Martin Sustrik

There's an image here.

It gets more bizarre.

When you renounce the inheritance, it passes to the next tier of relatives.

If children renounce, it goes to parents.

If parents renounce, it goes to siblings.

If siblings renounce, it goes to nieces and nephews.

By renouncing a property, you create an unpleasant surprise for your relatives.

Finally, when every possible relative renounces, the family court appoints an administrator to manage the estate.

Their task is to search for other potential heirs, such as persons with special connection, that is those who cared for the deceased, worked closely with them and so on.

Lucky them, the friends and colleagues.

Obviously, this gets tricky and that's exactly the reason why a new system was introduced to allows a property to be passed to the state.

But there are many limitations placed on the property.

Essentially, the state will only accept land that has some value.

In the end, it's a hot potato problem.

The legal system was designed in the era when all property had value and implicitly assumed that people wanted it.

Now that many properties have negative value, the framework misfires, creates misaligned incentives and recent fixes all too often make the problem worse.

Tax penalties meant to force owners to renovate only add to the costs of the properties that are already financial liabilities, creating a downward price spiral.

Maybe the problem needs fundamental rethinking.

Should there be a guaranteed right to abandon unwanted property?

Maybe.