European integration processes and modernization of European legislation have necessitated a review and improvement of Ukrainian legislation on international private law relations. This refers, particularly, to conflict-of-laws regulation of international inheritance relations. The conflicts existing in inheritance relations with a foreign element stem from different approaches applied in international treaties and in domestic legislation of States to regulate such relations with the use of substantive and conflict-of-laws rules. Today’s conflict-of-laws regulation of inheritance relations in Ukraine highlights the need for a review of the approaches and improvement of the existing conflict-of-laws constructions, and also for development of conceptual tools, which, in turn, will help resolve the issues arising in judicial and notarial practices with regard to inheritance under private international law.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the conflict-of-laws rules with regard to inheritance relations in private international law, and also to study the ways and means of conflict-of-laws regulation of international inheritance relations, as well as to present the author’s own vision of improving the mechanisms of their conflict-of-laws regulation, and to develop theoretical definitions and proposals in the area under study.

It is established that the Law of Ukraine “On Private International Law” (PIL Law) does not provide for explicit differentiation of conflict-of-laws rules based on the types of inheritance and the subject matter of inheritance relations, thus making it more difficult to regulate these relations appropriately. Having enshrined the universal factor connecting the testator’s last place of residence to inheritance relations, PIL Law does not provide for a definition of “the last place of residence”. There is no definition of this concept in Ukrainian legislation either. This allows interpreting it differently, both in doctrine and in practice. As a result, the author proposes to apply the connecting factor of “the last permanent place of residence” to inheritance relations.

The author has established that with regard to conflict-of-laws regulation of a person’s capability to make and revoke a will, as well as the will’s form and the act of its revocation, PIL Law enshrines the conflict-of-laws connecting factor of law of the State where the testator had permanent place of residence at the time of making the act or at the time of death. However, if at the time of making the act or at the time of death the testator temporarily resided in the territory of a foreign State which legislation establishes other requirements regarding the capability to make a will, in this case such a will does not legally entail the invalidity of the form in which it is made. We believe that this situation may be resolved by consolidating the conflict-of-laws connecting factor of law of the State where the will is made; however, issues relating to acceptance of inheritance should be governed by law of the State where the estate is located, unless the testator specified another law directly in the will.

The domain of international inheritance still has many issues which remain unclear and are not adequately addressed; this particularly refers to conflict-of-laws regulation of inheritance of certain types of testator’s rights, to ascertaining of the limits of testator will’s autonomy with regard to inheritance, and so on. Therefore, improvement of the conflict-of-laws regulation of international inheritance relations will help in addressing many problems which exist in judicial and notarial practice