It is not because a person is very sick that the sale of his life property would be zero. It does not matter that the buyer knows it and that the seller dies a few weeks later, even judged the Court of Cassation.
As long as the seller is not notoriously condemned by the disease, that the purchaser is not competent in medicine and that he does not know that the life expectancy is compromised in an irremediable way, the sale has no no reason to be canceled, she said. She therefore rejected the arguments of the heirs of a very sick old lady who had died three months after selling her house as a life annuity to a relative.
A period of twenty days after the signature
According to them, this relative was aware of the state of health which required permanent medical acts and, therefore, by paying a bouquet of approximately 1/5th of the value of the property, when it would have taken thirteen years of annuities for the price paid to match the full value, this buyer was sure to get a great deal. He knew, they said, without any risk, that he would not pay the true value of the house.
But the old lady died of a fall and not of her illness, which moreover did not condemn her in the short term with certainty. Moreover, its buyer not being a doctor, it cannot be concluded that the sale would be void for lack of hazard, concluded the judges.
For a life annuity sale to be void, without possible discussion, due to the seller’s illness, it is necessary, according to the Civil Code, that the seller dies of this illness within twenty days after the signature.