IS IT POSSIBLE TO MAKE SAME DEMANDS ON THE DECEASED BANKRUPT AND HIS HEIR?

On March 29, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District had to pass a verdict in a case related to the bankruptcy of a woman who inherited property after the death of her husband, who was declared bankrupt. Case No. А41-31815 / 2017 had previously been considered by the courts of the first and appeal instances, but it turned out that both of them incorrectly applied the norms of substantive and procedural law.

At the end of 2012, the spouses Lavrova and Skvortsov lent Belousov $ 750 thousand at interest for a year. The latter had to repay the debt by the end of 2013, but died unexpectedly in April 2013, after which his wife Tatiana accepted his inheritance.

In November of the same year, Skvortsov died, and his wife Irina Lavrov became his heir. Since Tatyana Belousova had not repaid the debt taken in 2012, Lavrova appealed to the Shchelkovo City Court, which granted her petition in August 2015.

More than 42 million rubles were collected as the main debt, almost 7.7 million rubles of accrued interest and 60 thousand of the state duty.

This decision became the basis for the court to subsequently declare Tatyana Belousova bankrupt (April 2, 2018), starting the restructuring of her debts, including those that were inherited by her.

In 2019, the heiress appealed to the arbitration court with a claim to declare her ex-husband bankrupt, whose debt to Irina Lavrova also entered the register of claims. After that, the heiress applied to the court and asked to exclude these requirements from the register of her own debts in order to prevent the “doubling” of claims and the enrichment of the creditor Irina Lavrova in a double amount. It is curious that both the first instance and the appellate instance supported the citizen Belousova, noting that the fact that Lavrova was declared as a creditor in the bankruptcy case of the deceased Belousov was “enough for her”.

What was the opinion of the court of appeal? Judges Zenkova, Korotkova and Tarasov drew attention to the fact that none of the instances took into account simple truths. Debt obligations are terminated when they are fulfilled or there is a legal reason for this. In the case under consideration, there were no such grounds, and the abuse of Tatiana Belousova's subjective rights was obvious already for the first instance and was recorded in the ruling of the capital arbitration court of September 2, 2019.

The district court also noted that the presentation of the same claims to different persons (including in different insolvency proceedings) is not something exceptional for judicial practice.

Guarantors often receive claims from creditors for which the main debtors have not settled. The inclusion of claims in the register is not identical with their extinguishment, which means that it would be unfair to exclude such claims from the register to another bankrupt (in this case, to his heiress). Thus, the definitions of the lower instances adopted in 2020 were canceled, and the district court rejected Belousova's petition to exclude the debt to Lavrova from the register of claims against her.