What does the 2021 law say?

It came from article 24 of Law no.2021-1109 strengthening respect of the principles of the Republic, and its rules were transcribed into article 913 of the Code Civil.

This states that:

• If the deceased – or at least one of his or her children – was an EU citizen or was living in the EU at the time of death,

• And a foreign legal system is to apply to their estate (notably, due to the EU regulation),

• And this foreign system does not include any forced heirship rules in favour of children.

Then each child – or their heirs if they have died – is able to claim compensation out of the

French-situated estate, up to the level of the French réserve héréditaire rules (see here).

The new law also modified article 921 of the Code Civil, which now says that where a notaire, while dealing with inheritance proceedings, notices that a potential heir is likely to lose out they must inform them of their right to compensation.

The Cridon network which deals with notaires’ questions surrounding international matters has advised that, where applicable, the 2021 law means that the notaire should seek to estimate the value of the testator's worldwide estate and calculate the reserved heirs’ portion of this total.

However, any compensation for disinherited heirs can only be taken from property in France.

For example, if there is a house in France worth €100,000 and another in the US worth the same, a single child would in theory have a right to claim the whole value of the house in France as their 'reserved' half of the estate.