Malta [Case 9 : conditional contracts of succession]

Abstract

The other brothers can challenge their exclusion and should be able to impugn the validity of the property transfer to ensure that the property belonging to Lord Stern is divided equally among them. Arts. 586 and 984(2) of the Maltese Civil Code do not allow the making of any contract with regard to a succession which has not yet devolved, with the limited exception of contractual stipulations made in contemplation of marriage, including donations from parents and life insurance contracts. Even assuming that the "succession contract" entered into by the Stern family in 1930 was a pre-nuptial contract, there are insuperable difficulties to holding such a contract to have been valid at the time when it was made and to giving effect to it today. Firstly, this contract treats the family property as an indivisible totality to be transmitted in ownership from one successor to another. In 1930 the only legal institute which could be used to package and transmit the family property in this way was that of entail or fedecommesso. [Excerpt]