A nagy pereskedés : Gróf Sztáray Antal öröksége a Sztáray-Zichy-Apponyi perben 1893-1899

Abstract

Although the large-scale litigation procedure over the inheritance of Count Antal Sztaray finally came to an end six years after the death of the benefactor (1893), the legal struggles affecting the majority of the Hungarian aristocracy also shed a bright light onto some of the important issues of modernization and transformation of the Hungarian inheritance law. The legal regulations of last will and testament based probate were extremely tolerant in dualistic Hungary: the Hungarian legal practice actually claimed to have the single task of finding out the genuine will of the deceased. Article XXXV of the Act of 1876 on public notaries and Article XVI of the Act of 1876 on last wills and legacy contracts merely defined the formal requirements of last wills. A new situation was created by Article XVI of the Act of 1894 whose Paragraph 130 provided Hungary with a highly professional and very detailed regulation of the probate procedure by offering up-to-date, European legal techniques. The new inheritance law entered into force on the 1st of January, 1896, so the first part of the inheritance lawsuit over the Sztaray legacy was conducted in compliance with the old regulations while the second part with the new ones, thus converting the trial into the first significant test case of the new law.