South Korea’s inheritance law makes it possible for absentee parents to claim their children’s money, based solely on the fact that they are related by blood. - The Straits Times/ANN
SEOUL (The Korea Herald/ANN): Last week, the Busan High Court recommended a settlement in a legal dispute over a late sailor’s wealth that broke out between his mother and his older sister.
The mother, however, refused to obey the court and hand over 42 per cent of her son’s insurance money to the sister, despite leaving her children when they were young and being out of touch for 54 years.
The news sparked outrage across South Korea and reignited discussions about a legislative change to exclude parents who abandoned their children from inheriting their wealth, known as the “Goo Hara law”. It is named after the late K-pop star whose mother tried to claim her money after her death, despite not having been in her life since Goo was nine years old.
South Korea’s inheritance law makes it possible for absentee parents to claim their children’s money, based solely on the fact that they are related by blood. The revision to this law that was first proposed in 2020 is still pending in the National Assembly.
In an interview with local media, the mother of the late sailor, Mr Kim Jong-an, said she “raised him when he was little. He didn’t raise himself. I’ll get that insurance money. I did enough for my kids”.
Mr Kim was two years old when he saw his mother for the last time.
Legal loophole
At the time of Mr Kim’s death, he was in a common-law marriage, which is not recognised by the law. As his closest relation by law, his mother was contacted by the insurance company and at first did not even recognise that she had a son by that name.
The mother-son reunion after 54 years happened via paperwork – Mr Kim’s body has not been recovered since his presumed death in January 2021 – and she claimed the life insurance money worth 237.7 million won (SS$180,000).
The Busan court recommended that she hand over 100 million won to her daughter, who raised her brother after they were abandoned, but the mother refused.
“When our older brother died in 1999, she (the mother) was nowhere to be seen, despite the police contacting her,” Mr Kim’s sister said at an open forum for the Goo Hara law at the National Assembly held earlier this week.
“Would she have cared if my younger brother did not have money? Or was married and had children?” she said.
The verdict that gave all the money to the estranged mother was based on the South Korean Civic Act and the ordinance of the Seafarers Act. The ordinance states that the family of the person who has died should be defined as the bereaved family, regardless of whether they were financially supported by the one who had died.
Article 1,000 of the Civic Act states that the direct descendant of someone who has died has top priority in inheritance, and the “direct ascendant” (parent) second. Should the person who died have a spouse, the spouse would have top priority as well.
Without a will, a sibling can inherit only if the person who died had no parents left and no children. Article 1,004 of the Act states that one loses the right to inheritance if one is responsible for the death of the person, the person’s spouse or any beneficiary who has priority for inheritance over him or her, if he or she obstructed the will from being carried out, or if he or she used deceitful means to pressure the dead person to make a favourable will towards him or her.
This means that even if a parent abandoned a child at a very young age and the child’s sibling raised the child for the majority of his life, the parent would have all the rights to inherit whatever wealth the child may have left behind, as long as the parent did not try to kill the child.
Goo Hara law
A similar case happened when K-pop star Goo Hara died by suicide in November 2019 at 28. Her mother – who had not contacted her in nearly two decades – claimed half of her assets based on the inheritance law.
Goo’s brother filed for a legislative revision through a national petition to Parliament that would deprive of inheritance rights those who “grossly neglected support for one’s direct ascendant or descendent”.
The petition was signed by more than 100,000 people and forwarded to the Legislation and Judiciary Committee. In June 2020, Representative Seo Young-kyo of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea officially proposed the revision to the law.
In December 2021, the court granted Goo’s mother the right to inherit 40 per cent of her assets, saying that the father was entitled to 60 per cent as the main caretaker for the majority of her life.
Without the legal revision, the court has no legal basis to prevent absentee parents from claiming their children’s wealth. Representative Seo and other members of the judiciary committee from her party said they will make sure the revisions are deliberated by the committee in August.
The Busan High Court is slated to reach its final decision on the Kim case next Thursday. - The Korea Herald/ANN
