Litigation and inheritance registration can cost hundreds of thousands of rubles
The recently adopted tax reform bill contains amendments that will make property disputes in court much less accessible. In case of disputes regarding inheritance and ownership of real estate, the state duty (we are not talking about fees for lawyers and experts) can amount to hundreds of thousands of rubles, practicing lawyers have calculated.
The law was signed by the Russian President on July 12 and will come into force at the beginning of 2025. In addition to the widely discussed innovations in personal income tax, the introduction of a tourist tax, etc., the law increases the state duty for filing documents in court on property cases. Considering that legal disputes often involve real estate and other valuable property, duties could soon amount to hundreds of thousands of rubles, lawyers warn.
“An apartment in the Central Administrative District, cadastral value of 35 million…,” a practicing lawyer illustrates the situation in his Telegram channel (https://t.me/litigation_lawyer_troubleshooter/418). — …I’m going to court with a claim , according to the law, the maximum possible fee is 60 thousand rubles, we pay and go to court… Now, for filing a claim for the same dispute, the state fee under the new law will be 245,000 rubles.»
The mechanism for calculating the new fee, according to the lawyer, is as follows: under Article 333-19 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, when filing a property claim with the court, the state fee is paid for a claim valued between 10,000,001 rubles and 50,000,000 rubles — 120,000 rubles plus 0.5% of the amount exceeding 10,000,000 rubles. If the property claim is worth more than 50 million rubles, the fee will be 320,000 rubles plus 0.2% of the amount exceeding 50,000,000 rubles. There is no upper limit.
In some cases, even the simple registration of an inheritance can be burdensome: registration of a certificate of inheritance rights with a notary costs 0.3% of the value of the inherited property, but no more than 100,000 rubles. for each object + 7,700 rubles for each object. «A lot from the point of view of indisputable proceedings, which is notarial,» the lawyer estimates.
Applications for interim measures, for clarification of decisions in the courts will also be subject to a fee — 10 and 5 thousand rubles per submission, respectively. As for arbitration courts, there (that is, when working with legal entities) the prices are much higher: for a claim price from 10 to 50 million rubles — 325,000 rubles + 1% percentage of the amount exceeding 10 million rubles; over 50 million rubles — 725 thousand rubles + 0.5% of the excess amount; Correcting a typo in the decision will cost 15 thousand, an interim measure — 30 thousand, and so on.
“There have long been conversations in the judicial system about overload, the need to free judges from many minor proceedings,” recalled “MK” lawyer Alexey Golubev. — This goal may also be achieved, but the main thing, it seems, is still the desire to increase budget revenues. The consequences will most likely be as follows: litigation over expensive real estate and assets will be inaccessible to low-income and poorly socialized owners and heirs. This will make them less protected from abuse and fraud.
According to the lawyer, even now, in order to compete with black realtors, unscrupulous relatives, etc. for an apartment, victims need tens of thousands of rubles for legal services. Taking into account the new fees, the cost of a judicial resolution of the issue will sometimes increase several times.
— It would seem an obvious solution: take out a loan if there are no savings, resolve the issue, sell the asset and return the loan, says Golubev. — However, firstly, not everyone is able to carry out such an operation successfully. Secondly, we are often talking about apartments and houses where people live and want to continue living — in this case, this option turns out to be impossible. And most importantly — a lawyer cannot and does not even have the right to guarantee the outcome of the trial. That is, there remains a possibility of losing a significant amount, ending up in debt and at the same time losing the process. Under such circumstances, few people will decide to go to court.