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Years of Caregiving, Not Just a Gift: Supreme Court Rules Long-Term Support Can Shield Inheritance from Forced Share Claims

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Korea’s Supreme Court has confirmed that property received by an heir as compensation for long-term caregiving of a deceased parent can be excluded from the calculations used to determine other heirs’ forced share (유류분) entitlements — and has ruled that the reformed Civil Code provisions enabling this exclusion apply retroactively to cases that were already in court when the Constitutional Court struck down the old rules. Here are the key points.

Issue

Where an heir received property from a deceased parent as compensation for years of cohabitation, caregiving, and financial support, can that property be excluded from the forced share calculation — and does the reformed Civil Code provision enabling such exclusion apply to cases that were already pending in court before the reform took effect?

Background: The Legal Reform

  • Korea’s forced share system (유류분) guarantees certain heirs a minimum portion of a deceased person’s estate, even where the deceased made gifts during their lifetime that reduced the estate available for distribution. Gifts made during the deceased’s lifetime are generally counted as “special benefits” (특별수익) that factor into the forced share calculation.
  • For years, a structural gap existed: the Civil Code’s contribution credit provisions (기여분), which allow recognition of an heir’s special contribution to the estate or to the care of the deceased, were not applied to forced share calculations. This meant that an heir who had devoted years to caring for a parent could be required to hand back property they received as compensation for that care to satisfy other heirs’ forced share claims.
  • In April 2024, the Constitutional Court found this gap incompatible with the Constitution, holding that requiring contribution heirs to return property received as compensation for caregiving produced an unjust result.
  • In March 2026, the Civil Code was amended to address this. The revised Article 1008 provides that where a co-heir received a gift or bequest as compensation for having specially supported the deceased through extended cohabitation, nursing, or care — or for having specially contributed to maintaining or increasing the estate — that gift is excluded from the special benefits calculation to the extent of the corresponding contribution.

Facts

  • The deceased died in November 2020, leaving four daughters and two sons.
  • The daughters sued in 2020, arguing that property gifted and bequeathed to both sons had infringed their forced share entitlements, and seeking transfer of real property interests.
  • At issue were two apartments registered in son B’s name — one transferred in June 2003 and another in June 2006 — subsequently sold for ₩181 million and ₩273 million respectively.
  • B argued the apartments were not gifts at all, and alternatively that even if they were, they should be excluded from the forced share calculation because he had lived with the deceased for an extended period, covered hospital costs, and provided nursing care.

Lower Court Decisions

  • Both the trial and appellate courts treated the two apartments as lifetime gifts from the deceased to B, finding no evidence that B had paid for them. They included the apartments in the forced share calculation base.
  • Because both decisions predated the Constitutional Court’s April 2024 ruling, neither court separately examined whether B’s caregiving qualified as a special contribution or whether the apartment transfers were compensation for that contribution.

Supreme Court Decision

  • The Supreme Court (Civil Division 3, presiding Justice Lee Suk-yeon) reversed the appellate decision against B on June 11, 2026, and remanded to Daegu High Court.
  • The court held that the amended Civil Code must be applied to this case, reasoning as follows.
  • The Constitutional Court’s decision to allow the old provision to remain temporarily in force was motivated by the need to maintain a minimum legal framework for the forced share system during the transition period — not by any intention to allow the unjust treatment of contributing heirs to continue until new legislation took effect.
  • The provision that excluded contribution credits from forced share calculations must therefore be treated as suspended from application following the Constitutional Court’s ruling.
  • The retroactive effect of a constitutional incompatibility ruling extends not only to the specific case that triggered the ruling, but also to all cases in which the challenged provision was at issue in ongoing court proceedings at the time of the ruling.
  • B did not need to have filed a separate constitutional challenge of his own to benefit from this retroactive effect — the mere fact that his case was pending in court at the time of the April 2024 ruling is sufficient.
  • The appellate court’s inclusion of the two apartments in the forced share calculation base, without first examining whether they were received as compensation for special caregiving contributions, can no longer be sustained.

Key Takeaways

  • Property received by an heir as compensation for long-term caregiving, cohabitation, or financial support of the deceased can be excluded from the special benefits base used to calculate other heirs’ forced share entitlements, to the extent of the corresponding contribution.
  • The amended Civil Code provision enabling this exclusion applies retroactively to cases that were already pending in Korean courts when the Constitutional Court issued its April 2024 incompatibility ruling — even where the party seeking to benefit from the change never filed their own constitutional challenge.
  • Courts examining forced share claims in such cases must now conduct a separate factual inquiry into whether gifts received by an heir were compensation for special contributions — they cannot simply include all lifetime gifts in the base without that analysis.
  • The threshold question on remand will be whether B’s caregiving, cohabitation, and financial support of the deceased amounted to a qualifying special contribution, and whether the apartment transfers were genuinely compensation for that contribution.

Why This Matters

This ruling has broad practical significance for inheritance disputes in Korea, particularly in families where one child shouldered the burden of caring for an aging parent while others did not. For practitioners handling forced share litigation, the decision makes the factual investigation into caregiving contributions a mandatory step — not an optional one — in any case where the recipient heir asserts that a lifetime gift was compensatory in nature. For heirs in similar positions, it confirms that years of sacrifice in caring for a parent cannot simply be undone by a forced share claim from siblings who bore none of that burden.

Article: https://www.lawtimes.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=224217

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