psychological abuse by sons and daughters to their parents as a new reason for disinheritance: a legal an

Abstract

In the summer of 2014 the Spanish press spoke of a novel jurisprudential expansion of causes of deprivation of the legitimate inheritance line. The descendants could be disinherited by their parents if it is proved that the ascending family members had been victims of psychological  abuse.  The  media  were  not  oblivious  to  the  component  of  human  interest awoken by the judgment of the Supreme Court´s First Chamber,  in June the 3th, 2014. The mass media coverage of that judgment expanded its echo beyond the judicial circles and the legal profession. The media headlines presented the message happily as it had been a social demand for some time.  Thus, many parents could deprive of his own property the one who to some extension they felt as an intruder, be him or her of his very same blood or an adopted child.

Here we try to make a jurisprudential, theoretical and reflective review of how the courts   make  up  caselaw, in this  case,  focused on the  disinheritance  by  parents  of their descendants  on  grounds  of     psychological  abuse.  The  mass  media  play  the  role  of disseminators of this judicial information, taking into account   the human interest of these stories and facts. This paper proves that judges in Spain might be considering the human interest  of  newspaper  stories  to  right  certain  wrong  situations  in  our  secular  statutory minimum share of a descendent's estate.