Intestacy (France)

So far in this series on French wills and probate, we’ve looked at cases where someone left a will. But what if there isn’t one or it can’t be found? This is known as intestacy.

What is intestacy?

Intestacy is the formal legal name for when someone dies without making a will. In Spanish, it’s known as succession ab intestat” or “succession légale”.

Because the deceased did not make a will leaving instructions as to who should receive their estate, we have to refer to the law.

There are a huge number of permutations here so it’s worth giving an example:

Example:

According to the order of succession, the first category is children and surviving spouse. Given that there are individuals who fall into this category, all lower priority categories are automatically excluded.

The estate will therefore be split between the two children and the spouse, each of whom will receive 1/3. However, we know that one of the children has predeceased their father. That does not mean that the share of the predeceased child automatically passes to the other sibling. The grandchild in this case will be entitled to his deceased parent’s 1/3 share through representation.

Final comments

This article scratches the surface of a very complex system that becomes even more complex when one starts to consider mixed families, divorce, remarrying, etc., not to mention different interests in property such as absolute ownership (pleine propriété), bare ownership (nue propriété) and usufructs (usufruit).

The key thing to learn from this article is that, in the absence of a will, the law steps in to determine how the estate should be distributed..

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