Quote:
Originally Posted by theacefrehley
Does it make sense with Umineko world? Like the mess that made Krauss hide Kinzo's death (EP5)?
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Sort of, but not very. TLDR version is that if Genji is the actual owner by law, he can't do anything without Krauss' knowledge with it anyway.
Like I explained previously, Japanese inheritance law in 1986 prevents Kinzo from leaving anything to any single specific person, at least 50% will have to be distributed between his immediate children and their spouses if any survive. Letting the law handle the issue will also result in having to pay a 70% tax on the valuation of any property in Kinzo's name, and you have to pay it before you can sell anything. This is impossible to do even if the family finances are in good shape, as it is perfectly normal to have less liquid cash than property -- often, much less.
(As a side note, I have a roundabout confirmation that Ryukishi is aware of the legal considerations --
A certain Witch Hunter's interview tape mentions the Marusoo company chairman making the necessary arrangements when it appears he is heading for his death.)
Mind you, that doesn't include the metallic gold itself, which actually has to bypass the law entirely for other reasons.
So Kinzo has to pull one of a range of legal tricks if he wishes any specific singular person to have everything -- most of them are based on the concept of limited liability holding company which is the actual owner of the property in law, and is in turn owned by Kinzo, because that greatly simplifies the required paperwork, reducing all the various properties that need to be juggled to a single one. The magnitude of legal tricks required will nevertheless greatly increase if Kinzo wishes to leave everything to a single
unspecified person who satisfies a certain condition after Kinzo himself is dead. Like solving the epitaph.
The most reasonable way to do this involves handing the ownership of the holding company to someone while Kinzo is still alive, while leaving the shares of the company in trust with Kinzo himself so that he keeps the use of them while he is alive. The moment Kinzo dies, ownership reverts to person he is effectively borrowing them from, bypassing inheritance law altogether, and that person can then be required by Kinzo to do as he wishes -- possibly, with a legal contract charging them to do so, though whether such a contract is legal to make in Japan depends on a lot of factors and only a specialist would be able to tell.
Which essentially means that at the moment Kinzo's death is registered,
someone else owns everything instantly, if he wants to pass his wealth on at all, and if the trust mechanism is in use, that someone else
has owned everything well before Kinzo actually died -- Kinzo just had the use of it.
This someone can, in theory, be Genji or Kumasawa. However, being the owner of the holding company does not necessarily mean controlling it directly -- in most jurisdictions, the powers of the company owners are limited to directing the policy of the CEO, appointing the CEO and dismissing the CEO, and maybe sitting on the board of directors if one exists, but most of the rest of activities require CEO's personal involvement. And that CEO is almost certainly Krauss, otherwise he simply can't embezzle Kinzo's funds. Which means it's impossible to siphon any money out of Kinzo's legally owned property without asking Krauss to do that, or without replacing him as CEO.
Mind you, that does not touch on the issue of gold
at all. Gold is not a legally owned property, and would it become one, it would probably go under the laws governing buried treasure. I have so far failed to find the relevant Japanese laws, but my guess would be that when discovered, it would become the property of whoever owns Rokkenjima land itself.
It is possible for Beatrice herself to be that executor-owner, and there's red in Ep5 implying that she basically
is, if the gold is owned by whoever owns the land according to the law. The first letter also makes far more sense if it is not considered a death threat, but a threat of
keeping the entirety of the Ushiromiya properties to herself with gold and all, as she owns it anyway already.