Liberalities subject to hereditary collation: misunderstandings and assumptions under discussion

Abstract

In the Spanish legal system, the collation is a partitioning operation that occurs when several heirs with right to a reserved share concur in an inheritance, in which case they are obliged to bring to the inheritance the value of what they received during the life of the deceased gratuitously. Despite the fact that the collation of inheritances is an institution of immemorial validity in Spanish Law, it continues to pose terminological and conceptual problems in inheritance practice and in the judicial sphere. This paper analyses some of these problems in relation to the object of the collation, examining various cases in which it is discussed whether or not this partitional operation is applicable or on which asset or right it should operate. The withdrawal of money from the deceased's accounts, remunerative donations, the acquisition of real estate with money from the parents, the donation of the bare ownership or usufruct and the free transfer of the use of certain assets of the deceased are the situations that receive specific attention in this paper because, due to their peculiarities, in recent years they have raised doubts before the courts regarding their eventual collation in the distribution of the inherited estate.