Aurélio Pereira was born in Tomar and moved to Lisbon at the age of 16, where he made a fortune in construction. Without a wife or children, he would end up dying in Vila Seca, in the municipality of Barcelos, where, already ill, he went to live with his nephew and his wife, to whom he left his entire inheritance, valued at 50 million euros. Aurélio Pereira’s nieces contest the will and the case will be judged in the Braga Court.
According to an investigative report by Sábado magazine, which revealed the case, among the fortune that Aurélio Pereira left to his nephew’s wife is a mansion in Praça Duque de Saldanha, in Lisbon, built at the beginning of the 20th century and classified as a monument of public interest. .
In this war for the millionaire inheritance, on one side are the family members of Aurélio Pereira, who passed away in 2013, aged 78, and on the other, the wife of a nephew who became the heir to the entire fortune that will be around 50 million euros, between bank accounts, land and buildings.
The family demands in court the annulment of the businessman’s donations and will.
Health problems
Between 2002 and 2004, Aurélio Pereira had several strokes and required hospitalization. Mafalda Pereira, the youngest niece, now 51 years old, accompanied her uncle at that time and tells the magazine that “an MRI showed that he had a disease: multiinfarct leukoencephalopathy, which is dementia, that is, a degenerative disease , in which the person is left with cognitive deficits.”
When she left the hospital, Mafalda guarantees that her uncle was unable to live alone and even paid for his stay in a home for months. However, according to his niece, he “never set foot there”. And it is at this point that a cousin, who emigrated to the United States of America decades ago, and his wife, Maria Alexandrina, enter the scene.
She was available to welcome her husband’s uncle, in an apartment the couple had in the Parede area, on the outskirts of Lisbon.
Mafalda Pereira says that she knew little about her cousin’s wife, but that “she said that she had been a housekeeper in the USA, in the house of rich people and that they really liked her and that she was very gifted”.
The cousins took the businessman to their house on the outskirts of Lisbon and in the early days Mafalda still managed to visit her uncle. However, what would have been a temporary situation became prolonged and, little by little, the nephew’s wife began to prevent family visits.
Until one day, the cousin and his wife took the elderly man to Barcelos, where they had a house, which made contact even more difficult.
Niece Mafalda also remembers that Maria Alexandrina accused the family of wanting to keep her uncle’s money. Once, in April 2013, she went to Barcelos to visit Aurélio, but she was prevented from seeing him, and the GNR only registered the incident, as it could not force the owners to open the door.
Died in September 2013
Aurélio died on September 30, 2013, aged 78. The family was not informed and found out about the death from the obituary section of the newspaper. Morning mail.
After the businessman’s death, his nieces learned that, in 2010, he had donated the Saldanha mansion and several plots of land in Lisbon and Oeiras to his nephew’s wife. And in 2012 he made her universal heir through his will.
“She wanted to take us away from him, so that her uncle would stop remembering us and thinking that she was the only family member he had”, accuses Mafalda Pereira.
According to the investigation by Saturday, the donation of the Palacete and the will were made at home. In addition to the notary and the witnesses, two general practitioners intervened as experts to confirm, under oath, the testator’s mental health, allegedly at his request.
In the defense, also cited by the magazine, the heiress states that her uncle knew the “voracious appetite” of her family members, including Mafalda, for her assets and that he wanted to be cautious of possible allegations of mental insanity.
War comes to court
Mafalda and her sister went to court and want to nullify the donations and the will. But, in the meantime, Maria Alexandrina will have placed part of the assets in the name of her children, who, being from a previous marriage, will be the next heirs of everything, since her husband, Aurélio Pereira’s nephew, died in 2021.
When they visited the businessman’s grave, in the Vila Seca cemetery, in Barcelos, the family was also shocked by what was written on the tombstone: “Aurélio Pereira, adoptive father of Maria Alexandrina, uncle of António Francisco”. The family accuses her of pretending to be an adopted daughter to justify keeping the entire inheritance.
Heiress contests
In her objection, the heiress guarantees that it was Aurélio Pereira who asked to live with the couple in Barcelos and that the businessman made the donations and the will on his own initiative, having been lucid until his death.
It also says that Aurélio went out into the street and attended church, although the neighbors the magazine spoke to say that the man “didn’t go outside”.
Maria Alexandrina, who did not speak to the magazine’s report, denies that she prevented contacts and visits and argues that the millionaire did not want to see his family, claiming that they ignored him and were only interested in his money.
Tags: War court inheritance million
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