Does the French 2021 forced heirship law apply to non-residents’ second homes?
Whether it is applicable depends on the family situation
The law is extremely controversial
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Reader Question: I live abroad and have a second home in France I use for holidays. Does the 2021 law apply to me?
Whether it can apply to you will depend on your family situation.
The 2021 law on forced heirship always applies where someone dies as a resident of France, but in other situations it will only apply if the deceased or at least one of their children was an EU citizen or resident of France or the EU.
So, for example, if you have a child who is living in Germany when you die, yes, it applies.
The effect of the 2021 law is that where property is being shared out after a death by a French notaire (a notaire is always involved where there is French real estate) and where a foreign inheritance law is set to govern the share-out and it does not contain rules on obligatory children's portions, then the notaire should contact their children and offer them the chance to claim a ‘compensatory levy’ (the children are not obliged to claim it).
The 2021 law says this levy should be equal to their French-law ‘set portion’, which is half for a single child, two-thirds for two or three-quarters for three or more.
This is widely thought to clash with a 2012 EU regulation which aimed to simplify cross-border inheritance issues by giving people the right to choose in their will the inheritance law of their nationality to apply to their whole estate.
The regulation also contained a default rule that the law applicable is that of the last place of residency.
According to notaire François Trémosa from Toulouse, who helped draft the EU regulation, the effect of the 2021 law is even stronger than the situation that existed before the EU regulation, when French inheritance law was not applied to non-French real estate of non-residents.
He said the ‘levy’ should in theory be worked out based on the value of the deceased's worldwide estate, though it can only be taken off the value of property situated in France.
However, notaires widely condemn the law, due in part to complications such as this.
Many complaints have also been made about it to the European Commission, whose decision is pending.
