When the Same Inheritance Is Litigated Twice: the ECHR’s Perspective in Galina Roșca and Others v. the Republic of Moldova

On 24 September 2026, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in Galina Roșca and Others v. the Republic of Moldova (application no. 14975/15), finding a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention in respect of the principle of legal certainty and the binding effect of a final judgment, as well as a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, concerning the protection of property.

Beyond the finding of a violation of the Convention, the case is particularly noteworthy because of the nature of the dispute that reached Strasbourg: an inheritance dispute in which the seemingly straightforward question — who was entitled to inherit the property not covered by the will, and in what proportions — resulted in two sets of judicial proceedings producing incompatible outcomes.

The case originated in the death of R.P. in 2000. He left four children: R.I., R.T., R.G. and R.Gr.

Under his will, certain assets belonging to the deceased were left to R.I. He formally accepted the testamentary inheritance within the statutory time limit and, on 8 November 2000, was issued a certificate of inheritance in respect of the assets covered by the will.

However, part of the estate was not covered by the will.

The first applicant, Galina Roșca, was the wife of R.P.’s son, R.G., who had died before his father on an unspecified date. Galina Roșca and her two children, who were co-applicants, lived in the deceased’s property and continued to reside there after his death. This fact became crucial in determining whether the inheritance had been accepted.

The issue resurfaced in 2011, when R.I. obtained from a notary a certificate recognizing his entitlement to part of the property that had not been included in the will and subsequently donated that property to a third party.

As a result, proceedings were brought against the applicants seeking their eviction. They lodged a counterclaim requesting, among other things, the annulment of the certificate of legal inheritance and a finding that they had accepted the inheritance by continuing to reside in the property.

The first-instance court dismissed the applicants’ claims. The situation changed on appeal.

By a judgment of 15 May 2012, the Chișinău Court of Appeal quashed the first-instance judgment and allowed the applicants’ claims. The court found that they had acquired the legal position that R.G. would have held had he been alive when the succession opened and that they had accepted the inheritance in practice by residing in the property.

Moreover, the court found that the deceased’s other children, including R.I., had not accepted within the prescribed time limit the inheritance relating to the property that was not covered by the will.

With regard to R.I., the Court of Appeal expressly held that he had no legal entitlement to the disputed property.

The judgment was upheld by the Supreme Court of Justice on 2 January 2013 and became final.

Accordingly, at that point, the legal question of who had accepted the inheritance in respect of the property not covered by the will had been finally determined.

On 27 May 2013, the applicants initiated a new set of proceedings, this time against the notary responsible for the inheritance proceedings. They sought the annulment of the inheritance certificate by which Roșca Andrei had been recognized as entitled to one quarter of the estate not covered by the will, and the issuance of new certificates under which each of the three applicants would receive one third of that property.

At first instance, the Criuleni District Court ruled in their favour. In its judgment of 11 December 2013, the court proceeded on the basis that matters already established by a final judicial decision could not be reconsidered and did not have to be proved again in subsequent proceedings.

The outcome was, however, reversed on appeal. By a judgment of 30 July 2014, the Chișinău Court of Appeal dismissed the applicants’ action, interpreting the effects of the final judgment of 15 May 2012 differently. According to the Court of Appeal, the earlier judgment had established only that the applicants were entitled to inherit, without determining that they were the sole heirs to the property concerned.

The Court of Appeal therefore considered that R.I. had also accepted the inheritance within the statutory six-month period following R.P.’s death and was consequently entitled to a share of the property not included in the will. The applicants challenged this conclusion before the Supreme Court of Justice, arguing, among other things, that the appellate court had disregarded the effects of the final judgment of 15 May 2012, which had already established that R.I. had no rights over the disputed property.

On 3 December 2014, the Supreme Court of Justice dismissed the appeal as unfounded.

Thus, following the second set of proceedings, the domestic courts reached a conclusion incompatible with that established in the first proceedings: while the judgment of 15 May 2012 had established that R.I. had no entitlement to the disputed estate property, the new proceedings recognized that he nevertheless had a right to a share of the very same property.

This contradiction between the two sets of proceedings became the central issue subsequently examined by the European Court of Human Rights.

For the ECHR, the issue was not to determine who, under domestic law, was the rightful heir.

The Court did not act as a “fourth-instance” court called upon to interpret domestic inheritance law.

The question before it was different: what effect must a final judicial decision have in a State governed by the principle of legal certainty?

The Court’s answer was clear: a final judgment cannot subsequently be called into question through new proceedings that result in a conclusion incompatible with that previously established.

The ECHR observed that, in the first set of proceedings, the domestic courts had been called upon precisely to determine who was entitled to inherit the property not included in the will and in what proportions.

The Chișinău Court of Appeal had found that only the applicants had accepted the inheritance in respect of that property within the applicable time limit and that R.I. had no legal entitlement to inherit it. That judgment had been upheld by the Supreme Court of Justice and had become final.

In the second set of proceedings, however, the courts concluded that R.I. was also entitled to inherit the same property. For the ECHR, the two conclusions were directly incompatible.

A particularly important aspect of the judgment is that the first judgment had not formally been quashed or set aside. Nevertheless, the ECHR found that the second set of proceedings had effectively called into question the final nature of the first judgment. Accordingly, for the Court, legal certainty is not protected merely by the formal existence of a final judgment.

Its legal effects must also be protected.

In other words, it is not sufficient for a judgment formally to remain in force if, through subsequent proceedings, the State produces a legal outcome incompatible with what had already been finally determined.

This is one of the most important lessons arising from the case.

The judgment is also relevant to the manner in which the binding effect of a final judgment should be understood. A party cannot circumvent the effect of a final judgment simply by changing the manner in which a new claim is formulated.

In the case at issue, the applicants relied in the second set of proceedings on the earlier final judgment and argued that it had already determined the legal position concerning the inheritance.

The ECHR observed, in particular, that the argument that acceptance of the testamentary property also entailed acceptance of the remaining property had already been raised in the first set of proceedings and rejected by the Supreme Court of Justice.

Accordingly, this was not an entirely new legal issue.

It involved revisiting a matter that had already been examined and finally determined.

The case was not limited to Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. The ECHR also found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, because the second set of proceedings had direct consequences for the applicants’ property rights.

As a result of the new judicial interpretation, the applicants were required to share with R.I. part of the property in respect of which their rights had already been established in the initial proceedings.

This connection is important: legal certainty protects not only the stability of a judgment as a procedural act, but also the stability of the property rights recognized by that judgment.

A final judgment establishing a property right may create, for the purposes of the Convention, a legal situation protected by Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.

Consequently, a subsequent interference with that right through proceedings incompatible with the final judgment may simultaneously raise issues under Article 6 and the right to property.

The case demonstrates the particular importance of the manner in which acceptance of an inheritance is effected and documented.

In the first set of proceedings, the fact that the applicants resided in the inherited property played a crucial role in the court’s conclusion that they had accepted the inheritance in practice.

At the same time, with regard to R.I., the courts examined when and how he had accepted the inheritance, including the fact that the certificate relating to the property not covered by the will had been requested only more than a decade after the succession had opened.

The case therefore brings renewed attention to a fundamental issue in inheritance disputes: acceptance of an inheritance cannot be assessed in isolation from the heir’s actual conduct, the applicable statutory time limits, and the acts carried out in the course of the inheritance proceedings.

At the same time, once those matters have been finally examined by the competent courts, the conclusion thus reached must benefit from the binding effect of a final judgment.

The case of Galina Roșca and Others v. the Republic of Moldova goes beyond the confines of an inheritance dispute. It is, first and foremost, a case about trust in the justice system and the stability of judicial decisions.

Where a person obtains a final judgment recognizing a right, that person must be able to rely on the State not subsequently calling that right into question through proceedings leading to an incompatible outcome. In inheritance matters, where disputes may involve several categories of heirs, notarial acts, and successive judicial proceedings, this principle acquires particular importance.

A final judgment must not merely exist. It must produce the legal effects for which it was delivered.

In Galina Roșca and Others v. the Republic of Moldova, the ECHR considered that this principle had not been respected and found a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.

In respect of non-pecuniary damage, the Court awarded the applicants EUR 3,600 jointly, and EUR 1,500 for costs and expenses.