The boss of a hotel in western Middle Franconia is, as he puts it, “pissed off”. In January 2020, a lifeless man was found in his hotel with wounds. The hotel room was soiled with traces of blood, the hotel manager had it cleaned by professionals.
Almost two years later, the hotel manager doesn’t know how and why the man died in his hotel. But he knows this after two judicial instances: He remains seated at the cost of 2558 euros for the stay and entertainment of the deceased guest as well as the room cleaning. This has now been decided by the district court of Ansbach and thus confirmed a judgment of the local court. The judgment is final.
The judges justify this as follows: An heir must in principle pay for the debts of a deceased. The case is different, however, if the inheritance is rejected in good time. In the present case, the hotelier had asked the deceased’s daughter to reimburse the costs he had incurred. This, however, had turned down the inheritance – and in time, as the court found.
Because the deceased had partly worked abroad and, according to the investigation files, there was a will there, the daughter could not have known with certainty at the time of death whether she had actually become the heir. In this respect, she was allowed to turn down her inheritance even after the period of six weeks. Therefore she does not have to be liable for the debts of the deceased.
The court speaks of the “general life risk”
What the hotelier – who does not want to appear in the newspaper with his name – is particularly upset: As the court confirmed, large amounts of cash were found on the deceased. The hotelier speaks of 3000 euros. As the court stated, relatives “had already used this for the funeral costs when the action was brought” – and could therefore “no longer be used for the hotel costs”. The action had to be dismissed. A court spokesman speaks of a “general risk to life” which, according to the Federal Court of Justice, is also subject to landlords of rooms – in this case a hotelier.
This stunned those affected. “Would you have had to rob the deceased to get his money’s worth as a hotelier,” he wonders. The fact that a relative can take cash but turn down the inheritance does not reveal itself to him in the beginning. Especially since he left the cleaning to so-called crime scene cleaners, i.e. professionals. This was not to be expected of the general cleaning staff.
Why did the man die? Matthias Soldner, spokesman for the Ansbach public prosecutor’s office, can clarify this. The man apparently fell “days before his death”, possibly because of increased alcohol consumption, and suffered head injuries. According to the investigators, this was not the cause of death. These were based on natural death.