11941 Rogito posponed ?

Ciao tutti,
weve been working towards buying a property for the last 12-14 months,the previous owner died without leaving a will, leaving 38 people in the line of succesion, monumental amounts of time and work finally got all parties together to sign the proposta several weeks ago,this was duly sent off and all relevant checks were made on the property and people involved, o.k'd and approved it landed back with our notiao last friday, who telephoned to give the o.k to come over to sign and pay asap.
flights booked that evening for april 23rd and a few glasses of wine, saturday morning phone call from vendors family explaining that one of the uncles had died on friday evening, the said uncle also held 3 procuras for some of his immediate family in the u.k and u.s.a.
does anybody know beings the proposta had been signed by him before his death could we still proceed or will the whole thing have to go back to stage one, and a new proposta / procuras be needed by his dependants to act on his behalf.

Category
Legal

What a mess - Im sorry for you. Basically you are back to stage one. A procura is granted to an individual giving power to carry through one action - so with his death all the procuras are null and you have to get a new procuratore to act on the others behalf. For his part of the property you will have to wait for the succession to be done by his heirs and then conclude with his heirs for his quota - and in the meantime hope that nobody else falls off the twig. I have to say I think you have been very brave going this far - if it were me I would have surrendered as soon as I knew the number and age of the owners! Also if this takes the due date for the rogito to after that agreed with the propostas you will technically have to redo the proposta with all the other owners, or at the very least get some form of agreement that the due date can be prorogued.

Hard luck. The procura(s) which were held by the deceaed chap will need to be re-written, and (assuming the heirs are willing to sell their inherited portion of the house), they will have to wait for the will to be registered. However, so long as the will is straightforward this could be completed in about six weeks.

I don't see the necessity to rewrite any procuras which didn't involve the deceased or his heirs, and neither do I see any need to rewrite the compromesso - after all that document isn't strictly 'necessary' - you can go straight to the rogito without ever having had one. Your notaio is in the best position to advise you, I'd ask your notaio to liaise informally with the deceased's notaio so that any delays to the settlement of the will are known, and you can be kept informed. Good luck with it.

However, a proposta or a compromesso is a legally binding contract - and if the act isnt signed by the due date agreed by the parties it is technically null. This means - in the worst circumstances - that both parties can change the prices previously agreed, as well as terms and conditions. To be clear - when I said all the procuras, I meant all the procuras involving the deceased. The others, if there are others, will be valid until the terms of the procura are met.

I agree that if you have got a compromesso it is a legally binding document, and that agreeeing on a change of the date of 'expiry' would be a good idea - I've done this on occasions via fax, with every party signing to a new date (though there weren't 38 parties!)

Another possibility that I can think of is for you to get full possession of the property by paying a percentage of the final price, occupy the house and postpone the "rogito" until the party of the deceased person can organise themselves. A special clause should be added indicating the time you are prepared to wait and also introducing penalties for the sellers if they do not comply with the terms of the sale. This could allow you to start working on the property if needed. Be careful to get proper insurance cover and also ask the notary whether it would be possible to add a further clause by which the sellers would reimburse you double the amount of the money spent on any improvements if they do not comply with the final sale. (This should keep them on their toes, I think). But as I said before, check with the notary and seek his/her advice.

In principle a sound idea Giaia - the problem is that you can only be responsible for selling your quota of a property and cannot guarantee that another will sell - so technically they could go ahead and sell 37/38ths of a property but you could be always be left with someone who has a right of access through your kitchen to the 20% of the downstairs loo that they own.