Empty hope: Beneficiary status through subscription rights in life insurance

The subscription right regulates who is entitled to the agreed benefit in the event of an insured event. Insured persons can determine their individual subscription rights in order to avoid disputes later on. Why can someone else become a beneficiary in case of doubt despite the subscription right?   Can subscription rights be revoked? The […]

Gift tax and inheritance tax

How to protect your assets from gift tax First of all, it is important to clarify the question of why such a bizarre-sounding tax as the gift tax is actually levied in Germany. The widespread belief that one can freely dispose of one’s own property and private assets, which have already been severely affected by […]

Variable loan interest rate – bank overcharges by around a quarter of a million

– Special bank for doctors and pharmacists agrees ineffective interest cap clause –   Numerous bank customers pay overdraft interest on their current account for years because their credit institution charges them too much interest on their loans. Legal and calculation errors occur en masse at some institutions – and occasionally lead to the bank […]

Books / Technical articles

Publications – Technical papers Fiala/Schramm, Insolvency risk of British life insurers when relocating to Ireland, ExpertenReport, issue 7/2019, pages 60-62 Fiala/Schramm, When are insurers no longer obliged to pay benefits or can reduce benefits?Expert Report, issue 3/2019, pages 56-58 Fiala/Schramm, No insurance coverage in case of refusal to pay protection money, ExpertenReport, issue 11/2018. Pages […]

Munich law firm:

Your law firm in Munich Dear visitors, I am pleased to welcome you to my website and would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and my office in beautiful Nymphenburg in Munich and to present our range of expertise to you in a transparent manner. For more than 25 years I have been […]

Pension funds are not allowed to withhold health insurance contributions on private pension part

– This leads to further legal disputes about the “correct” determination of contributions –   The Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG, decisions of 27.06.2018, ref. 1 BvR 100/15, 1 BvR 249/15) decided that benefits from a pension fund (PK) – which are based on contributions made privately by the employee – are not subject to any […]

Tax savings through charity or religion – or tax evasion-Deluxe

– What alternatives are there to the tax havens Andorra, Liechtenstein, Vatican, Switzerland, San Marino, and Monaco –   To date, Germans have invested up to more than € 360 billion in tax havens, as Professor Gabriel Zucman recently determined. The widely praised way of buying tax CDs with allegedly mass self-disclosures is only the […]

Brokers’ liability in the sale of used life insurance

– Obligation of the insurance broker to advise in the case of brokering in the secondary market for life insurance policies – An insurance broker was ordered to pay damages by the Higher Regional Court of Dresden (OLG, ruling of 29 February 2019, file no. 4 U 942/17) because he had not informed the policyholder […]

Sale of life insurance policy destroys shapeable additional income

In its ruling of 16 October 2018, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH, ref. VI ZR 459/17) decided how contracts for the sale and assignment of used life insurance policies lead to an obligation to pay damages if the investor or policyholder (UN) of the life insurance policy bears the payout risk according to the […]

Reduction of life insurance: No information obligation for life insurers on reduction possibilities

Members of the German Bundestag asked: “What legal obligations do life insurance companies have to inform their customers about the possibility of reducing claims before the contract is concluded, and what is the practice of life insurance policies as established by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin)?   The answer of the Federal Government of […]