French law prohibits disinheriting one or all of one's children. According to the rules defined by the Civil Code, the heritage taken into account in a succession after the death of a person is composed of two parts. The first, called "hereditary reserve which is the minimum share that is due by right to the children of the deceased or to the surviving spouse, in the absence of children.
The second is called the "Available quota », it represents the rest of the heritage for which the deceased had complete freedom to bequeath it during his lifetime to the person of his choice. It is this first hereditary reserve that guarantees the children of the deceased to benefit from a part of the estate. But, in reality, several solutions exist to partially disinherit your children, completely legally.
One of the ways to be able to disinherit your children is to adjust your marriage contract. Either opt for the universal community regime with a special mention of full allocation of his property to the surviving spouse. Either provide in his marriage contract a specific clause which provides that his estate is automatically assigned to the surviving spouse and does not enter into the estate. In this way, none of the children will be able to claim their share of the inheritance.
To disinherit one's children from all or part of one's property, it is also possible to play on the available portion, this part of the heritage that the person can freely transmit, during his lifetime, to the person of his choice. In particular, she can use life insurance for this by naming someone other than her children as the beneficiary of the contract.
On his death, it is the person he has thus designated who will reap the benefits of his life insurance and these sums will not be included in the consideration of the estate for the estate. Be careful, however, not to pay disproportionate life insurance premiums in relation to your standard of living, at the risk that one of your disinherited descendants, considering themselves wronged, will take legal action.
Not all countries have this legal hereditary reserve for children in particular. As a result, buying real estate in a country that ignores this mandatory inheritance law, such as the United Kingdom for example, offers the possibility of depending on the applicable legislation in this country and thus escaping the obligation to inherit his children, in force in France. All assets held abroad are therefore exempt from French legal provisions on inheritance. It is a European regulation on inheritance that gives this possibility since August 2015.
As far as owners are concerned, putting a property up for sale as a life annuity removes it from the heritage taken into account in a succession. The person who made the purchase in life will recover all of the property on the death of the seller. The children will therefore not have the possibility of inheriting this part of the heritage.
