Life sale

Can you buy a life for a very sick person?

Publié le null - Directorate for Legal and Administrative Information (Prime Minister)

A 78-year-old person sells his or her dwelling house in a viager to a relative. She suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and chronic kidney disease that has become terminal and requires dialysis four times a day at home. Three months later, she died from a fall. His heirs sue the buyer in nullity of the sale for lack of chance.

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Image 1Crédits: JPC-PROD - stock.adobe.com

The Cour d’appel d’Orléans found that there was a risk. Apart from the fact that he had no medical knowledge, the buyer could not have known on the day of the sale the imminent death of the seller, a death unrelated to her illness. The heirs of the deceased appeal against that decision. According to them, the sale is without risk. They also believe that the relative was sure to make a great deal by paying only about 1/5e the value of the property. It would have taken 13 years for the annuity price to be equal to the total value of the property.

The Court of Cassation dismisses the appeal and upholds the decision of the Court of Appeal. It states that if the seller is not undeniably condemned by the illness, and the buyer is not competent to judge that his state of health was irreparably compromising his life expectancy on the day of the lifetime sale, the sale has no reason to be canceled.

It also recalls that a passenger is void because of the seller’s illness only if the seller dies of that illness 20 days after signing it.

FYI  

Life selling is based on a hazard. It depends on an uncertain factor, the life of the seller. The future death of the seller (creditor) must be unpredictable. The purchaser (debitor) must not have been aware of any illness which compromises the life expectancy of the seller in the short term.

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