Some Aspects of the Modern and Contemporary History of Heritage. The Division of the Succession Patrimony of the Monks in the Romanian Law

This paper proposes the historical and legal analysis of a part of the matter of inheritances, namely, the succession patrimony of the monks, from the perspective of Romanian law, in the modern era and the contemporary era. We started in the study of this subject from a problem encountered in practice, which concerned the request of the relatives of a deceased monk to hand over to them the goods he owned during his life, in their capacity as successors. First, I analyzed the legal issue through the prism of civil law, as the first impulse of the legal practitioner. After that, I researched the rules of canon law and the norms in the status of various cults, which regulate the legal status of goods that are acquired by monks during the period in which they function as such within the church. In Romanian law there are few cases of this kind, which would allow outlining a judicial practice in the field, which is why we can analyze the problem from the perspective of the normative acts in force and the doctrine, even if it is quite poor. At the same time, to have a correct representation of the factual and legal situation, but also to understand as correctly as possible the issue of inheritances as it is regulated and perceived in the monastic world, I considered necessary the analysis of modern and contemporary legislation and consulted the statute of several cults, to better understand the legal regulation specific to canon law.