In this article I tell you about the misadventure that happened to me recently; That of having to follow a sale in which one of the sellers was a person under the control of a support administrator.
Let's start with the basics:
What does it mean to have a support administrator?
According to Article 404 of the Civil Code :
"the person who ... finds himself or herself unable ... to provide for his or her own interests, may be assisted by a support administrator, appointed by the protective judge."
This means that, a private citizen, when he or she is in the condition of having to be assisted by a support administrator, cannot take any "legal" or economic action without the approval or at any rate the authorization of his or her administrator ( who of course has to hear the opinion of the judge ), let alone sell property!
Having made this necessary premise, the situation was as follows:
A client to whom I had to sell her house, found herself - due to succession - within her property, a part of land in the name of her cousins among whom this "incapacitated" person also ( receivership is the mildest form of incapacity of the person from a legal point of view ).
In order to sell the house, it was necessary for my client to purchase the cousins' shares so as to obtain 100 percent of the property and in turn transfer it to a third party.
The first thing I did was to interface with the administrator ( a lawyer ) who explained to me that in order to carry out the sale, it was necessary to obtain authorization from the protective judge.
Obviously, in order to obtain permission, the priority was to draw up a sworn report from an engineer coupled with a report explaining the reason for the request and justifying the value of the sale, in order not to harm the rights of the assisted person.
The support administrator points out to me that the judge does not have short timeframes ( as in all courts the officials are overworked and have 1000 other more serious situations to handle ) but armed with patience we file the petition in December 2016.
Months pass and despite the reminders nothing happens. In the meantime, the house has found a buyer and we cannot wait indefinitely to transfer the shares of that land.
In June 2017, I decide to personally solicit the judge by going to the office and pointing out the situation, he obviously understands but shows me the mountains of files and confesses that he needs time to look up the file file in question so that he can take matters into his own hands.
Clearly not the answer I wanted.
I try again, this time I manage to convince the judge to search through the mountains of papers for our file and with his help after 15 minutes of "unwrapping" we find the incriminating envelope. The following week we get the authorization ( along with the approval of 6 other petitions that have been stopped there for years ).
All's well that ends well, right?
NO
I go to the notary to arrange the buying and selling of the shares ( an endless flutter for a 4500 € worth of land ) who, on seeing the authorization tells me:
" eh, but the judge who signed this authorization is not the one competent to decide on the sale!"
Since the property was acquired by inheritance, the support administrator had requested--I am told by practice--acceptance of the estate with benefit of inventory.
In such cases, according to Article 747 of the Code of Civil Procedure,
" authorization for the sale of hereditary property, should be applied for to the judge of the court of the place where the succession was opened, upon the favorable opinion of the protective judge."
The administrator who had submitted the petition(I repeat, lawyer) to the wrong judge had not taken into account this small insignificant detail that risked losing us everything.
Understand well that this meant having to file another petition with the judge and wait for a new authorization who knows when.
PANIC and SGOMENTO
Fortunately, the notary, once we produced the inventory of the estate in which no particular anomalies and liabilities were listed, agreed to do the deed anyway by having the heirs sign a statement attesting to the payment of all debts.
End of July 2017 we did the deed.
Basically, if you are dealing with a vendor client who is subject to support administration
check the provenance of the property and consult FIRST, VERY FIRST with the notary for the proper procedure to be done to finalize the sale!!!
Share my misadventure so that it doesn't happen to others!!! ?
