Lifetime costs even after death

This is the crux of the latest ultimate Court ruling. Let us remind you that the life conviction is that the life conviction transfers its property to the buyer in exchange for taking care of him for the remainder of his life.

In January 2009, my grandma transferred the property of the home and economical building to her grandchildren in exchange for life support. They made a commitment to accept her as a householder, to supply her with a life - long home, food, aid and care in sickness, and to bury her. But after 5 months of misunderstandings between the householders, the female moved out and moved in with her daughter, and the grandchildren had since failed to supply benefits to her.

Soon my grandma applied to the court for the termination of the life sentence, but this request was rejected. For the next 5 years, until the death of a sick woman, her daughter took care of her, and she arranged her ceremony and became her heir. At that time, she sued her grandchildren for reimbursement of the costs of caring for her parent and their grandmother.

Whose duty?

The defendants questioned in their entirety this request, indicating that it was a elder woman, distancing herself from them, that prevented them from making benefits to her.

The territory court found that the daughter had fulfilled the benefit to which they had been sued, and judged PLN 52 1000 from them. The amount was based on the rates of payment for specified aid determined by social assistance and after deduction of support from these bodies and the ceremony allowance.

The Court of Appeal in Poznań, however, limited the amount awarded to the actual expenses of the plaintiff for the funeral, or PLN 2.4 thousand. The SA considered that there are no grounds for charging defendants on the basis of rules on unwarranted enrichment, as its premise is, inter alia, impoverishment of the demanding person, and it is not possible to say that there is impoverishment of the plaintiff as a consequence of caring for his mother. At the time for which it demands payment, it did not spend any amount of care for a female to 3rd parties. If she had requested payment of the equivalent of her benefits in kind, the work to deliver in the contract was imposed on the defendants, it would have been possible to justice their equivalent on the basis of Article 405 KC. It states that who, without a legal basis, obtains a property benefit at the expense of another person, is obliged to issue in kind and, if it is not possible, to return its value.

Repayment of parent support

The plaintiff appealed to the SN, accusing SA of violating Article 405 KC. The erstwhile (judges Paweł Grzegorczyk, Władysław Pawlak and Roman Trzaskowski) acknowledged her in part and returned the SA case to re-examine. The ultimate Court considered that the SA had besides narrowly concluded impoverishment, which is the condition for the recovery of unwarranted enrichment. It does not gotta trust on the ‘exit’ of assets depleted by a defined value (in assets or through an increase in liabilities), but besides takes place, for example, in the case of the provision by the depleted free service for the benefit of the enriched.

As regards the dimension of the claim, with which the individual who actually provides life support in place of the obliged individual may appear, however, caution is desirable due to the wealth of possible facts, especially in household relations," SN pointed out. In any event, the reimbursement of the burden incurred by the individual actually supporting the life conviction may be justified only within the limits of what the life conviction could require of the individual obliged under the life contract, as indicated in the conclusions of the SN.

File number: II CSKP 547/22