Hereditary community

In this case, a lady granted a special power of attorney to two individuals to manage her assets and bank accounts during her lifetime. These individuals made many financial transactions, withdrawing cash and making transfers totaling over 600,000 euros, mostly for donations to NGOs or to cover personal and household expenses of the deceased person.

When the lady passed away and the inheritance was partitioned, one of the heirs believed that some actions of the attorneys-in-fact had exceeded their powers, so he filed a lawsuit, on behalf of all the heirs, requesting the attorneys-in-fact to be accountable and return the money that might have been improperly withdrawn.

In the first instance, the judge ruled that, since the inheritance had already been divided and distributed, he could only claim for what was due to him and not on behalf of all the heirs. However, the Provincial Court (PC) had a different opinion because, if there were amounts or credits that had not been considered in the partition, the hereditary community still existed with respect to those assets not distributed. Therefore, any heir can claim on behalf of all so that, if the lawsuit is successful, that money will be properly distributed among all.

Upon reviewing the case, the PC found that most of the transfers were justified (donations and personal expenses of the deceased), but there were others (such as a transfer of nearly 200,000 euros to one of the attorneys-in-fact and another of 15,000 euros for some construction work) for which the justification was not proven. Therefore, it orders the attorneys-in-fact to return those amounts to the inheritance with interest.