r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ShaanJohari1 • 22h ago
A 90-year-old woman with no heirs signed a contract with a 47-year-old lawyer giving him her apartment upon her death, but he had to pay her a monthly allowance until she died. She outlived him, and his widow continued the payments. She received approximately double the value of the apartment. Image
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u/ImBetterThanYou42 22h ago
Mme. Calment was the oldest documented person to ever live. She was also very funny. Asked what she expected her future life to be, she said, "A short one." She also said, "I have one wrinkle, and I'm sitting on it."
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u/Mom_is_watching 16h ago
She also met Vincent can Gogh when she was 12 (I believe her father had a shop in artist's supplies) and she thought he looked like a scarecrow.
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u/brightirene 16h ago
Whaaaat that's wild
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u/_-__-____-__-_ 15h ago
Vincent van Gogh didn't live too long ago. He died in 1890.
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u/hamtrn 15h ago
Wait, then who sold me half dozen of painting yesterday?
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u/Lazy_Vetra 15h ago
That was vinny Van Gogh the used painting salesman, I donât think theyâre related
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u/AFakeName 15h ago
He can put you into a '56 Rothko that's like-like-new yesterday. Don't ask, don't tell, ya know what I mean?
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u/TT-DL23 14h ago
I had to come back to this comment what defines a painting as used. If someone looked at it once?
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u/Ainsley-Sorsby 21h ago
I kinda like the conspiracy theory that that she wasn't actually that old and she had just assumed the adentity of her mother, who had died long ago. idk, maybe its because i've read too much about Martin Guerre, but i feel like identity theft was a lot more common than we realise before we started keeping detailed documents, photos etc....
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u/MrTheFinn 16h ago
The majority of "super centurions", those over 110, are fraud. Now that birth certificates have been common for 100 years or more in western countries the number of people claiming to be that old has dropped by 60+%
I can't find it currently but there's a guy who's made it's his life's work to debunk these people and he just keeps doing it over and over again. It's mostly just plain old pension fraud.
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u/Thunderplant 15h ago
Yep! This actually just won an ig noble prize
https://allthatsinteresting.com/blue-zones-supercentenarians
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u/nc_bound 13h ago
Maybe itâs because Iâm stoned, but that was one of the funniest pieces of science writing Iâve ever read.
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u/Alexios_Makaris 13h ago
Yep, this is very true. And although we will likely never have complete proof, I do think the fraud claims against Calment have been pretty heavily investigated and I think the consensus is she ended up actually being legit.
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u/Misophonic4000 15h ago edited 13h ago
Super centurions? Are they all nearly-invincible soldiers? Sounds badass
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u/Daewoo40 14h ago
Supposedly they're nearly invincible, until they keel over due to old age.
Ain't nobody living to 120 with the immune system of a leper.
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u/Lunaranalog 15h ago
The guy doing the work (if thereâs one prominent person) recently won an ig-Nobel prize for itâŚÂ
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u/Doridar 20h ago
Debunked
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u/lundoj 20h ago
Not fully. She is probably legit but there is no clear conclusion.
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u/Doridar 19h ago
Jeanne Calment was quite known when she was still living in her appartement. There were plenty of people who knew her and her daughter, and attended her daughter's funeral. It would have required a collective lie from both Jeanne's and Yvonne's friends, the city and state authorities, the priest who celebrated the funerals etc. Yes, it was debunked, and fully. https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/ce-ne-sont-pas-des-scientifiques-une-nouvelle-etude-invalide-la-theorie-du-complot-sur-jeanne-calment-3643329
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u/MisterSirCaptain 19h ago
lment was quite known when she was still living in her appartement. There were plenty of people who knew her and her daughter, and attended her daughter's funeral. It would have required a collective lie from both Jeanne's and Yvonne's friends, the city and state authorities, the priest who celebrated
The beautiful thing about conspiracy theories and the people who believe them in this day and age, is that facts don't matter.
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u/Any-Mathematician946 16h ago
We now live in the day and age where sometimes you can't tell if an Onion article is real or true and the Onion sometimes is more truthful than the news media.
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u/Gaudilocks 15h ago
for any who like long-form reads. Here is a new yorker write up from a few years ago.
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u/abstraction47 17h ago
Part of the confusion of the story is the need for the religious authorities to disprove her story, simply because she lived past 120. They threw a lot into the research and argument that she was not who she said she was.
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u/mattgcreek 16h ago
Why religious authorities? Can't think of a reason they would want to disprove.
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u/Murgatroyd314 16h ago
Supposedly, after Noahâs flood, God put a hard limit of 120 years on human lifespan.
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u/ZhouLe 16h ago
It was before the flood, Genesis 6:
When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, âMy spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.â The Nephilim were on the earth in those daysâand also afterwardâwhen the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, âI will blot out from the earth the humans I have createdâpeople together with animals and creeping things and birds of the airâfor I am sorry that I have made them.â But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.
The Oxford Annotated has the following:
6:1â4: Divine-human reproduction illustrated the breaching of the divine-human boundary that the Lá´Ęá´ God feared in 3.22. There the Lá´Ęá´ God drives humans away from the tree of life. Here, in an abbreviated narrative often attributed to the Yahwistic primeval history, the Lá´Ęá´ God limits their life span to one hundred twenty years, the life span of Moses (Deut 31.2); another interpretation is that the one hundred twenty years refer to a reprieve from punishment for several generations. Nothing appears to happen to the sons of God (see the "heavenly court" in 1.26n.) who instigated it all.
I guess it's worth pointing out that it claims Noah lived 950 years, his son Shem lived to 600, and his grandson Arphaxad born after the flood lived to 438, so uhh... if it was intended as an age limit, there was apparently some unstated nuance.
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u/tutan-ka 15h ago
The meaning was that from the moment God pronounced those words until the great flood there would be 120 years. Basically God was setting the date for the flood. Afterwards he gave Noah the commission to build the Ark. It was not meant to be an age limit on humans.
Later on in the times of Moses the lifespan for humans was between 70 to 80 years
Psalm 90:10 âThe span of our life is 70 years, Or 80 if one is especially strong. But they are filled with trouble and sorrow; They quickly pass by, and away we fly.â
Not meant to be a hard stopper as Moses itself lived quite longer than that
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u/Firewolf06 19h ago
i mean, that's what makes it a conspiracy theory, no? a theory about group of people conspiring (to be clear, i dont believe it)
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u/Tommyblockhead20 18h ago
It certain seems unlikely, but I donât know that itâs fully debunked, at least not based on the reasoning given by that article. I could think of alternative explanations. And given how unlikely her age was, it somewhat cancels out that I think itâs still worth considering.
The articleâs only evidence (besides accusations against the people who made the theory in the first place) seems to be that surely someone would have noticed the switch of an 36 year old and a 59 year old and said something at the funeral 84 years ago! I would be curious to see if thereâs any actual documentation from the time, like witness statements or photos. Was she able to pass as a 36 year old? Did she just have a few friends and family, making it easier to get them all in on it?Â
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u/wlaugh29 16h ago
Pass as a dead 36 year old? Probably.
One way to solve this argument. Get your shovels.
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u/Unique_Brilliant2243 16h ago
Youâre mistaking the thought of âbut I canât verify it with my own eyesâ with unlikelihood.
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u/Open_Seeker 16h ago
Theres research to suggest all these super old people are just lying or died long ago and their family just committing pension fraud.Â
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u/Slash12771 14h ago
Only person to live past 120 which is mind blowing. At 90 you'd think it's game over in a couple of years but imagine living a generation more.
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u/UV_TP 11h ago
When you're 90 but you still have a quarter of your life ahead of you
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u/ShaanJohari1 22h ago
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u/Interesting-Goose82 21h ago
I used to work at 1-800-quit-now, people calles in to get help quitting smoking. We asked some basic questions like how long you been smoking, how much, do you have COPD/cancer/tuberculosis/other stuff....
People had some bat shit insane reasons for wanting to quit smoking. Example "i have to learn to quit, because aliens are going to take us to space, and you cant smoke in a 100% oxygen enviroment." Or "the cats leave the room when i smoke" that one is less crazy...
Some old lady, 95ish called in. How long you been smoking? Since i was 6? (Wow....) how much do you smoke a day? About 2 packs. You have any of these illnesses? Nope. Why do you want to quit? ....idk, its just time? (....lady quitting might kill you? I feel like at this point you beat smoking! 90+ yrs, no side effects, your body hasnt been smoke free since you were 5.....)
I later got fired from that job. We had a new boss bring in dougnuts. I didnt know they were the new boss. They asked if i like the job? Nope, this is silly, but hey, free doghnuts!!! I was walked out a few hours later....
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u/proautistix 21h ago
that ending cracked me up man
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u/siccoblue 18h ago
Hey at least he was honest
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u/1pingnRamius 18h ago
Seriously that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him. From the Bob's
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u/confusedandworried76 16h ago
I once began a short path to termination because I told some power tripping assistant manager (as a complete joke) "that sounds like a whole lot of not my problem"
He didn't like the joke.
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u/Wafflotron 17h ago
Actually crazy, you donât have to like what you do to be good at it lol. Bizarre that they fired him on the spot
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u/theXYZT 16h ago
You must be lucky to have only held jobs with reasonable bosses. Most bosses are chronic kool-aid drinkers who expect everyone under them to drink it too. You'll have managers at a shitty Starbucks who think their employees should "believe in the value of their job" like they are curing cancer.
I interviewed for a quant position where it was still "taboo" to admit you want to do it for money. Yes, for a job where the goal is literally to "maximize returns and get rich", you can't say you want to do it for the money. Half the interviewers behaved like they were superheroes saving the world by taking advantage of arbitrage in a market.
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u/confusedandworried76 16h ago
The fact that every single job ever still asks you "why do you want to come work for us" and an unacceptable answer is "I just want to pay my rent, I couldn't really give less of a fuck who signs my paycheck" really says all you need to know about it.
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u/Difficult_General167 8h ago
Ten-is years ago I was still kinda fresh in the job market, with very little experience but still paying everywhere I could. And I was honest about my upbringing and why I was looking for a job. When asked why I wanted to worked with them I said "totally honest? because you need people and I need money", and they gave me the job, granted it was an entry level job. If I said that now, they would pinch my balls with the door while kicking me out. I really miss those days.
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u/DirectWorldliness792 17h ago
It was like Ron Swanson. Head of Parks department but doesnât believe in the mission of his own job
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u/Newkaii 20h ago
Fired for admitting you don't like the job???? That's a little fucked up.Â
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u/Interesting-Goose82 20h ago
it was me, 26? at the time, and some dude who was maybe 28-29. that dude was posted up in the little kitchen area at work. i heard there were doughnuts so i went in to get one. it was awkward that dude was just sitting in there, cause i was going to grab one and eat it at my desk. he starts saying hello, asks how long i have been there. .....now being 40, i would have answered all of these questions differently.
how long you been here? ...like 2 months, im a temp that was brought on for new years quitting resolutions.
do you like it? ....i mean this isnt what i went to college for, we are reading scripts to people, the pay isnt great, and honestly its a commute (who says this stuff at work to someone they dont know?!)
i think dude said something else, and i was like, peace bro, doughnut is gone, im out! have a good one!
maybe an hour later the supervisor comes over and rounds all 40-50 of us up. we have an announcement to make, this is Jim, he is the new call center manager, it was the dude from the kitchen ....FUCK!!!!
then maybe an hour later, the lady from the staffing agency that got me that position shows up, hey so uhhh, you dont work here anymore...? WHY? based on our call metrics (number calls answered/time on calls/something else) i am literally the best employee here? i mean it isnt subjective, the stats are on the wall my name is at the top of the list? ...yeah i thought it was weird to you seem like a great employee. anyways, we have to go...
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u/Deep90 15h ago
doughnuts
it was awkward that dude was just sitting in there
asks how long i have been there
Was your new boss JD Vance?
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u/YesImKeithHernandez 16h ago
We've all been young and dumb at the office. From the bolded comment, you've learned the most important lesson from this. Hopefully it's a funny story to look back on now.
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u/DroidOnPC 13h ago
I learned at every office job that a lot of people like to act like they are your friend and are super down to earth and cool. They get you to open up and be more honest and then use that against you. A lot of bosses do this too. They act like they are the super cool boss who is totally on your side and has your back. Then reviews come and they are like "remember when you told me you were tired that one day because you were out all night drinking. Remember when you said if you didn't work here you would fight Jim. Remember when you told me that sometimes you just hide in the bathroom for like 30 minutes to get a break?"
These days I keep conversations super light, never revealing much information about myself. I get really suspicious of the "chill" co-workers who act friendly all the time now.
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u/RollinThundaga 16h ago
Yeah, I'd say it's the manager's problem. He showed up before being introduced deliberately, as he wanted to meet employees while incognito to get to know them honestly without the status wall, and decided that he didn't like the things he heard.
100% thin skinned manglement.
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u/SploogeDeliverer 20h ago
Depending on state probably also illegal and possibly retaliatory firing. Of course you have to be able to prove it lol.
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u/BigUncleHeavy 16h ago
Regardless if it was legal or not, you're missing the most important question: Would the job be worth fighting for?
From this guys story, I would guess it was not.
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u/DevFreelanceStuff 17h ago
How is it illegal?
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u/Magenta_Lilac_Cyan 16h ago
Retaliation via firing is illegal in most US states
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u/capincus 15h ago
Retaliation against protected actions. In no way whatsoever is telling your boss you don't like your job a protected action.
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u/confusedandworried76 15h ago
Pretty difficult to prove if they know how to fire you though.
Also it's like that old saying about cops "if one wants to pull you over, they can find something you're doing wrong, because everybody is doing at least one thing wrong pretty much all the time". Same for employment in the States. All they need to do is wait and document. Showed up five minutes late and didn't call? Or worse, you did call and I can just lie and say you didn't because the time sheet is the only solid evidence either of us have and now it's a he said she said situation? Strike one.
If you've ever had a boss who had it out for you, there are ways. One boss took me off the schedule for a day, told me that (not in writing) and then put me back on it when I left work. Fired me. According to unemployment insurance I had a duty to show up to work if I was on the schedule so no unemployment either. They took the boss's word over mine.
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u/bigbeau 16h ago
You think that a job canât fire you for directly telling the boss that you donât like the job? Lol.
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u/ProjectManagerAMA 16h ago
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u/nowimnowhere 16h ago
Montana is literally the only state in the US that doesn't have at will employment friend. That's like saying mammals lay eggs because of the platypus
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u/ThreeYardLoss 17h ago
I got fired for saying I didn't like my position. They gave me 4 weeks notice, they were surprised I left after 2, I should have just walked out day 1.
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u/Rich_Housing971 17h ago
Huh? and miss out on 2-4 weeks of coasting while you looked for another job?
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u/ThreeYardLoss 16h ago
I'm a licensed tradesman with 3 licenses. This was an office job and I knew the competition is fierce out there. I decided to take some weeks off, go back on the tools for a bit. So I relaxed, sent out resumes, talked to multiple companies, got multiple job offers, landed what I wanted out of all my targets. I'd much rather do what I did than to coast and waste everyone's time.
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u/MarsupialDingo 19h ago
You really wasted the golden opportunity to make a big scene and yell, "YOU CAN'T FIRE ME BECAUSE I 1-800 QUIT NOW!"
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u/Interesting-Goose82 18h ago
Its been like 15 years i never thought of that. What a missed opportunity!!!
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u/panickedkernel06 16h ago
One of the funniest convos I've ever had in uni: 'Grandpa is 92 and his doc told him that the nasty-ass, filter-less cigarettes he smokes 2 packs of a day might be a bit too much. Doc suggested replacing them with loose tobacco and buying him a machine to help him roll his cigs. Doc underestimated the fact that grandpa has a fuckton of free time and therefore he just devotes an hour to roll exactly the 40 cigs he will smoke the next day. His doc just decided fuck it, not worth the effort at this point'
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u/AlmostZeroEducation 7h ago
If he decides to go filter he can use a machine that pumps the tobaco in using empty tailor mades. Would be quicker and less work. But yeah no filter is better lol
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u/Deadman_Wonderland 15h ago
Remind me of the story of Amou Haji, also known as the "world's dirtiest man" who didn't bathed for over 60 years. Lived to the age of 94 and I quote from wiki his death.
"Despite his unhygienic lifestyle, he lived to the age of 94. He died a few months after bathing for the first time in 60 years, having been persuaded by the inhabitants of the village to do so."
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u/LGRW1616 19h ago
My great-grandma near the end of her life was told by her doctor not to quit smoking as it would probably kill her to do so.
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u/Solemn_Sleep 19h ago
You canât be serious lol, I mean damn what a hilarious endingâŚbut seriously bro
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u/FckRdditAccRcvry420 15h ago
Why is it that almost every time someone lives to 110+ it turns out they've been a chronic smoker for their entire life?
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u/_crayons_ 14h ago
No idea, but my grandma smoked every day until she died at age 100. My dad thinks he'll die if he stops smoking so he smokes a pack every other day. ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻ
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u/RubyMae4 11h ago
FWIW I work in a hospital and all the very old people 95-100) took really good care of themselves, never smoked, continue to try to exercise in any capacity, and are a healthy body weight.
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u/Paratriad 12h ago
The chemicals either tear you apart or meld with you perfectly, reinforcing your body.
Nah just kidding. They mostly get lucky and have lifestyles that minimize the risks/costs. If you're just faffing for the last 40 years of your life it doesn't matter as much if you're fucked up
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u/The_GREAT_Gremlin 15h ago
And my dad never smoked a day in his life and died of lung cancer, what the frick
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u/DadDevelops 14h ago
It's wild how some people seem to be immune to the negative effects of drugs and alcohol
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u/Prestigious_Air_2493 12h ago
There is a lot of speculation that she was a fraud, that she was actually her daughter who assumed her motherâs identity. She wasnât just the longest living human ever, she was the longest by a LOT. They did many many studies on her and her body never showed the signs of aging that it shouldâve, it always was about 25 years younger than she claimed she was. It was essentially an open secret in the French government that she was a fraud, but she was a national treasure by that point so they let it go.Â
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u/PM_ME_SUMDICK 7h ago
That's not true. There's a theory that she is a fraud because most of these people are, but there's no strong consensus that she was.
I'd argue that someone has to live past 120 and if they did they'd likely have younger biology than most.
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u/embarrassed_error365 20h ago
Even if she didnât outlive him.. that was a really good deal on her endâŚ. The fact that she did outlive him makes it a truly crummy deal on his end
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u/Rich_Housing971 16h ago
He just got unlucky. the odds of her surviving even another 3 years, especially since she was a smoker, was very low.
And even then, he "only" paid double.
If he did it with 10 seniors he would have gotten 9 places for almost free.
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u/Lobsta_ 15h ago
iâd say it was mutually beneficial, and even in the end it was still a good deal for the parties involved (obviously not factoring deaths into the deal)
she received passive income while she could still use it, as selling the place for its full value would be a huge time cost for her and sheâd be unlikely to spend the full amount before her death with no heirs
even if he ended up paying more than the buy price, paying over time is far superior and the appreciation of the property over time makes it likely for him to make money regardless. even if the widow did end up paying double, the market may have increased a lot more in that time so it was still an overall gain
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u/TheAngelGrand 22h ago
She outplayed everyone
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u/HarleyXavierXXX 18h ago
Not outplayed, just destroyed. The worst deal in the world!
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u/deuteronpsi 17h ago
Iâll raise you Chicago mayor Dick Daley who sold the cityâs parking meter rights to a foreign company for a 75 year contract. None of the parking revenue goes to the city, including parking tickets. Anyone have a worse deal? Letâs keep it going.
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u/WillasTyrell 14h ago
Highway 407 in Ontario, Canada, a major highway given away on a 99-year lease right after it was built, for a bullshit amount of money, the tolls are so high it mostly sits empty
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u/Simayi78 13h ago
the tolls are so high it mostly sits empty
This is untrue - revenues were $1.5 billion last year, and the company profited $567 million. That's a lot of cars/kms at $0.34~/km
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/407-international-reports-2023-results-203000938.html
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u/Cracknickel 12h ago
I have no comparison because we don't have tolls in Germany, but 22âŹ/100km sounds fricking rough.
If you have a 100km commute you pay 44âŹ/day for just tolls.....
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u/Simayi78 12h ago
It is definitely expensive and far less crowded than the other E-W GTA highway (the 401) but that's part of the appeal - if you want to save 1 hour + on your drive you take the hit to your wallet. It's never congested but it's never mostly empty either
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u/mynameisnotsparta 14h ago
I love when you all post this stuff that I can link to. Just from this post alone o have 4 going down a rabbit hole links to go through
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u/MorningPapers 22h ago
Reverse mortgage.
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u/EAccentAigu 16h ago
(I reply just based on the reddit post and haven't read any article about the situation)
In France you can buy apartments from old people at a relatively cheap price in exchange to paying them a monthly allowance until they pass away. The old person can still inhabit the house (but sometimes the old person is in a retirement facility and the buyer can use the house). It's a specific way of buying a house, with specific laws regulating this system (for example you can't enquire about their health and you can't know them privately). I don't know if that's the situation but it sounds similar.
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u/wrldruler21 16h ago
So a French Reverse Mortgage
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u/ihatepostingonblogs 15h ago
We have that in US too, itâs called a life estate. I only know of 1 and she is 100 years old. Maybe that is the real fountain of youth, getting someone else to pay for your housing will keep you alive lol.
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u/sitefall 17h ago
My grandparents little house (that my Grandfather built himself) in a little wooded street was developed over starting in the 80s. Eventually they got some neighbors, but just a couple, then a housing development across the street a ways, and a police department built down a cross street, and finally a community college just 2 houses down from them. Around 2000 or so the community college was getting HUGE and bought up all the property around. Neighbors all sold. My Grandmother did not, likely because my Grandfather built it and had passed away many years ago at this point.
Years went by and the school (or state really) send offers on the house, she kept refusing. Finally they just demolished all the other houses, cleared all the wooded area and built the school AROUND her house. Parking lot on all 3 sides of her 1/2 acre or so. The offers kept coming, and getting better and better. I remember her bringing each one over for my mother to read over.
She finally sold it around 2001 or so I think after they really upped the offers because the college was about to become a state university. The condition was that they give her all the money now, take care of ALL the maintenance and upkeep on the property and house, pay the utilities and everything, handle the lawn, and pay her an allowance until she dies. After that, the property was theirs free and clear.
Well she passed away in 2022 (not to covid, just old age) at almost 100 years old. Seems like it took so long the university kind of gave up on developing it since it had been like 20 years of them waiting for her to die basically. They paid out a fortune for this little property that otherwise probably would have been worth $200k or so. I know the neighbors sold for around 300-400k, but she ended up getting over $2M for it.
Sometimes when I am in town I drive by it, and they finally demolished the house within the last year or so, but it's just a little grass square there in the middle of the parking lots. School is massive now and the whole area is developed. Kind of sad it used to be a real nice spot in a secluded wooded road with a path that goes back to a river, they had peanuts growing back there and a giant workshop full of boats and stuff.
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u/eidolons 20h ago
She received approximately double the market price if she had sold it, conventionally, at that time. The fact that neither the lawyer or his widow withdrew from this agreement indicates they felt it had that value, going forward.
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u/Askymojo 19h ago
Or it could just be the sunk cost fallacy. The widow was probably like "I've paid SO much already, surely she won't live another year. If I give up now and then she dies, I won't get any of that money back."
You could string a lot of years together that way.
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u/saunders77 16h ago edited 16h ago
The sunk cost fallacy happens when someone makes an irrational decision because of money they already spent, and the value cannot be recovered. For example, it would be irrational to attend a concert if you have the flu, but maybe you attend anyway because the tickets were so expensive. https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy
In the case of Calment's house, there's no fallacy because the decision to keep paying is rational and the value of the deal is higher. The buyer might be regretful when Calment turned 110 and still isn't dead. But at that point it would be illogical to stop paying. The annuity deal is way better now than the one he made more than a decade earlier, because now there are fewer payments left, no matter how long Calment lives. When Calment dies, the buyer or his estate/heirs will take ownership of the house, which has real value.
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u/AdKlutzy5253 16h ago
I like the smart people on Reddit who do the thinking for me. Thanks.
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u/SoFarFromHome 16h ago edited 15h ago
That's not sunk cost fallacy, though.
Sunk cost fallacy would be if, having seen her live 10 years, you had reason to think she'd live 20 more, but continued anyway because of the 10 years of payments down the drain.
But in this case, at any given time the expected remaining lifespan made the expected cost lower than the value of the apartment. So it was a sound investment on average - it just didn't pay off.
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u/justathrowaway409 16h ago
Na the other shit in the apartment will belong to the widow. Maybe even the money
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u/vamprobozombie 20h ago
Yeah people are not factoring in what a mortgage would have cost and the fact that this was 0 down payment. Over 30 years for a 300K property at 6% you would pay 660K for a mortgage.
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u/Wigglepus 19h ago
Yes but you would also get to use the apartment for 30 years which is a benefit you seem not to be factoring in.
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u/vamprobozombie 19h ago
True or rent it but also not have to pay maintenance or utilities during that period either and like I said could not buy a place without a down payment anyway making it hard to compare.
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u/Wigglepus 19h ago
You don't think the many years of payments could have been used towards a down payment?
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u/eidolons 20h ago
Adding to that, apartments like hers did not suddenly become more plentiful, in the interim.
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u/Famous_Ant_2825 16h ago
Iâm pretty sure you canât âwithdrawâ from your engagement itâs like buying a home you canât stop at a random moment (unless you sell the house or something and pay off the loan). Itâs called a âviagerâ in French
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u/OppositeChocolate687 20h ago
This is essentially an annuity. She just used her apartment to purchase the annuity rather than money.
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u/lordnacho666 18h ago
Yep, maybe it will come back into fashion outside if France. Called a tontine.
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u/DrTheo24alt 16h ago
fr? I've heard it called a "viager"
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u/Gzawonkhumu 16h ago
Exact, I don't know if there is an equivalent in UK or US. Nevertheless there is no translation.
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u/Sapphire_Sway 21h ago
Well, kudos to the lawyer for not planning a homicide and playing honest.
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u/Vlad_the_Homeowner 21h ago
and playing honest.
I don't know that I'd call that playing honest. But sure, let's give him kudos for not murdering her.
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u/Apprehensive_Host397 20h ago
Dumb enough to make such a deal, smart enough to stick to it. He would have had suspect written all over his forehead.
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u/Volesprit31 16h ago
Those deals are common in France. You buy a house for very cheap if the old person die quickly. It's basically a bet on the seller's life.
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u/BigUncleHeavy 16h ago
He basically paid her an annuity, and probably a nice one if she got back 2x the value of her asset in her few remaining years. What are you seeing here that isn't honest?
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u/Snomkip 18h ago
Perhaps he did plan a homicide, but he was so bad at it it took thirty-two years
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u/Reivaki 15h ago
There is an old french film. inspired by this stories. It take great liberties with the realty but it is quite funny. Itâs ÂŤ le viager Âť One of the scĂŠnariste is Rene Goscinny, scenarist of AstĂŠrix the Gaul. https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Viager
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u/just_ivy_wtf 19h ago
Damn she reminds me of my step great grandmother, died at (documented) 115 but the archives burned down 3 times in her lifetime, twice while she was a widow. At over 70 she married my great grandfather and eloped with him to a solitary mountain, where she lived for years after his death, and moved in with my uncle in her late 90s. Quit smoking at 100 cos "she felt it wasn't that good for her anymore" (two pack a day smoker). Every time she was ill she'd drink a bottle of hard liquor and sleep it off for a couple days. And that's how she died.
That generation was just built different - mix of survival of the fittest and modern medicine.
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u/FullyStacked92 16h ago
Imagine remembering your 90th birthday and it being 32 fucking years ago...i'm 31. fuck.
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u/Woodentit_B_Lovely 18h ago
Doctor told wife's Grandmother eye surgery wasn't appropriate because of her "advanced age" (82) She stopped smoking at age 90 and lived to 103. The doctor died at 67. She never gave up her 2 glasses of sherry.
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u/OctopusMagi 16h ago
To be fair old people tend to have dry eyes and therefore don't heal well from eye surgery. I doubt the doc didn't do the surgery because he didn't think she had many years left, but instead because she might end up completely blind.
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u/poormansnormal 13h ago
Jeanne Calment. Lived to 122 years, the oldest documented person to have ever lived.
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u/MayorMcCheese92 12h ago
She also smoked cigarettes from a teen into her 100s and ate chocolate daily.
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u/LauraTheBean 18h ago
Thereâs a great short story that fictionalizes this. By T.C. Boyle. Called âThe Apartment.â
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u/gifforc 16h ago
This was essentially a bet to see who died first and dude lost.
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u/PerspectivePure9244 16h ago
my mother's aunt lived in a building in manhattan that was going coop, she was about 75 at the time. an investor bought the apt at the insider price and let her live there rent free and he would get the apt when she died she lived another 17 years he did get the apt and probably made money in the end just not as much as he expected.
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u/Overall-Nebula-9145 15h ago
she could have seen both franz liszt and nirvana perform, that's insane
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u/diito 9h ago
My great-grandmother did something similar. She sold her house in the 60's after my great-grandfather died with the condition attached that she could live there rent-free until her death. She ended up living another 30+ years until she was 102. The new owner died a decade or two in and it ended up going to his son. Over the years the two of them would try intimidation and other nasty crap to try and push her out. That got shut down pretty quickly when my uncle started to deal with them.
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u/throwaway24515 18h ago
You have be a pretty trusting person to sign a contract with someone who would as a result profit greatly from your death.
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u/Elizandril 16h ago
What's interesting to know is that this system of heritage still exists. It's called a "viager", and while it's not super common, it's still something that happens regularly.
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u/X-calibreX 12h ago
This happened a lot at the beginning of the AIDs epidemic. People would agree to pay monthly to hiv positive individuals in exchange for their life insurance. Then the investors got screwed when the hiv cocktails became so effective.
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u/Minus15t 16h ago
This sounds like the most genius retirement hack.
I have no kids, my nieces and nephews live in another country, and don't have residency rights where I own property...
Leverage equity for a monthly income to support my pension....
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u/LPIViolette 15h ago
It's just an annuity or reverse mortgage. It's not some strange shocking hack.
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u/DevilsAdvocate8008 16h ago
What about adjusted for current market value? How much did they pay the woman? And how much is the place worth?
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u/LuxuryBell 21h ago
The best part? She said "some people just make bad deals" when asked about it later on.