Reflections of Historical Legal Traditions in the Attempt to Implement Improvements for Vulnerable Necessary Heirs in Brazilian Inheritance Law

Abstract

The improvement to the necessary heir arose in the Fuero Juzgo, as a way for the father to benefit a child of his preference, and its regulation was detailed in the Toro Laws and, during the codification period in Spain, the legal figure entered its Civil Code. In 2015, Argentina incorporated the institute into its Civil and Commercial Code and, recently, Brazil has proposed laws that aim to implement it. Such projects use Argentine law as a justification, ignoring its true origin and disregarding its historical evolution through an in-depth study. The objective of this paper is to analyze the legal figure of the improvement to the necessary heir and investigate how its historical traditions can influence contemporary legislative proposals for its adoption in Brazil, applying it to the vulnerable necessary heir. This is an exploratory research, through a deepening of the institute of improvement in Visigothic and Spanish law, making a historical and critical analysis, to ascertain the possible viability of its application in Brazilian Civil Law. The deductive investigation method was used as the method of this study, with application in historical research. It is concluded that legislators and scholars need to deepen the historical study of improvement before adopting this rule in Brazilian Civil Law, so that the problems of the past are not reproduced in contemporary times.