Rules on the conflict of laws in the matter of succession in Romanian private international law

Until the entry into force of the new Civil Code (1 October 2011), the law applicable to inheritance made the distinction between the inheritance of movable property (to which the national law of the deceased applied) and the inheritance of immovable property (to which lex rei sitae applied). At present, the Civil Code establishes, as a rule of principle, that inheritance is subject to the law of the state on whose territory the deceased had habitual residence at the time of death. Thus, in the new legal regulation, the Romanian legislator considered, on the one hand, the Hague Conventions in this matter, and on the other hand, European Union law. In this article I analyzed the law applicable to inheritance in Romanian private international law, namely the law applicable to wills. Likewise, I conducted a comparative study with the legislation of other states in this matter. As regards the domain of application of the law on inheritance in Romanian private international law, I presented the aspects governed by art. 2636 of the Civil Code.