数字遗产继承的民法障碍与制度构建思路

Civil Law Obstacles to the Inheritance of Digital Heritage and Approaches to Institutional Development

摘要: 数字经济发展催生大量兼具财产价值与人格利益的数字资产，数字遗产继承纠纷逐年进入司法程序。《民法典》《个人信息保护法》仅对网络虚拟财产、遗产范围作出概括规定，缺乏分层继承、平台协助、权益平衡等可操作细则。当前数字遗产继承存在四重民法障碍：数字遗产法律属性与可继承性认定标准模糊；互联网平台格式条款与法定继承权形成规范冲突；继承权、死者人格利益、第三方个人信息权益多重价值失衡；价值评估、举证规则、遗产管理人等配套民事制度供给不足。现有研究分为属性定性、困境梳理、域外借鉴三条主线，但普遍存在短板：一是物权说、债权说、复合财产说各执一词，鲜有文献在同一框架下对比三种学说适用局限；二是多数成果纯理论推演，缺少本土裁判案例佐证四重障碍；三是完善对策多笼统呼吁立法，未依托现行民法典设计分层司法解释路径。文章边际贡献为：系统回应学界学说分歧，全文本嵌入权威司法案例实证困境，依托现有法律框架构建分层继承规则，填补当前研究实证缺失、观点对话不足的漏洞。结合国内互联网法院典型案例，以财产属性、人格属性强弱将数字遗产类型化划分，梳理继承制度运行困境，借鉴域外数字资产继承立法经验，从细化分层继承解释规则、规制平台不公平格式条款、搭建多元民事权益平衡机制、完善数字遗产配套程序四个维度提出完善路径，弥合传统继承规则与数字财产形态之间的法律漏洞，为统一司法裁判、规范平台数字资产处置提供规范参考。

Abstract: The development of the digital economy has generated numerous digital assets carrying both property value and personality interests, and disputes concerning digital heritage inheritance have entered judicial procedures year after year. The Civil Code and the Personal Information Protection Law only set out general provisions on online virtual property, the scope of inheritances, and access to the personal information of the deceased, without operable detailed rules covering tiered inheritance, platform cooperation, and the balance of rights and interests. At present, the inheritance of digital heritage is confronted with four civil law obstacles: ambiguous criteria for confirming the legal attributes and inheritability of digital heritage; normative conflicts between standard-form clauses formulated by internet platforms and statutory inheritance rights; imbalance among multiple interests including inheritance rights, personality interests of the deceased and personal information rights of third parties; and inadequate supporting civil systems such as asset valuation, rules of evidence and the estate administrator system. Existing studies fall into three main lines: attribute definition, dilemma sorting, and foreign experience reference, yet they generally have obvious deficiencies. First, the theory of property rights, the theory of creditors’ rights, and the composite property theory each hold separate viewpoints, and few documents compare the applicable limitations of the three theories within a unified framework. Second, most research outcomes merely adopt theoretical deduction, lacking domestic judicial precedents to verify the four major obstacles. Third, most improvement proposals simply call for legislation in general terms, rather than designing tiered judicial interpretation paths based on the current Civil Code. The marginal contributions of this paper lie in systematically responding to academic theoretical divergences, embedding authoritative judicial cases throughout the full text to empirically verify practical dilemmas, and constructing tiered inheritance rules under the existing legal framework, which fills the gaps of insufficient empirical materials and inadequate academic dialogue in current research. Combined with typical cases heard by domestic internet courts, this paper categorizes digital heritage according to the intensity of its property and personality attributes, sorts out the practical operational dilemmas of the inheritance system, and draws on foreign legislative experience of digital asset inheritance. It proposes improvement approaches from four dimensions: refining interpretive rules for tiered inheritance, regulating unfair standard-form clauses of platforms, establishing a diversified balancing mechanism for civil rights and interests, and perfecting supporting procedures for digital heritage. This paper bridges legal loopholes between traditional inheritance rules and the forms of digital property, and provides normative references for unifying judicial adjudication standards and standardizing platforms’ disposal of digital assets.