German estate realty – tricks to reduce the legal portion thwarted by German jurisdiction
German estate realty: We often find the constellation that a parent goes into a new marriage and wants to reduce the inheritance of the children from a former marriage to the legal portion.
Here an often used maneuver is to acquire realty – house, premises – and to sign it over to the new spouse.
Thus the value of the realty would not be part of the estate and the children would not participate in it.
But this is not so easy, says the OLG Schleswig, decision from 10.12.2013, case-number: + U 29/13:
The new spouse has to prove that s/he contributed to the purchase of the realty and in what way.
If s/he fails to do so, it is to be supposed the realty was a present – and this way it falls into the value of the real estate.
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