The Supreme Court reviewed a case in which a court order had been issued against a woman who had died back in 2010. Nevertheless, in 2023 the magistrate judge recovered a debt from her, and in 2024 the bailiff initiated enforcement proceedings. After the bailiff discovered that the debtor had died, he applied to the court to have the proceedings terminated, but all three judicial instances rejected the request. The courts held that the bailiff should have searched for heirs or estate property, and that the debtor’s death prior to the issuance of the court order did not prevent enforcement.

The Supreme Court disagreed with this position. It reminded that a citizen’s legal capacity ends at the moment of death, which means that a judicial act cannot be issued against a person who no longer possesses civil or procedural legal capacity. Therefore, the court order issued 13 years after the woman’s death is invalid, and the enforcement proceedings initiated on its basis must be terminated.

The Court also noted that a bailiff is not required to search for heirs. This is the creditor’s responsibility: it is the creditor who must file a claim against the estate or the heirs, rather than obtaining a court order in the name of a deceased person.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court emphasised that enforcement is the final stage of civil proceedings. By analogy of law, enforcement initiated on the basis of a judicial act issued in relation to a deceased person cannot continue, since the enforcement of claims against a non-existent legal subject is impossible.

Taking into account these errors, the Supreme Court overturned all previous decisions and remanded the case to the first instance court to terminate the enforcement proceedings. Ekaterina Schmitt, a lawyer at Timofeev, Vahrenwald & Partners, noted in her comment for Advokatskaya Gazeta that this case reflects a common problem in court order proceedings: among “debtors” there are often individuals who died long before the enforcement process began. According to her, courts do not always verify whether the debtor has procedural legal capacity, although this is a key requirement for issuing a court order. In practice, a consistent approach has already formed: such court orders are considered invalid, and enforcement proceedings based on them must be terminated.

She stressed that in such disputes the procedural relationship itself is “defective”: the claim is addressed to a person who cannot be a party to the proceedings. Succession is impossible, as the debt falls within the realm of inheritance law. If such orders continued to be enforced, creditors would gain unjustified advantages compared with those proceeding under the ordinary claim-based procedure, where the fact of the debtor’s death is usually identified much earlier.

“Advokatskaya Gazeta” (Russian Advocacy Newspaper) is the official body of the Russian Federal Bar Association (published since 2007). The Newspaper’s publications are devoted to the most important legal topics, case law, as well as legal practice and issues of advocacy.

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