The Supreme Court has overturned a ruling that awarded a man 128,500 euros from his late mother’s estate, finding that he had already received more than his share through properties she gave him during her lifetime.
The court allowed an appeal by his brother, the executor of the will, set aside the first-instance judgment and dismissed the claim.
The mother died in Limassol in 2009, having made a will in 1986. The executor was appointed after her death, because the original executor had died.
The brother who sued argued that the executor had failed to take the necessary steps to give him the share of the estate he was entitled to by law. The first-instance court found that the will breached the provisions on the share reserved for heirs and awarded him 128,500 euros, after taking into account what he had already received.
The executor argued, among other things, that the court had misinterpreted how earlier gifts should be counted and had not properly taken into account the property both brothers received from their mother before her death. He also argued that his brother had already received assets of greater value and that their shares should be adjusted accordingly.
According to the evidence before the court, the mother had given the executor properties valued at 3,477,500 euros and the brother who sued properties valued at 4,008,000 euros during her lifetime. The values were assessed as at the time of her death by a valuer agreed by both sides.
The ruling
The Supreme Court reiterated that, as a rule, when a deceased person leaves a spouse and children, no more than a quarter of the net estate can be freely left by will, and the rest is reserved by law for the entitled heirs. When a child’s share is calculated, certain gifts of property the child received from the parent during the parent’s lifetime are taken into account. This aims at a fair distribution among the children, using a formula set out in the law and valuing property as at the time of death, the court said.
The court found that the two brothers had received gifts worth a total of 7,485,500 euros, or 3,742,750 euros each if divided equally. The brother who sued had received 265,250 euros more than that. Set against the 189,000 euros he was due from the estate, this meant he had received 76,250 euros more, the court said.
The court found no error in the first-instance court’s rejection of the executor’s claim that the family had later agreed to divide the property differently. It upheld, however, his grounds of appeal on how the gifts were counted and how the reserved share was calculated, which it said were decisive.
The executor was awarded the costs of the first-instance proceedings and 3,000 euros, plus VAT if applicable, for the costs of the appeal.
