forcing the utility to control the circle of heirs, are further minimized the possibility of appropriation of an inheritance by reason of being relatives were passed over with a better right to it.
latter is precisely what went wrong in the case study. When a woman died in 2003 opened a series whose natural beneficiary was his only daughter, quickly, however, a nephew of the deceased requested the actual possession and the Registrar, after the necessary investigations, it is granted, thus ignoring the true heir.
Ten years ago it was not foreseeable that the victim obtained repair because the judges were still extremely lenient with the Civil Registry. In a case where the victim went to the extreme of having to face criminal consequences for alleged bigamy that could only be configured as a crime by the insufficient information of the public service, the judges acquitted the Civil Registry. This service could not determine that the first husband was dead at the time of getting the victim's second marriage, which were upheld by the Court of Talca as a circumstance "of the registry system itself, more so if the information from only one office because only in recent years has been revamped Civil Registry computationally ... " (Court of Appeals of Talca, 24.08.2000, Sánchez
c / Treasury confirmed by Supreme Court, 30.11.2000, Lexis Nexis No. 17,614).
In ten years it seems that modernization has come fully to the Civil Registry. In any case, the Supreme Court now officially sanctioned the change in public expectations regarding the operation of this service reflects normatively on a different standard of governing in 2010.
"Normally expected from the service in question is that if a child is registered as such on their parents the situation is noted by the Administration when ruling on the possession of one of their parents. It is true that there may be errors and for this the law provides mechanisms for the settlement, but it is not acceptable that two computer programs used by the institution ..., the system has thrown the existence of the marriage of the deceased in the year 1944, she was a widow, who had brothers who died before her, she had a nephew and could not determine the existence of a daughter duly registered after the year 1944, so the service certainly did not work as expected I had to do " (statement of appeal in the case
Muñoz Contreras, cons. 8).
III
Although
the lack of service was unambiguous, the trial became entangled by considerations of causality. The third party intervention in the causal chain should be analyzed in some detail: the correlation of the damage is the profit derived directly by the false heir was to recognize the actual possession, without whose craft the victim had not experienced loss. The Court of Appeals of Valparaiso appears to have been sensitive to such considerations, but it seems to have it channeled in a conceptually neat, explaining his decision to censor the Supreme Court.
was clear, moreover, that without the initial mistake of the Civil Registry, the false heir could not pursue their operation. The Supreme Court was well within reach (not even appeal to the equivalence of conditions) the possibility of correcting the reasoning of the judges of the fund.
reaction probably would have been different from being shown fraud or deceit of the third (and were reduced to mere knowledge of the existence of other heirs a better title). Although this solution is closer to the material fairness of orthodox thinking, it is usual that the fraud is presumed by the judges as the only adequate cause of injury, even in the presence of significant neglect in the origin of the damage. No doubt the fact of the third is here motivated by the negligence or fault of the Service Registry Civil, but it was not impossible (but on the contrary, it credible) that this lack of service was motivated in turn by fraudulent conduct or gross fault of those who wanted to pose as heir.
Therefore, although it seems reasonable that a state agency to respond in such a case shall be warned of the risk generated by this case. The net result of the sentence is assigned to the family of the deceased a sum equal to twice the market value of the thing (one, who got the fake heir to sell and another, which indemnifies the State). Hardly find a reasonable justification for a situation in which the State must assume duplication of inheritance. The
final question leaves open the statement has to do with monetary corrective to this situation. What happens to the remedies proposed by the civil law? It's uncomfortable to accept that advertising procedure lieu of actual possession has no effect on notice to the heirs of a better title in order to appear and enforce as appropriate. Nor is it satisfactory to argue that the victim is not required to infer the actions that have allowed them to be recognized as the heir and recover the goods, thus counteracting the damage. Did not some of the damage appears as caused by a lack of diligence of the same victim? Or alternatively and finally, would not have been entitled to less reserve to public service provided the possibility of subrogation actions that the victim was against the false heir?
