Inheritance of Legalized Digital Assets: Conflicts and Possible Areas of Improving Russian Legislation

Abstract

Digital financial assets, utilitarian digital rights, digital ruble can belong to citizens, but when drawing up orders in case of death, as well as when executing inheritance, notaries and law enforcers find themselves in a deadlock due to the incompleteness of legal regulation of this sphere of public relations. The author’s goal was to analyze the possibility of applying the general procedure of hereditary registration of the transfer of rights to digital rights and digital rubles, to identify gaps and to formulate proposals for solving both practical and doctrinal difficulties. The methods of collecting empirical information, generalization methods, comparative legal, formal legal ones were implemented. The conclusions are formulated about the possibility of singling out an independent type of dispositions in case of death in respect of such special objects of turnover as digital rights in the framework of interaction with the platform on which such rights are issued and circulated. In the absence of a clear consolidation of the rules of inheritance of digital rights, the testators have to carry out conditional inheritance planning by taking actual actions to ensure the transfer of information about the login and password from the digital wallet to the heirs; it does not allow to protect interests of compulsory heirs and surviving spouses. Comparing the rules of execution
and execution of testamentary disposition in case of death in respect of funds on the citizen’s account in a credit organization, which the legislator extended to the digital ruble, with the peculiarities of interaction between the citizen and the platform regarding the turnover of digital financial assets and utilitarian digital rights allowed us to conclude that for the hereditary succession in respect of digital rights the most simple in the execution and execution will be just a testamentary disposition. Since the registration on the platform creates a personal account of the user, the platform operator conducts the identification of the user, transfer of rights to his heirs can be ensured by applying directly to the platform operator for access to digital assets.