A long-running inheritance dispute in Kazakhstan, involving a murder, has been resolved. The Court of Cassation ruled to strip the relatives of a convicted killer of rights to the victim's property, reports infohub.kz.
The case began when a woman filed a lawsuit to restore the deadline for accepting an inheritance. She claimed that her grandmother had made a will in 2007 in favor of her son, the woman's uncle. After the grandmother's death in 2010, the uncle continued to live in the house but never legally formalized the inheritance. The uncle himself died in 2013.
The woman explained that she was unaware of the inherited property, believing it had passed to her uncle under the will. Only in 2023, during the consideration of another civil case involving the disputed house, did she learn that the uncle had not formalized the inheritance. She then went to court and a notary, confirming her relationship to her grandmother. However, the notary refused her due to the missed deadline for accepting the inheritance.
The district court restored the deadline and recognized the woman as having accepted the inheritance, but the appellate court overturned that decision. The case reached the cassation court, which disagreed with the appellate conclusions and upheld the first-instance ruling.
The cassation court explained: "The absence of a notarial certificate of inheritance rights does not in itself confirm the absence of inheritance rights. After the death of his mother, M. actually lived in the disputed house, which is an action indicating acceptance of the inheritance. Moreover, his death after the opening of the inheritance does not exclude the application of the institution of hereditary transmission."
The court also recognized the reasons for missing the deadline as valid. The district court's decision was challenged by the wife and son of another man—the brother of the deceased heir—who had been convicted of his murder. The court stated that these individuals had no independent inheritance rights to the disputed property.
The court's ruling emphasizes: "In accordance with Article 1045 of the Civil Code, persons who intentionally deprived the testator or any of the possible heirs of life do not have the right to inherit, and therefore these persons did not acquire inheritance rights to the disputed property."