The First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) established that the exclusion of the inheritance due to indignity or disinheritance constitutes a civil sanction that entails the deprivation of the right to succession of the sanctioned party.
Within the scope of the decision, the reasoning assumed is based on the interpretation of article 727 of the Civil Code, which provides that legitimate or natural children who may have been declared unworthy of succession, and as such excluded from the succession of their parents carried out repeated actions that are detrimental or deceptive to their parents or that affect their reputation and dignity.
According to the enunciated jurisprudential position, it is derived that children who have mistreated, seriously insulted their parents with deeds or words or who have denied them their protection or assistance, can be declared unworthy to receive the succession of their deceased.
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The enunciated jurisprudential position is in accordance with the notion of the Constitution of the Republic, in its article 57, which establishes the protection of the elderly person as an integral part of our catalog of fundamental rights.
Thus, it is entirely justified that parents, who in principle are free to dispose of their assets in the manner they deem appropriate for their personal interests, pursue the disinheritance of their child when there has been a break in the affective or sentimental bond, with those children who have incurred in repeated practices of psychic, emotional or physical abuse that is incompatible with the parent-child relationship and the elementary duties of respect and consideration that derive from it, as it happens, in the cases established in articles 727 of the Code Civil and 1 of Law no. 1097-46”, maintains the court.
In this sense, the aforementioned chamber through judgment no. SCJ-PS-22-2191, of July 29, 2022, rejects the appeal filed against civil judgment no. 00076, issued on October 26, 2015 by the Civil and Commercial Chamber of the Court of First Instance of the Judicial District of Espaillat, which has its origin in a lawsuit for succession exclusion of inheritance.
The signatory judges of this decision are Pilar Jiménez Ortiz (who presides over the first Chamber), Justiniano Montero Montero, Samuel A. Arias Arzeno and Napoleón Estévez Lavandier.
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