Many entrepreneurs think about how to pass on their business to their successors. But sometimes relatives of business beneficiaries are trying to deprive them of their inheritance. Elena Gladysheva, Advocate and Managing Partner of RI-Consulting described the schemes of fraud, which are often found in practice.

Family and inheritance law go hand in hand with the business activities of business beneficiaries. Family and inheritance law issues arise for wealthy individuals as well as for beneficiaries of any level of business.

The law offers defensive schemes and tools to minimize such risks. However, due to the general mentality or culture in Russia it is not customary to think "about something bad". No one is protected against such situations. Life insurance (real insurance coverage) will not cover creditors' claims. By the time the beneficiary dies, the number of his assets will increase and the division of estate will be complicated. In the case of freedom restriction, the business will stop. Because all management decisions are usually made by the beneficiary. Here are just some of the risks of businessmen: inability to make decisions in case of temporary incapacity (accident, coma and other circumstances), death and disputes between heirs, subsidiary responsibility of heirs, even after death of beneficiary, corporate conflict, to which almost no one is ever ready, negative consequences of its impact on business, and also business stoppage for the period of accession to the heirship.
And there are also many schemes that unscrupulous citizens use in order to deprive heirs of their inheritance. The most interesting cases, among others, successfully resolved by RI-Consulting over the past year, are two cases in which formally, at first glance, the heirs could not get the inheritance on legal grounds.

THE PROPERTY IS SOLD

So, at the beginning of this year, an heiress turned to our Company. She learned from the notary that the legacy of an elderly millionaire is missing any property including a significant amount in the bank accounts, as well as several expensive real estate objects owned by him during his lifetime in Moscow and Moscow region, and car.

As advocates of RI-Consulting found out, a few days before the grandfather's death, while he was in intensive care due to the severe course of coronavirus, all of his property was sold at an undervalued price by a distant relative under a "general" power of attorney issued by his elderly mother. According to the terms of the sales contracts, all the money was given in cash to the seller's representative. RI-Consulting, which represented the plaintiff, filed claims for the recognition of all transactions as invalid and committed by the representative with a clear loss and at a significantly reduced cost (more than twice), of which the other party to the transaction could not have been unaware at the time of the transaction. The defendants presented a substantial amount of evidence to show that the transaction was made on behalf of the grandfather, that it was consistent with the reasonable business practice. Despite this, the court sided with the plaintiff, sustaining the claim in its entirety.

SECOND WILL

In another case there was an attempt to deprive a heiress of inheritance by submitting a will to a notary for another person, made out on a later date. Formally the story looked legitimate, but advocates of RI-Consulting conducted a deep analysis of the documents, collected evidence in the case and revealed that the testator had signs of mental illness at the time of signing the second will In the course of the case, the Company requested information from all medical organizations where the testator was observed, prepared a pre-trial opinion on the testator's alleged inability to comprehend his actions at the time of drawing up the later will.
The court appointed a post-mortem comprehensive forensic psychiatric examination. It confirmed the advocates' assumptions: the testator could not really be aware of his actions and was unable to control them at the time of signing the later will due to the presence of serious chronic diseases. As a result, the court satisfied the claim and declared the second will invalid - the client received all the inheritance due to her.
There are many different schemes that are used by unscrupulous citizens to get hold of someone else's inheritance. We have cited only two cases that are most common in practice.

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