"Preventing Minor Bankruptcy"... Jeong Il-gyun, Daegu City Council Member, Proposes Ordinance for Legal Support to Youth Inheriting Debt

A bill aimed at supporting children and adolescents facing difficulties due to inheriting debts from deceased parents has been proposed, drawing attention.

Jeong Il-gyun, a member of the Daegu Metropolitan Council (People Power Party, Suseong-gu 1), is the chief proposer of the “Daegu Metropolitan City Ordinance for Legal Support to Prevent Debt Inheritance from Parents to Children and Adolescents,” which passed the agenda review by the Culture and Welfare Committee on the 27th and is now awaiting approval at the plenary session.

Jeong Il-gyun, Member of Daegu Metropolitan Council

The “Daegu Metropolitan City Ordinance for Legal Support to Prevent Debt Inheritance from Parents to Children and Adolescents” was proposed to provide legal support to protect the rights of children and adolescents from falling into difficult situations due to inheriting debts from deceased parents, enabling them to plan their lives independently as healthy members of society.

An official from the Daegu Metropolitan Council stated, “The core content of this ordinance is to provide legal support so that children or adolescents can decide whether to inherit their deceased parents’ large debts or to renounce the inheritance.”

This ordinance is expected to be finally passed at the Daegu Metropolitan Council plenary session on May 4.

According to Supreme Court statistics, over five years from 2016, there have been 80 cases of bankruptcy filings by minors due to inheriting parental debts, averaging about one case per month.

Minor heirs are forced to bear all their parents’ debts regardless of their own will unless their legal representatives file for limited acceptance or renounce the inheritance, leading to many children burdened with debts amounting to tens of millions of won, which has become a social issue.

Due to the seriousness of this social problem, the Civil Act was amended last December; however, the revised law only extended the period for making limited acceptance after reaching adulthood, which is considered insufficient as a fundamental solution to protect minor heirs.

Jeong Il-gyun of the Daegu Metropolitan Council said, “We enacted this ordinance to prevent the unfortunate situation where minors go bankrupt at a rate of about one per month before even entering society. In reality, many minors miss the opportunity to renounce debts due to lack of knowledge about debt-related matters. We hope that through substantial support at the local government level, minors in our region will no longer suffer from inheriting parental debts, nor face the burden of debt collection immediately after stepping into society and starting economic activities upon reaching adulthood.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.