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Background to the Denney Case

An Englishman dies domiciled in Spain: does Spanish Law or English Law govern the succession to his estate?

Anthony Denney was an Englishman who had lived in Spain for many years. He died in 1990 and his Spanish will made his second wife Celia Mercedes Royde-Smith universal legatee, without prejudice to the rights that the children of his first marriage might have under his national law. The question was, were his children entitled to inherit part of the estate as obligatory heirs under Spanish Law? It took nine years to find out the answer. 

Anthony Denney’s three children by his first marriage challenged the widow’s claim to the estate in the Spanish Courts, claiming that under Spanish Law part belonged to them. Their grounds were that  because English Private International Law refers to the law of Spain and Article 12.2 of the Spanish Civil Code accepted the renvoi, or reference back from English Law, therefore Spanish Law gave them compulsory rights to a part of the estate. However, Article 12.2 of the Civil Code is ambiguous and there were no judgments from the Supreme Court to provide guidance on how it should be interpreted. 

It should have been merely a matter of obtaining a definitive judgment on a point of law, but a major complicating factor proved to be  the question of the ownership of Denney’s collection of modern art, which had been lent by him to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1970. Shortly after Denney’s death, the DMA was instructed to transfer the loan collection to the Museum of Modern Art in Toulouse in letters signed Anthony Denney, later discovered to be forged. Transport costs and insurance were paid for by the City of Toulouse.  In 1993 the City formally accepted the collection as a gift from Denney’s widow,  even though officials knew that it had not been declared to the Spanish Tax Authorities and that Denney’s children by his first marriage had lodged an inheritance claim in the Spanish Courts.      Reference 

The widow denied that the children had any right to bring their inheritance claim before the Spanish Courts and also argued that the  case should not be heard without the Mayor of Toulouse being present , because the City, which she claimed were now owners of the collection, would be affected by the outcome. The Mayor of Toulouse, for his part, announced that the litigation in Spain was a private matter in which neither the City, nor the State nor the Regional Council were in any way involved.  Reference  

The litigation in the Spanish Courts followed three stages : 

  • Stage 1 : January 1995 :  The Spanish Court of First Instance in Jerez de los Caballeros found no evidence to suggest that the collection had ever left the deceased’s estate, it rejected the widow’s argument that the Mayor of Toulouse owned the collection and declared the Denney children forced heirs under Spanish Law.
  • Stage 2 : July 1995 : The Provincial Appeal Court in Badajoz overturned the decision of  First Instance, without considering the substance of the inheritance claim, on grounds that the Mayor of Toulouse ought to have been called to the case.   Link to legal references
  • Stage 3 : 27 May 1999 : The Supreme Court in Madrid ruled: 
    • that there were no reasons why the City of Toulouse should have been called to the case and overturned the judgment of the Provincial Appeal Court. 
    • Then, after considering recent developments in Private International Law and the trend towards a more restricted application of renvoi, it rejected the claim of the Denney children and revoked the Judgment of First Instance. 
    • The order of the Provincial Appeal Court in Badajoz, ordering the costs at first instance and of the appeal to be paid by the Denney children, was overturned and no ruling was made in respect of costs because of the complexities of the legal issues involved and the fact that similar cases had never come before the Supreme Court.