Succession

The Supreme Court (TS) has considered that the expenses that some grandparents incurred to maintain and care for their grandchildren should be taken into account when distributing the inheritance of the grandmother. The key is that they paid expenses that corresponded to the father , who had the obligation and the ability to take care of his children. Although the grandparents acted out of love, that does not change the economic benefit that their son received by saving those expenses.

The case began when the mother of three minors passed away. The father moved with them to the paternal grandparents' house , but after remarrying, he stopped taking care of them. The grandparents took care of their maintenance, housing, education, and care for years, even during part of their adulthood . In their will , the grandmother decided that those amounts would be accounted for within the inheritance portion of her son, along with the payment of a bank debt.

The father opposed because he understood that it harmed the part of the inheritance that corresponded to him by law. He argued that his parents had helped the grandchildren out of their own will and family affection. Although his initial claim was rejected, on appeal the food expenses were excluded because no judicial resolution had previously established the obligation or its amount.

The TS, however, rules in favor of the defendant. It explains that the so-called collation serves to take into account certain benefits received in life and balance the distribution among the forced heirs. Here, although the money was allocated to the grandchildren, the father also benefited , as the grandparents paid what he had to face. Therefore, the food destination of the money is not enough to exclude it from the distribution.

Furthermore, a prior judgment that imposed on the father that obligation or specified its amount. The TS recalls that the obligation to support the children arises with their birth. In this case, the father did not dispute either his duty to support them or his ability to do so. It also does not prevent accounting for those expenses that the grandmother would not have claimed while she was alive.