Five more couples have told The Connexion of plans to sell up and leave due to France’s 2021 inheritance law.
This seeks to impose French forced heirship rules on people who, as EU law allows, chose a foreign legal system lacking ‘reserved portions’ for their children to govern their estate.
More than 160 couples have now joined a campaign brought forward by Connexion readers for a quick decision by the European Commission concerning a possible breach of an EU regulation allowing choice of the inheritance law of a will-writer’s nationality.
Campaigners were awaiting, by Monday November 25, a “fuller explanation” requested for them by the European Ombudsman over the commission’s slow deliberation about complaints lodged since 2022.
The readers wrote wills choosing British, US or Dutch law systems which offer great flexibility as to how the estate is left.
The fact many such people are affected has come as no surprise to senators who had opposed the French law during the parliamentary process in 2021, saying: “it will have unintended effects, that the government has not analysed, when dealing with inheritances covered by Anglo-Saxon laws”.
More readers join inheritance campaign
Reader Christopher Larmer, 76, a retired engineer from Charente, said his house is up for sale, as he is in poor health and cannot wait for a change in the law.
“When I die, I want my wife to have all my assets, as she has no income and my son is wealthy.
“We’ve considered a French law leaving her a usufruit [see below about opting for the EU law], but it’s complicated. Moving to Britain would involve less risk.”
Julie Davies, 69, a retired antiques dealer from Var, said her husband’s children from a first marriage say they will oppose his will.
“To protect me, we are forced after 34 years to sell our home and move to the UK.
“Due to the cost of removals we will have to leave behind most of our possessions. I’ll also be leaving behind my son and grandchildren, which is tearing me apart. But life wouldn’t be worth living if I am left to fight through the courts to own the home we both paid for, while grieving.”
The couple have lived in France since the 1990s and had visited a notaire to understand the rules, and write a Brussels IV will, when the EU regulation came into force, leaving them feeling relaxed about the future.
“Eddie is 14 years older than me, but now I keep saying I’m going to have a heart attack due to the stress,” Mrs Davies said.
Read more: Foreign couples flock to join campaign to end 2021 French inheritance law
French inheritance rule meant to protect girls
The EU regulation allowing choice of law says in article 35 that the right to this choice may be set aside by a national [eg. French] court “exceptionally” in cases where its use is shown to have had effects that are “manifestly incompatible” with the usual rules of orderly society. The latter is known as ‘public policy’ or, in French, ordre public.
When the regulation came into force in 2015, lawyers thought this rule would be very unlikely to be raised in the case of Connexion readers choosing foreign law systems.
However, background documents to the French 2021 law show that the French government considered this rule to justify its proposal.
The 2021 law was originally intended to prevent people making wills that discriminate against some of their children, notably girls who the government said might get less in some Maghreb-origin families.
During debates on the law, the Senate’s laws commission sought to strike out the rule from the overall bill in which it was contained, which included various measures to combat Islamism and sectarianism and protect principles of laïcité (secularism).
In doing so the senators said that it was already possible for a court to set aside a will involving blatant gender discrimination by invoking the ‘public policy’ rule.
It said: “This [2021] article, whose aim is to ‘put an end to the application of foreign inheritance rules on our territory which harm women’, is in fact of very uncertain real benefit to women: in the case of a foreign legal system resulting in discrimination based on sex, the French judge or notaire can already set it aside in the name of France’s international public policy.
“This article would, what is more, have unintended side effects, which have not been analysed by the government, in the case of the settling of estates governed by Anglo-Saxon laws.”
The law’s Senate rapporteur, Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio (Les Républicains), told The Connexion: “These effects were indeed brought up during the bill’s examination. Unfortunately there is no bill proposed for the time being to write this law differently.”
Opting for inheritance under EU law
The EU regulation, known as ‘Brussels IV’, allows people to choose in a will the law of their nationality to apply to their estate.
Many people opt for this for more flexibility as French law has reserved portions for bloodline children: half to a single child, two-thirds to two, three-quarters to three or more.
A 2021 law says that where a foreign law without forced heirship will apply, the notaire settling the estate must contact the deceased’s children and offer the right to claim compensation out of any French-situated estate to the level of their French portion.
In the case of a person who died living in France, this is calculated against the value of the worldwide estate.
The 2021 law applies if the deceased or one of the children was/is an EU-resident/citizen.
Read more: EU ruling on French inheritance law drags due to volume of complaints
Many couples who opt for Brussels IV have children from previous marriages and wish to leave more to their spouse than allowed under French law.
Some, having opted for this, have told us they chose not to insert a tontine clause (full ownership to the survivor), when buying French property, seeing it as unnecessary.
Some readers have also now been considering the right to leave their estate, via a French will, to the spouse in usufruit (lifetime use).
In this case, a person’s children only obtain a legal right to full ownership of the deceased parent’s estate (eg. half a shared-ownership house), after the second spouse’s death.
However, if the spouse wishes to downsize, the children could demand their share. An usufruit’s market value depends on the holder’s age and is only, for example, 30% of a property’s sale value for a holder aged 71 to 80.
Some French lawyers believe that the 2021 law may fail in the original intention of stopping gender discrimination in the case of choice of Sharia, because the latter includes a reserved portion for daughters, only it is half that of sons.
The Connexion publishes a help guide to Inheritance Law and Wills in France, priced €14.50.
