The Provincial Court of Seville has refused the appeal A father has filed a lawsuit against the decision, which had already rejected his claim Eviction due to precarious situation in front of his son and daughter-in-law in the house of his late wife, fully confirmed the judgment of the first instance and ordered the appellant to pay the legal costs.
The conflict originated after the death of the parties’ mother and common wife on February 15, 2021. The woman left a will in which granted her husband general usufruct and life of all its assets, including a Socini precautionary clause intended to deter this forced heirs to object to this provision. The couple’s two children were the only heirs, and a few months after the death, the widower and both descendants filed their inheritance tax self-assessment together.
The hereditary inheritance was essentially concentrated in a single propertya house in Carmona that was registered in the name of the deceased and where various family members lived together. According to the father, both he and his wife had for years allowed one of their sons and daughter-in-law to occupy the upper floor of the house without paying rent, as a mere act of familial toleration. According to his account, this coexistence deteriorated significantly after his wife’s death, which led to a complete breakdown of personal relationships.
The plaintiff claimed that from that moment on he was subjugated Pressure, insults and attacks by his son and daughter-in-law with the aim of forcing him to leave his own home. His story included extremely serious episodes such as threats, damage to the home’s interior, and physical attacks resulting in serious injury, events which he allegedly reported to authorities. Due to this situation, he explained that he had expressly withdrawn the defendants’ permission to continue living in the apartment because they lacked a title justifying their profession.
Based on these facts, the father filed an eviction lawsuit due to precarious situation and requested that the illegal occupation of the property be determined and the eviction of his son and daughter-in-law ordered. This is what the defendants are faced with They denied the existence of mere tolerance and they defended that their right to stay at home had a completely different origin. They stated that they had already built the house they lived in on the family property years before, with their mother’s full consent, and had paid directly for a significant part of the work, with the aim of establishing their habitual residence there in a stable and permanent manner.
In addition, they questioned the father’s standing to sue since the division of the inheritance had not yet been formalized. nor the specific division of assetsand because there are other co-heirs who have rights to the property. They also claimed that the family conflict was caused by the plaintiff himself, to whom they attributed hostile and violent behavior, and even stated that some of his complaints gave rise to a criminal case with a conviction against him.
The Court of First Instance of Carmona accepted these arguments and dismissed the action in its entirety. Acquittal of the accused and ordering the actor to pay costs. The court considered that the father lacked active involvement and that, in any case, this could not be described as precarious since the son’s occupation of the property was supported by his status as heir and by the circumstances in which the construction of the house took place. This decision gave rise to an appeal to the Seville Provincial Court.
This court recognized that the plaintiff had actual standing to sue in his capacity as legatee of the joint usufruct of his deceased wife’s inheritance. In this way, the Court has corrected and clarified the reasoning of the Court of Carmona, which had dismissed the action for lack of standing The hereditary usufruct confers sufficient powers To exercise possession actions even before the division of the inheritance has been formalized. However, this legal clarification was not enough to agree with the complainant.
The core of the decision lies in the type of use of the property. The board concludes that this is not a precarious situation, as the father claimed, but one a profession for which a valid title applies. It was proven that the son built the house he lived in on the family property with the express consent of his parents and assumed a significant portion of the construction costs. This circumstance, supported by witness statements and documentary evidence, places the case in the area of building on other people’s land in good faith and brings it closer to a deposit than to a mere revocable toleration.
The Court recalls that the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court in these cases recognizes that the bona fide owner has a right of retention which prevents the owner of the property from recovering possession without first finding a solution Patrimonial consequences resulting from the construction. As long as the legal options provided for in the Civil Code are not exercised and the developer does not receive compensation, a claim for damages cannot be successful. Eviction due to precarious situation. The conflict, the judgment emphasizes, is not just about ownership, but concerns ownership and the rights arising from the investment in the property.
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