Legally protected cultural goods and bankruptcy proceedings

This paper deals with general problems of legal aims of bankruptcy proceedings in connection with the aims of heritage protection – issues built by completely different systems of values. Bankruptcy is designed for protecting pecuniary interest of a limited group of people, while cultural heritage is protected for present and future generations, despite its current commercial significance. In the global environment, bankruptcy of a cultural goods owner usually has a cross-border range but national bankruptcy legislations and laws devoted to heritage protection differ in very serious aspects. For this reason the paper is not limited to any concrete legal order. There are discussed some important universal issues: limits for a trustee in managing cultural goods which are a part of bankruptcy estate, legal status of cultural goods excluded from bankruptcy estate, consequences of bankruptcy sale in the case of lack of bankrupt’s ownership title.