Ustanovlenie soderzhaniya inostrannogo prava v transgranichnykh nasledstvennykh delakh: mezhdunarodnaya pravovaya pomoshch' i al'ternativnye puti preodoleniya trudnostei

Abstract

International cooperation of states and their integration associations favour foreign economic activities. At the same time, armed conflicts and the ever-increasing gap between developed and developing nations force people to seek refuge and a «better life» abroad. Both, however, lead to an increase in cross-border succession cases, the Achilles' heel of which still is not the only application of foreign law but even establishing its content as well. Given this, based on an analysis of provisions on international jurisdiction and conflict of laws rules, the article identifies the main situations requiring Russian courts and notaries to apply foreign inheritance law and reveals specific complications of establishing its content. With the advantages and disadvantages of existing ways to obtain information on foreign law, the author considers the problem of substitution of applicable foreign law with lex fori as a reaction of legal practice to the limited access to relevant information. Some examples of techniques to avoid the application of foreign inheritance law are given and a set of measures to reduce the need to establish the content of foreign inheritance law and to improve access to it is proposed.