Part six of our series on disputes over immovable property in an estate. Find out why a court cannot dismiss an action merely for an incorrectly worded prayer for relief, and what we recommend to heirs when preparing the action.
In the previous part we introduced three ways of wording the claim in a dispute over whether immovable property belongs to the estate. In this part we look at the practical consequences of this lack of uniformity and at which form of claim we consider safer.
Given the inconsistent decision-making practice of the Slovak courts (and the absence, to date, of a unifying opinion of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic), the question arises whether and how a court may refine the claim, or decide the case otherwise than as the claim was literally worded.
We regard the two main variants of the claim – "the property belongs to the estate" and "the deceased was the owner of the property as at the date of death" – as different in terms of what must be proved in the proceedings:
It follows from the above that the two forms of claim are distinct and should not be interchanged. Nevertheless, since the inconsistency in court practice on this question has not yet been resolved, we take the view that regardless of which of these two forms of claim the claimant chooses, the court should not, until a unifying opinion of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic is adopted, dismiss the action merely for an incorrectly worded prayer for relief – otherwise there could be a denial of justice (denegatio iustitiae). It would place unreasonable demands on the claimant when even the experts themselves cannot agree on a uniform interpretation.
We also note that even a constitutional complaint may not succeed on this question – in its settled practice, the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic confines itself to assessing whether the interpretation adopted by the ordinary courts is constitutionally acceptable, and does not intervene in which of several interpretations should be the correct one. Unifying this question falls within the competence of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic.
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