LA ESENCIAL REVOCABILIDAD DE LA DISPENSA DE COLACIÓN HEREDITARIA.

Abstract

What characterises the way the Spanish Civil Code regulates collation is that the Civil Code establishes a system of accounting records, as unanimously upheld by legal thought and repeated Supreme Court case law. The laws regulating collation are dispositive by nature. They may therefore be drawn upon by the parties concerned, and they empower any person who wishes to benefit an heir inter vivos (normally through a gift) freely to exempt that heir from bringing the value of the gift to collation in the future settlement of the giver's estate, as provided by article 1036 of the Civil Code. This is not an obstacle to the fact that exemption from collation, as a mortis-causa, act, is essentially revocable by nature anyway. The decedent may render its effects null and void at any time, whereupon the duty of collation springs back into existence. As we have shown in the body of the paper, from the time of the enactment of the Spanish Civil Code to the present day, civil law scholars have been largely in favour of the possibility of revoking exemptions from collation when the giver himself, while maintaining the validity of the gift, establishes in a later will the obligation to bring the value of the gifts to collation in the characteristic sense. Whereas in-natura contributions are excluded in the collation system under the Spanish Civil Code and Edmundo de Trujillo is the owner of the most-valuable property, the compensatory assignment Mr de Trujillo owes to his siblings must necessarily be paid in cash, as advocated unanimously by legal thought and ratified by the Supreme Court ruling of 17 March 1989 (Division 1).