Today, Erwin Müller would probably describe the decision back then as a mistake: It was 2015 and the drugstore king was still fit enough for game hunting. The passionate shooter was accompanied by a couple of friends and the man’s brother: Andreas, Stefanie and Adrian J.; Müller met her at the beginning of the noughties and fell in love with her.
At the same time, the relationship with his only biological son Reinhard finally broke down and Müller decided to adopt the trio. In the adoption contract, the three waived their compulsory share and instead received significant one-off payments over the years – but that was apparently not enough.
The three adopted children are now demanding their statutory share of the inheritance and are suing 91-year-old Müller and his wife Anita. According to the Ulm Regional Court, the case concerns the contract in which the three adult adoptees waived their statutory share. The hearing began on Monday.
The compulsory portion is half of the legal inheritance. Before the adoption, the wife and son would each have been entitled to half of Müller’s total assets. The compulsory share would have been half of this half – i.e. a quarter. Son Reinhard would have at least inherited this, even if Müller had left “everything” to his wife Anita in his will. With a total of four children, the legal inheritance would have been only one eighth, and the half of the total inheritance due to the children would have been four. The compulsory portion would therefore only be one sixteenth.
“We are attacking the contract waiving the compulsory portion because we consider it to be immoral and void of form,” explained Maximilian Ott, the adoptee’s lawyer. The Müller couple is represented by the lawyer Anton Steiner. When asked by the dpa, he explained that ongoing proceedings would generally not be commented on.
However, Müller told manager magazin: “It is an obvious attempt to get money out of the adoption, even though the adopted children had always assured that they were not pursuing any material interests.” For Mr. Müller, this is a great human disappointment. The adopted children did not want to comment on the matter.
The reason for Andreas, Stefanie and Adrian J.’s displeasure was the celebration of Müller’s 90th birthday, where they were not invited. Maximilian Ott, lawyer for the adopted children, told BILD: “My clients felt pushed out of the family. That day it became clear to them that they were being used to put pressure on Reinhard Müller, who then left the company with a lower severance payment They are deeply disappointed as a human being.”
The accusation: Müller did not adopt the trio out of charity, but out of calculation – and was able to fob off his son Reinhard with a small severance payment. But apparently Andreas, Stefanie and Adrian J. had also lost the drugstore king’s favor – like many others before them. Over the years, Müller repeatedly brought people into his inner circle, but they soon left involuntarily. Currently, there is no one other than Ms. Anita who would inherit Müller’s billions. Son Reinhard received a severance payment years ago.
According to the company, the trained hairdresser Erwin Müller set up his first salon in 1953 in his parents’ apartment in Unterfahlheim, Bavaria, which he later moved to Neu-Ulm. In 1966 he came up with the idea of also offering cosmetics and drugstore items in the salon.
In 1969, Müller brought back the idea of drugstores with everyday goods and large self-service department stores from a tour of Canada and the USA. In 1973 he finally opened his first drugstore in Ulm. Today, the drugstore chain says it has around 35,000 employees and more than 900 branches in Europe.
