The Center for providing free secondary legal assistance of the Ministry of Justice informs residents of rural areas about the main points that Ukrainians should pay attention to when inheriting a plot of land.

In Ukraine, the Civil Code provides for two methods of registration of land inheritance – by will and by law. In the first case, whoever the testator specified in the will, therefore becomes the owner of the plot.

Inheritance by law will take place in the following cases:

-the will was not drawn up or was declared invalid;

-the heirs under the will refused to accept the inheritance;

-the will does not cover the entire inheritance.

Civil legislation divides legal heirs into five ranks. Each of them inherits property only if the previous one did not inherit it. The legal heirs in the order of precedence include:

1st row: the testator’s children, including those conceived during the testator’s lifetime and born after his death, the surviving spouse, and parents;

2nd row: relatives of the testator, his grandmother and grandfather both on the father’s side and on the mother’s side;

3rd row: relatives of the testator’s uncle and aunt;

4th row: persons who lived with the testator in the same family for at least five years before the opening of the inheritance;

5th row: other relatives up to the sixth degree of consanguinity inclusive, dependents of the testator who were not members of his family.

By law, the heirs have 6 months from the moment of the relative’s death to receive the land plot as an inheritance. During this period, you must submit an application for acceptance of inheritance to a notary public. The application is submitted at the last place of residence of the deceased or at the location of the immovable property (if the place of residence of the testator is unknown).

After accepting the application and opening the inheritance case, the notary is obliged to check the presence of a registered right to a land plot for the deceased in the State Register of Real Property Rights. If the information about the registered plot and its cadastral number is confirmed, then the notary has every reason to issue the heir a certificate of the right to inherit the land.

But sometimes there are situations when the state deed for the plot was issued to the testator during his lifetime, but the cadastral number was not assigned. This means that the right to land is not registered in the State Land Cadastre. In this case, the notary will not be able to issue the necessary certificate to the heir.

In the absence of a cadastral number, the heir should contact a land management organization, which includes a certified land management engineer, for the production of technical documentation for the land plot. After the development and coordination of such documentation in the relevant institutions, information about the land plot is entered into the State Land Cadastre with the assignment of a cadastral number and the issuance of an extract.

This document, together with others that confirm the right of inheritance, already gives the notary the right to issue the heir a certificate of the right to inheritance and register his ownership of the land plot.

In order to calculate the amount of tax, it is necessary to make an expert assessment of the land plot. For this, you should contact any certified appraiser or organization.

However, not all relatives are obliged to pay tax when inheriting land. Resident natural persons who are relatives of the first and second degree of consanguinity are exempt from it. But other resident natural persons pay personal income tax (PIT) at the rate of 5% of the value of the plot and 1.5% of the military levy on the assessed value.

Source: Free Legal Aid Center