[coldtea]

>The morality is already clearly established: in exchange for a very small monthly sum, you get the property when the owner dies.

That's, again, the contract. Seems some people can't tell between legal and moral, unless we talk about the 70s and segregation or something like that...

[timroy]

No, I (and presumably the other posters) can tell the difference - I just disagree on the morality, partly because I think the legal aspects are related to the moral aspects.

The guy purchased the right to the house once the current owner dies, but you believe it's immoral for her to continue living in it, or renting it out, or loaning it to friends, while she is alive. I think it's immoral to demand the house while she's alive, since that wasn't the deal.

Sometimes legality and morality are widely separated, but here they seem related.

[Someone]

It is a lottery with two participants that willingly took part in it. She won big, but if she had died the day after the contract was signed, he would have won big: he would have gotten the house for about $500. Would you suggest he should have paid her inheritance a lump sum if that would have happened?

[joshvm]

He would have had to make a down-payment on the house too. You pay e.g. half the total payment up front and then the remainder in monthly installments. Still, it would have been a quarter of the retail price, not half, in that case.

[coldtea]

I don't see much harm in "winning big" over somebody who just died. Being dead, it's not like she would have missed the money.

On the other hand, having someone pay tons of money and then die without anything to show for it, I do see, even if he "willingly signed into it".

There's also a threshold over which it should just be handed over. That such a threshold wasn't in the contract doesn't make it any less odious.

[Someone]

Her heirs would have disagreed. Consider the case where your mother owns a house and 'sells' it for $500 just before dying.

Also, I expect people buying such rights are generally well-off, and the people selling it to be relatively poor. After all, the buyer must be able to pay money on a house they cannot live in for an indeterminate period, and the seller typically chooses this construct to be ensured of both a roof over their head and money to live from for one's entire life, no matter how long that is.

The odds in this lottery get better every month for the buyer, so, assuming that the buyer can afford to buy into this, they should have no reason to want to get out of this.