A 53-year-old local man was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for killing his mother in a dispute over relocation compensation, a local court said Thursday.

The defendant, whom the court called Liu Xinyi, broke into his mother's apartment around midnight on February 16 and bludgeoned the nearly 80-year-old woman to death with a hammer as she slept, according to a press release from the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court.

Liu had been angry with his mother, whom the court called Shen, after she took him and his wife to court to obtain a portion of the three homes and cash that Liu had received as resettlement compensation for their home in Zhabei district.

It remains unclear whether Liu owned the house exclusively or his mother was a co-owner.

His mother had sued him and his wife in 2002 over ownership of the house, but the court only stated that the pair  had reached an agreement through mediation.

What was clear, according to the court, was that Liu and his mother had quarreled often about the compensation Liu received for the house.

The court said that Liu decided to murder his mother after he received the court summons for the compensation dispute. She was killed before the court ruled on the case.

Liu's wife said he had been in a bad mood around that time, according to the press release. He was smoking a lot. He off-handedly told his wife his bank account password and asked her to make sure their son was well taken care of.

"It sounded like he making arrangements for after his death," she told the court.

After the murder, Liu fled to a small town in Zhejiang Province, but police caught him a few weeks later after he returned to Shanghai to check the status of the court hearing. 

The court determined that Liu deserved a severe sentence because the murder was both premeditated and brutal.

With the reprieve, his death sentence will not be executed for at least two years.