THE SURVIVING SPOUSE, THE TRUE PRIVILEGED LEGAL HEIR?
THE SURVIVING SPOUSE, THE TRUE PRIVILEGED LEGAL HEIR?

Summary/Abstract: From the repudiated heir, to the „favorite” of legal devolution. This is briefly the evolution of the rights of the surviving spouse starting from the Civil Code 1864 and reaching the current Romanian Civil Code (NCC). By introducing, together with the right to collect a share of the legal inheritance in competition with any of the four classes of legal heirs or even the entire inheritance, if they do not want or cannot inherit, a special right of inheritance having as subject furniture and household objects assigned to the common use (only when competing with classes II-IV of legal heirs), as well as a special right of habitation over a building in the estate, right of the surviving spouse who does not own another real right of his own on a house corresponding to his needs, as well as by taking over in our legal system the regulation of the precipitous clause, the surviving spouse acquires a status we could say „privileged” compared to the rest of the legal heirs. French law also provides, in addition to the general right of inheritance in competition with the other classes of heirs, special rights of habitation over the building in which he lived, for use on the furniture of the house, rights that outline a privileged status of the surviving spouse as legal heir. The analysis will be made concretely for each case, in order to see if in the successions with foreign element it is opportune to choose to make the choice of the national law as lex successionis, rather than to let the succession devolution operate according to the law of the last habitual residence.

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