A gift or community of goods? This is what the judge says after a striking fight about winning lottery tickets
A woman from the province of Liège had received a tombilla bill from her mother in September 1990. It was a note to support the Brailleliga. A gift for her birthday that suddenly turned out to be 3 million Belgian francs three months later, at the trek. She won the first prize of converted 74,368.06 euros.
Mrs. was married, according to the legal system. Community of goods, as with so many couples in this country. The couple used 20,000 euros of the money to repay a mortgage loan, the rest ended up on savings books and securities accounts. But when that marriage came to an end in 2000, that amount suddenly became the deployment of decades of legal tug -of -war together with the car and the house.
« Gift »
« It was a gift from my mother for me, » Madam’s argument was. « It is money on our common account, » was the argument of sir. It led to lawsuits. Mrs’s mother testified that she had really meant the lotteryfair as a gift for her daughter. An argument for lawyers that is part of her ‘personal assets’.
Mr’s lawyers thought differently about that. Her personal capacity has at most grown with the value of the Lotje, not with the value of the main prize. Because he only became known in December 1990.
The Court of Appeal followed the argumentation of seneer in 2016. The profit has no retroactive effect on the value of the ticket at the time of the donation, the judge said. It was a yield, acquired after marriage, and therefore belongs to the common capital.
Mrs went to the Court of Cassation, and that now follows Mrs. The « random character » of the ticket implies that the profit « completely replaces the substance of the good ». A personal gift, even now that it turns out to be worth many times more. Cassation finds that the Appeals Court of Appeal « not legally justified ».
Precedent
The decision of cassation has an important precedents value. In similar cases, other courts will be inclined to follow that argumentation. And so the decision can have far -reaching consequences for those who buy lottery papers, experts say.
A pitfall is that in this case it was a gift. If you buy a ticket yourself and used the common bill for it, you will have to come up with other arguments if you want to get away with the profit yourself
A pitfall is that in this case it was a gift. If you buy a ticket yourself and used the common bill for it, you will have to come up with other arguments if you want to get away with the profit yourself. You could suggest only to repay the value of the ticket, but according to lawyers that is a legal gray area.
Mrs. also got right about the Suzuki Swift from her deceased mother -in -law. She was allowed to keep driving after the divorce, without paying interest.
