La influencia de los sistemas romano y germánico en la regulación de nuestro derecho sucesorio

Resumen

It is well known that the regulation of our inheritance law has been influenced by two clearly differentiated systems; namely, the Roman of the successio whereby the heir subrogates in the same legal position as the deceased had in life taking over his/her debts as own debts and being liable without limit for them with the heir’s own property, and the Germanic of the adquisitio per universitatem, according to which, the successor does not takes over the debts of the deceased, but they affect him/her; in this system the duties do not form part of the inheritance but are a mere withdrawal of the active. Well, although there are provisions in the Civil Code which clearly apply at this point the Roman system of the successio, for example Section 659 providing that the inheritance includes assets, rights and duties, not all the doctrine agree now. This paper analyses these divergent views and in what points they have followed one of either systems.