China’s Testamentary Succession Legal System’s Flaw And Consummation

Inheritance law system is consisted of intestate succession and testate succession.Testate succession is the main way for a natural person to deal with his personalproperty after death, which is precede over intestate succession in Inheritance ordinal.When viewed from relative position testate succession is not only related to a nation’spolitical and economic system and cultural tradition but also affect on families’ harmonythat directly related to the nation’s economic development and social harmony andstability. This paper studied some basic issues of the intestate succession system andlearned from foreign legal issues related to the general provisions and then point out theinadequacies exist in our testate succession system, give improving measures.This paper consists of three parts. The first one is an overview of the estatesuccession system. This part simply describes the historical evolution and developmentgrain of estate succession system and proves that the main functional direction of estatesuccession system is to guarantee social benefits. Find the penetration and limit ofautonomy to estate succession system by exploring the run-through of autonomy in thesystem and get the conclusion that interests’ equity is the guiding ideology of the futuredevelopment of estate succession.The second part illustrates the inadequacies exist in our testate succession system.Due to the tremendous changes of our social and economic conditions the originalinheritance law can’t adjust the inherit relations effectively in the new situation. Viewedfrom the subject in testate succession, provisions on the rights of testator, heir andoblige exist inadequacies; when it comes to the content, provisions on the forms of willsare also not perfect; as for the execution, there is still some problems in provisions ontestament revoke, alter and executor system.The last part gives advises to consummate the testate succession system. Based onthe realistic conditions that the inheritance laws provide complement to the testatesuccession system, take other nations’ relevant provisions for reference, probe into thespecify paths of consummating the testate succession system from macro and micro angles----macro, to perfect the existing system in legislating; micro, to strengthen theprovisions on the subjects, contents and executions of testate succession.