Slaboshpytska U. Recent Trends in Unification of Legal Regulation of International Inheritance Relations.

The thesis is deals with complex research of current trends in unification of legal regulation of international inheritance relations. The author investigates the concept of unification of private international law in general and inheritance relations, in particular. The causes and the characteristics of conventional and unconventional international inheritance relations unification were analyzed. Special attention was paid to implementation of international inheritance law into the national legislation of Ukraine and other countries. The peculiarities of the legal regulation of succession by commorientes in continental and common law countries were identified. It is formulated that under Civil law system there is a presumption that testators' deaths are simultaneously if it is impossible to determine the sequence of testators' deaths that were killed in a single incident as well as the Benelux Convention of 29 December 1972 creates the presumption of simultaneous death if the order of dying cannot be established. To the contrary in most of the Anglo-Saxon legal system countries there is no presumption that testators' deaths are simultaneously if it is impossible to determine the sequence of testators' deaths, since the rule of "seniority" according to which the younger person is deemed to have survived an older ones applies. The author analyses key provisions of Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions and acceptance and enforcement of authentic instruments in matters of succession and on the creation of a European Certificate of Succession as well as the system of choice-of-law rules that determine the law applicable to the succession. The provisions which set out the rules of jurisdiction for the competent authorities in succession decision making were researched. The paper formulates the proposal on Ukraine's accession to the international conventions, which serve as unifying acts in the field of inheritance relations. In particular the necessity of accession to the Convention of 1973 Concerning the International Administration of the Estates of Deceased Persons and the Convention Providing a Uniform Law on the Form of an International Will of 1973 were justified.