The wave of disinheritance “swells” – Countless properties going to the state –

Table of Contents

• 1 Inactive
• 2 Kikeonas
• 3 the “guardian”
• 4 Protests
• 5 **How can policymakers effectively leverage unclaimed inheritances to address ‌Greece’s housing crisis while navigating ⁣the ethical complexities⁢ surrounding deceased individuals’ wishes?**

There are too many paradoxes in the Greek economy. It is characteristic that in these conditions of the housing crisis, the phenomenon of renunciation of inheritance is observed with intensity.

Banking circles put the number of foreclosures at 500,000 to 700,000 in the many years of the Great Depression, from 2010 onwards.

Obviously, many heirs refuse inheritances because they are accompanied by debts either to the state, or to banks and individuals, which make their management difficult. The existence of the red loans has undoubtedly influenced the behavior of the heirs.

All this morbid and oppressive cycle of collectors, intermediate managers and finally servicers who strike at will and proceed to compound interest upon interest, combined with the complexity of the relevant procedures, tend to falsify trading morals, discouraging and changing finally the attitude of the heirs.

Inactive

As is well known, the acceptance of an inheritance requires the payment of the corresponding taxes in the first instance by filing within six months of the death of the heir the relevant declaration to the Tax Office and together with the assumption of any obligations the deceased has left behind. The disclaimer of inheritance can be filed within four months of the death of the heir.

The misfortune is that most of the unaccepted inheritances remain inactive and incomplete due to the lack of information of the relatives and those who could potentially claim them.

Usually when the first-degree relatives, parents and children, renounce any inheritance, the right is automatically transferred to the next, second-degree (i.e. siblings), third-degree (uncles) and fourth-degree (cousins), who in most cases of the cases they neither expect any inheritance nor are they willing to assume any burdens that may arise from it.

In the majority of cases, they are not even informed to renounce or accept the inheritance, with the result that after the relevant time limits have passed, they become potential heirs, with all that this implies for the obligations that may arise, the removal of which , needless to say, is achieved only in the courts, where those who wish to disinherit usually resort.

It should be noted that the submission of the relevant application for disclaimer of inheritance is foreseen within four months of the death of the heir. Otherwise, and to the extent that there have been previous waivers by relatives of the first and second degree, the next of kin who want to do the same and have missed the four-month deadline must resort to the courts in order to indicate and prove the time of their notification and thus to receive a new four-month deadline, which counts from the time of their notification that the courts will accept.

Kikeonas

It is obviously a flurry of actions and actions, which almost inevitably leads to frozen, inactive or scrutinizing legacies. It is impressive that even full bank accounts are lost through disclaimed inheritances, which remain unclaimed and after the passage of years either end up in credit institutions, or when reasons arise, are deposited in the Deposit and Loan Fund. Logically, through the multitude of renunciations, the state should have acquired infinite properties in the state, since it is automatically the last heir.

However, no one knows as there is no state monitoring and recording mechanism. According to unconfirmed information, only about 3,500 properties out of the hundreds of thousands of disclaimed inheritances have gone to the state.

However, neither the Ministry of Finance, nor previously the State Real Estate Company and now the superior ETAD know the number and value of the assets that come to the state through renunciations.

A search in the notary offices could yield the maximum, highlighting inactive assets, plots and houses and thus contributing to the development of social housing programs and easier handling of the acute housing problem.

the “guardian”

In 2013, precisely because of the large increase in the number of scholastic inheritances, the institution of a “guardian” was foreseen, who is chosen by the courts to manage them, apparently for profit, with the payment of a small fee, for management costs. Role of “guardian” of a scholastic legacy, e.g. of a farm or pasture, may be claimed by a tenant cultivator or husbandman, on the ground of preserving, by use, their value.

Be that as it may, there is untapped and inactive housing and land wealth out there that no one is looking for in these peculiar circumstances of a separate housing crisis.

But it is not the only problematic condition in the real estate zone. Finally, as businessmen and bankers point out, the specific zone is also haunted by the so-called insecurity of law. Previous rules of the building regulation that provided incentives and height privileges for environmentally modern bioclimatic constructions were recently brought to the Council of State.

Now a number of modern housing developments are facing a work stoppage precisely because specific incentives have been challenged at the highest court level.

Protests

A number of manufacturers are complaining about the alteration of the investment terms and the exceeding of the construction cost limits. Correspondingly, a number of investors and buyers of farms who rushed to buy lands of more than four hectares in order to overcome the obstacles of erecting buildings in non-plan zones are strongly protesting. All of them now, in order to build, must prove that their plot must face an officially recognized road.

Such roads, officially defined and named, do not exist in the Greek countryside. From time to time and case by case attempts were made to formalize such roads but they failed miserably. With the difference that the relevant provision remains strong and prevents the construction of new houses in off-plan zones that do not “face” an officially designated road. And thousands of buyers of plots of land of more than four acres to experience exactly the legal insecurity that our economic and legal culture contains…