The problem of dividing the rights of beneficiaries to property transferred to a foreign trust as common property of spouses

The article is devoted to the study of the legal nature of the beneficial rights of spouses to jointly acquired property. Using the example of judicial practice of the courts of the Russian Federation, the author analyzes the possibility of dividing the rights to property transferred to a foreign trust in Russian jurisdiction. The obscurity of such concepts as "trust" and "beneficial ownership" in the domestic legal system leads to a number of problems in resolving this category of disputes, which leads to insecurity of the rights and legitimate interests of interested parties.   The relevance of the problem under consideration is due to the lack of uniform practice and, as a result, the approach of Russian courts to the qualification of beneficial rights. Most often, the courts proceed from the impossibility of declaring these rights to be divided due to their non-recognition as property by the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and as common property of spouses by the Family Code of the Russian Federation. The article examines the advantages of applying foreign law in the consideration of disputes on the division of common property of spouses transferred to a foreign trust. In the course of the research, the author turns to the method of comparative analysis to identify the main contradictions of judicial practice in this category of disputes. The conducted research revealed the need to turn to foreign law not only at the stage of dispute resolution, but also in the qualification of legal concepts, due to the unknown institutions of trust and beneficial ownership of the domestic legal system. The author concludes that there are such legally significant circumstances for the fair resolution of the mentioned category of disputes: establishing the figure of the beneficiary, submitting documents to the court on the establishment of the trust, proving the property interest of the interested party in the property transferred to the trust. Due to the current disparate practice of Russian courts, it is necessary for the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to clarify the obligation of courts to apply to foreign law when considering disputes complicated by a foreign element, in particular in disputes over the division of property transferred to a foreign trust.

spouses, separation of property, matrimonial property, court, trust, beneficial rights, qualification of legal concepts, foreign law, legal nature, applicable law