LOS PACTOS SUCESORIOS EN LA LEY 2/2006, DE 14 DE JUNIO, DE DERECHO CIVIL DE GALICIA.

Abstract

Act 2/2006 of Galicia on Civil Law, which is presently in force, sets a series of common rules for all succession agreements (in matters of capacity to make such agreements and the exigency of public form). Immediately afterwards the act maintains previous legislation concerning sorting, with a few technical stipulations (e.g., the contractual exclusion of the sorting of an ab intestato inheritance, the includability of contributed things in a hotchpotch, the form of assessment in partition and the regulation of the effects of a supervening loss of efficacy), the so-called pacto de mejora or accord of improvement (as a concrete assignment of property with or without a coetaneous attribution of ownership), one subspecies of which, characterised by object, is the improvement of working and possessing (The new configuration of the institution of the lugar acasarado, the Galician term for the farmland lying round the home of the farmer, is especially important and must involve a radical change in the jurisprudence of the High Court of Justice of Galicia) and voluntary usufruct by a widow/widower without prejudice of the testamentary creation of said usufruct. The act contains a reform of the concept of the legitime, conceiving the legitime as a pars valoris and converting its recipients into mere creditors of the legitime, without prejudice of the possibility of attaching the hereditary property for satisfaction of the right. This reform largely conditions the efficacy and validity of the contents of the succession institutions at issue in the study.