Ministero della Giustizia Ufficio Centrale degli Archivi Notarili Il Registro Generale dei Testamenti

Transcription

1 Ministero della Giustizia Ufficio Centrale degli Archivi Notarili Il Registro Generale dei Testamenti Ministry of Justice Central Office for Notarial Archives The General Will Register Alessandro Todeschini Ufficio Centrale degli Archivi Notarili Italia 1

2 The Birth of the General Will Register The Italian legal system has always felt the need to protect the testator s interest in the execution of his last wills and to help heirs in their search for wills: the idea and attempts to set up a national filing system for deeds of last will have existed for a long time. Since the beginning of the 20 th century many States have put in place a Register containing information on the existence of wills; on 16 May 1972 the International Convention promoted by the Member States of the Council of Europe and open for signature and ratification of all other states was signed in Basel: it intends to enable testators to register their wills in order to reduce the risk of their remaining unknown or being found belatedly. Italy ratified this Convention with Law no. 307 of 25 May 1981, and set up the General Will Register at the Ministry of Justice, Central Office for Notarial Archives; through Decree of the President of the Republic no. 956 of 18 December 1984, the relevant Implementing Regulation was approved. 2

3 Purpose and Content (1/2) Registration in the Register amounts to a system of public disclosure in regard of the existence and availability of a will, which enables the interested parties to know whether a deceased person has made a will, even abroad, and if so, the place where it is kept. Pursuant to Law no. 307/1981, as amended, in the General Will Register, data concerning the following acts are registered with effect as of 1 January 1980: Public wills; Formal acts of deposit of holographic and secret wills; Special wills; Publications, declaration of invalidity, withdrawals, deeds of revocation relating to the mentioned acts; Publications of holographic wills that are not filed formally. 3

4 Purpose and Content (2/2) In the Register only the data that are necessary to retrieve wills (drafted by or filed with a notary or other public official) are stored, while no information is recorded on the dispositions contained therein. Original wills are kept by practicing notaries and with the competent Notarial Archive of the district once they retire; after 100 years of a notary s retirement, these deeds are deposited with the State Archive competent by territory. Registration is requested by a public official (notary and consular authority) that has received the will or with which the deed is deposited, as well as by the registrar of the Notarial archive for deeds deposited with the archives. Holographic wills deposited with a notary in trust and, hence, not listed in the directory, are not recorded in the Register: their existence remains unknown until they are retrieved and disclosed. 4

5 Services provided by the General Will Register Aggregate certificate of all the entries contained in the Register (Article 6(1) of Law no. 307/1981); Aggregate certificate of the competent body of another State that has ratified the Basel Convention (Article 6(2) of Law no. 307/1981); Request for registration in the register of any of the States that have ratified the Basel Convention (Article 5 and Article 7(2) of Law no. 307/1981). 5

6 The current system The system in which the information on all the wills received or disclosed by notaries is kept, enables the automatic processing of the following steps of the procedure: Electronic registration of correspondence, OCR acquisition of requests for registration of testamentary deeds (by means of ad hoc paper forms), Registration and management of certification requests, Issuing of certificates, also in electronic form and signed digitally (stamp duties are paid through a virtual system on the basis of an authorization issued by the Revenue Authority). 6

7 The paper form 7

8 OCR Acquisition 8

9 Some Figures Some indicators obtained from the General Will Register provide the order of magnitude of the testamentary trend in Italy: Registrations in 2014: 113,900 in 2015: 116,854 Wills disclosed in 2014: 69,145 in ,107 Wills drafted in the period concerning testators born abroad: 7,021 Wills disclosed in the period concerning testators born abroad: 13,052 Entries in the General Will Register as of 31/12/2015 (since 1/1/1980): more than 2,610,000 (Statistics posted on by the Department of Judicial Affairs Central Office for Notarial Archives Service 5 General Will Register, IT Systems and Statistics registrogeneraletestamenti.ucan@giustizia.it ) 9

10 The trend is growing

11 Evolution of the System The evolution of the system, towards transmitting requests for registration by means of an.xml file digitally signed by a public official through certified (PEC), is at an advanced implementation stage. As for legislation, the relevant regulation has been drafted and is going through the necessary procedure. 11

12 The XML card <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso "?> <!DOCTYPE RegistroGeneraleTestamenti SYSTEM "RGTXXXXXXXX.dtd"> <RegistroGeneraleTestamenti> <ChiaveFile ProgressivoInvio="4" CodiceIdentificativoPU=«XXXXXX" Controllo="SW UCAN-RGT" /> <PagamentoRicarica>XXXXXXXX</PagamentoRicarica> <SchedaRGT DataCompilazione=«XXXXXXXX" > <Testatore Cognome=«ROSSI" Nome=«MARIO" Sesso="M" DataNascita=«XXXXXXXX" LuogoNascita=«XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" ProvinciaNascita=«XX" LuogoDomicilioResidenza=«XXXXXXX" ProvinciaDomicilioResidenza=«XX"> <RegistroAltriStati>NO</RegistroAltriStati> </Testatore> <Atto TipoAtto="02" RevocazioneTestamentoAtto="1" DataAtto=«XXXXXXXX" NumeroAtto=«123" PubblicaAutoritaAtto="ARCHIVIO NOTARILE" QualificaAtto="ARN" SedeAtto=«XXXXXXXX"/> <AttoRiferimento ProgressivoRif="1" TipoRif="04" RevocazioneTestamentoRif="0" DataRif=«XXXXXXXX" PubblicaAutoritaRif=«XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" QualificaRif="NOT" SedeRif=«XXXXXXXX" /> </SchedaRGT> </RegistroGeneraleTestamenti> 12

13 Acquisition through certified 13

14 Secure Access Portal With the aim of securing the performance of institutional research and verification activities, the architecture entails the possibility for Notarial Archives to query the database based on their territorial competences. The portal requires strong authentication by means of a digital certificate: once a user types his credentials, the system enables him to use the subset of functions he is entitled to. 14

15 Thanks for your attention 15