A lawyer in Lehel in Munich sold two apartments belonging to his client with dementia for well below their value, namely to his children. He was sentenced to a suspended sentence of two years for breach of trust by the lay assessor's court of the Munich district court. The verdict is not yet final. He sold the apartments, which were worth 1,100,000 million and 1,300,000 million euros respectively, to his daughter and her husband for just 600,000 euros and to his son and his son's wife for 675,000 euros.
The lawyer had known the now deceased client since the 1980s, as she was a close friend of his parents. She had granted him a general power of attorney. The lawyer admitted the sale of the apartments. He stated that he was not interested in "pushing something on his children". He had developed a close and friendly relationship with the injured party over the years. He had therefore assumed that the transfer of the apartments to his children was in accordance with her wishes. It was only later that he realized that he could have achieved considerably higher prices by selling the apartments on the open market.
The court of lay assessors only partially believed the defendant and considered it to be a mere protective claim that the objective market value of the apartments sold had surprised him. As he had already sold real estate and had been a lawyer in Munich for many years, "it can be concluded that he was in any case familiar with the prices and values of real estate in Munich", according to the court of lay assessors. At the very least, he would have had a duty to obtain information about the market values of the apartments as the authorized representative of the injured party. In its judgment, the court of lay assessors also addressed the handling of persons. The fact that the injured party (...) was already completely demented at the time of the crime and that the crime was therefore committed at the expense of a person who could not even begin to defend herself against it must be seen as an aggravating factor."
Source: justiz.bayern.de/AG Munich, AZ: 836 Ls 231 Js 167395/16
© Fotolia
English