The Recklinghausen district court has declared the will of former football manager Rudi Assauer invalid. Assauer signed it with a notary in January 2012, making his daughter Bettina Michel the sole heir.

According to information from “Zeit online”, the court decided a few days ago to overturn the will. In the justification it says: The court was “convinced” that Assauer “was not able to testify at the time of the certification of this will”.

The court obtained medical opinions from four specialists, three of whom knew Assauer personally. Thomas Finkbeiner, the chief physician at the Dortmund Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, finally submitted the decisive report. Assauer was “no longer in a position to make decisions with a free, independent or uninfluenced will,” writes the expert Finkbeiner. The court agreed that it had “no reason” to doubt the medical reports.

So far, no case is known in which a German court has annulled the will of a prominent Alzheimer’s patient. It is unclear whether the 57-year-old daughter Bettina Michel will still appeal.

Michel took her father into his home in the Ruhr area town of Herten and took care of him until his death. She should get most of his fortune. According to Assauer’s tax documents, it was around 2.3 million euros before his daughter brought him in.

Rudi Assauer invested most of his money in real estate. It is dubious why there was hardly anything left of it in the end. The public prosecutor’s office in Essen has been investigating infidelity since August 2020 – not only against the daughter Bettina Michel, but also against Rudi Assauer’s former general representative: his former secretary, Sabine Söldner, who is now 62, and one of his former friends, the now 78-year-old cosmetic surgeon Heinz Bull .

January 17, 2012 was also a crucial day for Söldner and Bull: The notary who had Assauer sign the will prepared another document at the time, in which Söldner and Bull were to be made the general representative of the person with dementia. And again Rudi Assauer signed. From then on, the authorized representatives were allowed to direct Assauer’s life, open his mail, determine his whereabouts, and also manage his accounts. According to “Zeit online”, the public prosecutor’s office is investigating the suspicion that precisely those people who were supposed to protect Assauer’s assets attacked him.