While she had planned to bequeath 150,000 euros to the diocese of Gap, in France, Blanche Laurens finally paid her all of her heritage when she went from life to death in 2013. A last minute turnover surrounded by mystery. Why did she modify her will? In 2024, his niece filed a complaint for abuse of weakness.
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It was the newspaper “Liberation” that revealed this story worthy of a film last June: that of Blanche Laurens, a rich nonagenarian without children. Daughter of a businessman, she was at the head of an estimated heritage at 17 million euros.
In the first versions of his will, Blanche Laurens had appointed her niece Isabelle as a universal legatee. But she seems to have changed her mind, only seven months before her death in 2013. Finally, the old lady decided to bequeath everything to the diocesan association of Gap.
As “France 3 regions” specifies, Blanche Laurens intended, first of all, the already flirtatious sum of 150,000 euros at the Church. But there, it is therefore 17 million that fall into the embarlac of the diocese of Gap. And even much more, since the grandmother had no less than 22 apartments in all of Paris: ten years after his death, the prices have doubled, notes the lawyer for his niece.
“I feel like I was amputated”
Isabelle Laurens, the niece, decided to file a complaint in 2024. This 57 -year -old woman believes he was the victim of “legacy capture under the influence of three people linked to the Catholic Church”. The reason for his complaint: “abuse of weakness, false, scam and thefts”.
According to his lawyers, the will of his aunt was “dictated” to him, while the nonagenarian suffered from “dementia”, from a “Diogenes syndrome” and that she was “bedridden and knocked out of drugs”. One of the storm lawyers: “It is clearly abuse of weakness, it was dispossessed of everything”.
Contacted by “France 3 Provence-Alpes”, Isabelle Laurens deplores: “It’s awful because I feel like I was amputated, the family was erased. We pretended that we no longer existed. ”
She also affirms that she witnessed, at the end of the life of her aunt, of the grip that “strangers” have gradually acquired on the old woman, the insulation of her family members, who nevertheless lived in the same building. To prove her statements, Isabelle Laurens brought photos and recordings to the facts made at the time of the facts.
“I am leading this fight for my aunt who experienced a ordeal, to rehabilitate the honor of my family. And to alert families of the risks of legacies and donations to the Catholic church, ”said Isabelle Laurens again to our colleagues from French TV.
