How to transfer an inheritance in France

Last week, on February 17, I conducted a second joint live broadcast with Maitre Olga De Weck, a lawyer at the Paris Chamber of Lawyers.

The broadcast took place on my profile Instagram, topic of the meeting: How to transfer an inheritance correctly so as not to ruin the heirs - continued.

This was our second broadcast on the topic of inheritance, since we did not have time to answer all the questions at our first meeting in December.

So, on our first broadcast we discussed the following questions:

Who has the right to inheritance in France?

First of all, children. They have a reserved portion of the inheritance. To increase the minimum share for your spouse, there are the following solutions:

• Will.
• Donation graduelle.
• Donation au dernier vivant.
• Include your wife in the Clause Beneficier of contracts Assurance Vie And PER.

How to enter into inheritance rights?

• Collect documents;
• go to the notary;
• obtain an acte notaire to check bank accounts and transactions for the last 3-5 years;
• in the case of expensive interior items, order an assessment of movable property.

See the entry for details.

Recording of the first broadcast

Answers on questions

Olga answered many questions in the comments to the announcement post, I collected the most interesting ones and posted them on the site in the form of questions and answers, you can follow the link and read.

On our second broadcast we discussed the following topics:

Marriage contracts

In France, there are several marriage regimes, depending on which, the spouse has rights to inheritance or not.

Legal regime - Communauté réduite aux acquêts. This regime applies if you do not have a marriage contract. It presupposes the right of the spouse to inherit part of the property acquired during the marriage.

Communauté universelle assumes that all property of the spouses is common, and if there is an attribution de communauté clause in the contract, then all property goes to the surviving spouse.

The séparation de bien regime assumes that spouses have separate property. Therefore, in order to claim part of the property acquired during marriage, you need to record in the documents related to its purchase which part belongs to which of the spouses.

Who pays inheritance tax in France

Inheritance tax depends on:

• place of residence and tax residence of the testator;
• location of property;
• place of residence and tax residence of the heir.

A person is a French tax resident if he has lived in France for 6 years in the last 10 years.

There is an international will, which allows you to resolve inheritance issues if the heirs and the testator are tax residents of different countries. A competent notary will help in its preparation.

How to reduce inheritance tax

As we found out, the spouse accepts the inheritance and does not pay tax. Children have a tax benefit of 100 thousand euros. For heirs of the 2nd, 3rd and further stages, the tax benefit is reduced.

However, the costs of the notary frais de notaire will have to be paid in any case and they amount to at least 3% of the entire inherited property.

To reduce the tax burden on heirs, part of the property can be transferred in the form of Assurance Vie or PER, which do not fall into the inheritance mass and go directly to those whom you yourself designate as beneficiaries in the event of death. In this way, you can increase the part of the inheritance that will not be subject to inheritance tax and reduce the cost of a notary.

To do this correctly, sign up for a consultation with me. I will help you.

Sign up for a consultation

For details, see the recording of the second broadcast.

Who doesn’t yet know about Olga de Weck (Yudenich) - she is a lawyer at the Paris Chamber of Lawyers. Her specialization:

• family law;
• business law;
• labor law.

Olga will advise the most advantageous defense strategy, clearly and simply explain the proposed choice. She will accompany you all the way from the first appeal to resolving the conflict in court.

She has a subtle sense of humor and in her profile @olga_de_weck shares examples from practice.

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