Comparative perspectives on the heir’s concealment of assets under the French and the Romanian Private Law

Abstract

Committing fraud by concealing assets or some other act or omission and misappropriation of assetsrepresent rather frequent practices, despite the prohibitory regulation under the French and the Romanian Civil Code. We conducted an analysis on the forced acceptance of the heir the fraudulent conduct of which has been the cause of the inheritable mass imbalance. The article encompasses an analysis of the main legal exigencies for the existence of the assets concealment. The first condition refers to the quality of potential inheritor of the author of the fraudulent conduct, at the moment when the goods were swiped.The second indispensable condition refers to the intentional element or the voluntary, subjective aspect of the fraudulent behavior. The latter would cause a patrimonial loss for the other heirs, which is also required for this type of sanctioning. The third condition which follows under the scope of this analyze is that referring to the objective element of the inheritance concealment. This is materialized in the fraudulent and non-transparent managing of the assets. The article mentions the intricacies of the various types of concealment that a personal representative or potential heir can be accused of concealing assets. This type of conduct would include failure to disclose or attempting to underestimate the value of inheritance assets.