Jeanne was in her late 80s. Her husband had already passed away twenty years back. Her only daughter, Yvonne, had died much earlier at a relatively young age. Yvonne’s son, Frédéric, was raised by Jeanne herself. Unfortunately, like his mother, Frédéric too had a premature demise when he was killed in an automobile accident at a young age of 36.
All her life Jeanne had lived in Arles, France and had no wish to leave the place in her final years. However, living alone with no source of income, it was hard to support herself.
That’s when a forty-seven-year-old lawyer named André-François Raffray offered a deal to the old lady.
At age ninety and with no heirs, Jeanne agreed to sell her apartment to Raffray for the price of a low monthly subsistence payment of 2,500 francs. The contract said that the payments would stop upon her death, at which point she would be carried out and Raffray could move in.
Jeanne would thus have an ongoing source of cash to live on in her last years, and the lawyer would get an apartment cheaply, with no money down, in return for accepting the uncertainty as to when he would take possession.
Join 15,000+ students from 25+ countries to take our 25-lesson FREE course – Value Investing Masterclass – to learn the art and science of stock picking using the time-tested principles of value investing. 
Vishal Khandelwal is an investor, writer, and entrepreneur. You can know more about him 
