Forced Heirship in France (Réserve Héréditaire)

What forced heirship (réserve héréditaire) means

Forced heirship is the rule that a person who dies domiciled in France, or who owns French assets governed by French law, cannot freely dispose of the whole of their estate. A fixed share is reserved by law for the closest heirs, and no will, gift or arrangement can take it away from them. French law calls that protected share the reserved portion (réserve héréditaire) — "the portion of assets that must be transmitted" to those heirs (Article 912 of the Civil Code). Because the reserve is an absolute right in the succession, it is legally impossible to disinherit a reserved heir completely.

The system is built on a deliberate compromise. French law does allow you to give property away, by lifetime gift or by will, and it respects the freedom to dispose (liberté de disposer) — but it does not make that freedom absolute. Where legal devolution would send the estate to your children, the law lets you redirect only part of it; the balance is locked in for those children. Everything in French estate planning turns on that single division: the part you must leave (the reserve) and the part you are free to leave to whomever you choose (the freely disposable portion, or quotité disponible, Article 912, paragraph 2).

Who counts as a reserved heir is closely defined. The reserved heirs are the descendants and, where there are no descendants, the non-divorced surviving spouse (Articles 913-1 and 914-1 of the Civil Code). Ascendants — parents and grandparents — have no reserve; since 2007 they are protected only by a limited legal right of return over property they had given the deceased, not by a reserved share. Whether reserved heirs exist at all is judged at the moment the succession opens, that is, at the date of death. This article explains how much is reserved, how the freely disposable portion is calculated, why a child cannot be cut out, how excessive gifts are clawed back, how lifetime gifts are reported, how reserved rights can be given up in advance, and how the EU Succession Regulation and the 2021 compensatory levy change the picture for foreign owners.

How much is reserved: one child, two, three or more

For children, the size of the reserved portion depends on how many of them there are. Article 913 of the Civil Code fixes the amount a person may give away — the freely disposable portion — and the reserve is simply what is left once that is subtracted. Lifetime gifts and legacies together may not exceed one half of the estate where the deceased leaves one child, one third where there are two children, and one quarter where there are three or more (Article 913). The reserve is the mirror image of those figures.

The children's reserve is a single global share that is then divided between them according to the ordinary rules of legal devolution. With two children, for example, two thirds of the estate is reserved and shared equally, one third each; only the remaining third can be directed elsewhere. The reserve does not grow without limit as the family grows: once there are three children it is capped at three quarters, and a fourth or fifth child does not increase it — it simply reduces each child's individual reserved slice within that same three quarters.

All descendants count as "children"

The word "children" in Article 913 is read broadly. For the purpose of the reserve, "children" means all the descendants (Article 913-1 of the Civil Code), so grandchildren and remoter issue are reserved heirs too, whatever their degree. What matters for fixing the fraction, though, is the number of branches (souches) at the first degree, not the head-count of everyone who ends up inheriting. Where a child has died before the parent and is replaced by their own children through representation, the freely disposable portion is still worked out by reference to the number of children at the first degree (Article 913-1). Three children, one of whom has died leaving two children of their own, still produce a three-quarters reserve divided into three branch-shares — not a larger reserve because the grandchildren are more numerous.

The reserved share of a childless spouse

Descendants are not the only reserved heirs. Where the deceased leaves no descendants at all, the surviving spouse becomes a reserved heir, and the rate of that reserve is fixed invariably at one quarter of the estate: lifetime gifts and legacies may not exceed three quarters of the assets where, in the absence of descendants, the deceased leaves a non-divorced surviving spouse (Article 914-1 of the Civil Code). This is the only reserve the spouse enjoys — where there are descendants, the spouse has no reserved share and is protected instead by their ordinary inheritance rights and by rights over the family home. A childless couple therefore cannot plan on the footing that one of them can be left with nothing; a quarter is guaranteed.

The freely disposable portion (quotité disponible)

The freely disposable portion (quotité disponible) is the part of the estate that is not reserved by law and that the deceased was free to dispose of by lifetime gift or by will (Article 912, paragraph 2, of the Civil Code). It is the counterpart of the reserve, and it is the only room a French estate gives you to favour a spouse, a partner, a chosen child, a friend, or a charity beyond what legal devolution would give them. Where there are no reserved heirs at all — no descendants and no spouse — there is no reserve, and gifts or legacies may exhaust the entire estate (Article 916).

Knowing the fraction is only half the exercise; the fraction has to be applied to a figure. That figure is not simply what the deceased owned at death. To decide whether the reserve has been respected, French law requires the estate to be reconstituted notionally, adding back the lifetime gifts the deceased had made.

Reconstituting the estate to measure the reserve

To calculate the reserve and the freely disposable portion, the deceased's estate is reconstituted fictitiously by adding to the assets actually left at death the assets the deceased had previously disposed of by gift (Article 922 of the Civil Code). In practice the calculation is: the assets existing at death (before deducting legacies), minus the debts, plus the lifetime gifts, multiplied by the applicable rate. The existing assets are valued as at the date of death, and the gifts are added back at their value at death but in the state they were in at the date of the gift (Article 922, paragraph 2). This notional reunion is purely an accounting operation — it does not undo the gifts — but it is what stops a parent from emptying the reserve during their lifetime and leaving the children an estate that looks small on paper.

Certain items are excluded from the calculation. Funeral expenses, within a limit of €1,500, and the costs of administering the estate are deductible, as are the charges attaching to gifted property; but the inheritance tax owed by the beneficiaries is not deductible. Life-assurance proceeds paid to a named third party fall outside the estate and, in principle, outside this calculation (subject to the exceptions for manifestly excessive premiums). Because the freely disposable portion is measured against this reconstituted mass, a person who has already given away a great deal in their lifetime may find that they have little or no freely disposable portion left to leave by will.

The enlarged portion between spouses

Between spouses there is a special, wider allowance. A person may give their spouse more than a stranger could receive: in the presence of children, whether or not of the marriage, the spouse may be given, at the donor's choice expressed in the deed, either the ordinary freely disposable portion in full ownership, or one quarter in full ownership plus three quarters in usufruct, or the whole estate in usufruct only (Article 1094-1 of the Civil Code). This is the enlarged portion between spouses (quotité disponible spéciale entre époux), and it is the main tool for improving a spouse's position without breaching the children's reserve. A surviving spouse cannot, however, combine their legal inheritance rights with a gift or legacy on top; they take one or the other (Article 758-6).

Can you disinherit a child in France?

No. As a matter of French law you cannot disinherit a child. The reserve is an absolute right in the succession, and it is therefore impossible to completely exclude (exhéréder) a reserved heir (Article 912 of the Civil Code, and the settled reading of it). A will that purports to leave a child nothing does not work: the child remains a reserved heir and is entitled to their reserved share whatever the will says. The most a parent can do is direct the freely disposable portion elsewhere and reduce the child to their reserve — half, a third of a share, or a quarter of a share, depending on how many children there are — but not below it.

This surprises owners from common-law countries, where testamentary freedom is close to absolute, and it is the single most important thing a foreign owner of French property needs to understand before signing a French will. Disinheritance in the English sense simply does not exist for children under French law. Nor can it be achieved indirectly by giving everything away during one's lifetime: as we have seen, lifetime gifts are added back into the calculation of the reserve (Article 922), and gifts that encroach on a child's reserve can be cut back after death.

There are only three routes that come close, and each has strict limits. The first is where French law does not apply at all — where the deceased has validly chosen the law of a nationality that does not impose forced heirship, subject to the important restrictions discussed below. The second is where the child themselves agrees in advance, in a formal notarial deed, to give up the right to attack a gift that eats into their reserve (the advance renunciation, or RAAR, below). The third is the narrow ground of unworthiness (indignité), which excludes an heir who has, for example, been convicted of killing the deceased — a penalty for serious wrongdoing, not a planning tool. Outside these, the reserve stands.

Where a child does not wish to take, that is a different matter: a child is free to renounce the succession, and a child who renounces is, in principle, left out of the count of children, so the reserved fractions are recalculated as if that child did not exist (Article 913, paragraph 2, of the Civil Code) — unless the renouncing child is represented by their own descendants, or the donor expressly required the gift to be reported despite the renunciation. Renunciation is the child's choice, not the parent's.

Clawing back excessive gifts: the action en réduction

The reserve is not just a figure on paper; it is enforced by an action. Where the deceased made gifts or legacies in proportions that encroach on the reserve, those gifts must be cut back when the succession opens, through the action to reduce (action en réduction, Article 920 of the Civil Code). The action guarantees a reserved heir that they will actually receive their reserve out of the estate by allowing them to demand the reduction of the excessive gifts. It is the mechanism that gives the reserve its teeth.

Two features of the action matter in practice. First, it does not operate automatically: reduction is not by operation of law and must be claimed by the reserved heirs who have been short-changed (Article 921 of the Civil Code). If the heirs do not ask, nothing happens — the tax authorities, for instance, cannot reduce a gift of their own motion, and must follow what the parties declare. Second, the reduction is normally in value, not in kind. The person who received the gift or legacy keeps the property but pays the reserved heirs a compensating indemnity equal to the excess (Article 924); they do not have to hand the asset itself back, which protects third-party purchasers. Reduction in kind — actually returning the property — survives only in narrow cases, chiefly where the recipient chooses it, or where the recipient is insolvent and the asset has passed to a third party (Articles 924-1 and 924-4).

The order in which gifts are cut back

When several gifts and legacies have to be reduced, the Civil Code fixes the order. Legacies are reduced before lifetime gifts, because gifts are already in effect and are irrevocable while legacies take effect only at death; and among lifetime gifts, the most recent are reduced first, working back from the latest to the oldest (Article 923 of the Civil Code). The logic is that the earliest gifts had "used up" the freely disposable portion first and should be the last disturbed. This ordering can decide who ultimately bears the reduction, which is why the sequence and dates of a lifetime of gifts have to be reconstructed carefully on a death.

Time limits

The action is subject to strict time limits. It is barred five years after the succession opens, or two years from the day the heirs became aware of the encroachment on their reserve, but never more than ten years from the death (Article 921 of the Civil Code). Since 1 November 2021 a notary who finds, in administering an estate, that an heir's reserved rights may be affected by the deceased's gifts must inform each affected heir individually of their right to demand reduction — a reinforced duty of information now written into the law (loi 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021, Article 24; Article 921, paragraph 3). A reserved heir who suspects that lifetime gifts have hollowed out their share should take advice well within these periods, because once they expire the reserve can no longer be reconstituted.

Reporting lifetime gifts: le rapport

Sitting alongside the reduction is a separate and often-confused operation: the reporting of lifetime gifts (le rapport). Reporting is a step that precedes the division of the estate, by which an heir who received a gift from the deceased must account for it to the estate — bringing its value back into the pot, which is then reconstituted and shared between all the heirs in proportion to their rights (Article 843 of the Civil Code). Its purpose is different from the reserve: reporting exists to preserve equality between the heirs, on the assumption that a gift to one of them was only an advance on their inheritance, not an extra on top of it.

The default is that gifts are reportable. A gift to an heir is presumed to be an advance on their share (a gift "in advancement of inheritance") and must be reported, unless the donor expressly stipulated that it was made "outside the share" (hors part successorale), which is how a donor signals an intention to favour that heir beyond their normal entitlement (Article 843, paragraph 1). Legacies to an heir are treated the other way round — presumed to be outside the share unless the will says otherwise (Article 843, paragraph 2). Reporting is owed only between co-heirs; it is not owed to legatees or to creditors of the estate, and an only heir has no one to report to.

How much is reported is governed by its own rule. The sum reported is the value of the gifted asset at the time of the division, but assessed in the state the asset was in at the date of the gift (Article 860 of the Civil Code); a gift of money is reported at its nominal amount, unless it was used to buy an asset, in which case the value of that asset is taken. So a child given a flat worth little at the time, which is worth a great deal by the parent's death, reports the death-era value — a rule that can produce large adjustments between siblings decades later. Sums a parent pays a grown child under a maintenance obligation, such as an allowance or rent, are not gifts and are not reportable (Cass. civ. 15 November 2017, no. 16-26395).

The distinction between reporting and reduction is worth holding onto. Reporting is automatic, is owed as of right, aims at equality between heirs, and is measured at the date of division; reduction must be claimed, protects the reserve as a matter of public policy, and is measured at the date of death. Reporting can be excluded by the donor; the reserve cannot. Both can apply to the same gift, but an heir is never made to give back more than they received under both heads at once.

Giving up reserved rights in advance (RAAR)

French law does leave one controlled door open. A reserved heir can agree in advance — before the death, and with the future deceased's consent — to give up not their reserve itself, but the right to bring the action to reduce a particular gift (Article 929 of the Civil Code). This is the advance renunciation of the action to reduce (renonciation anticipée à l'action en réduction, or RAAR). It is one of the very few permitted agreements about a succession that has not yet opened, and for that reason it is tightly regulated.

What the renunciation does and does not do needs to be clear. The heir who renounces the action does not renounce the succession; they keep their status as a reserved heir. The only effect is to strip them of the power to demand the reduction of gifts that trespass on their reserve (Article 929). The renunciation must be made in favour of one or more identified persons — it cannot be a blanket giving-up of rights — and those beneficiaries may be other reserved heirs or third parties. The renunciation is also opposable to those who would come in the renouncing heir's place, so grandchildren stepping in by representation are bound by it too (Article 930-5). Crucially, it is not itself a gift, so it does not attract gift tax and is not treated as a liberality between the renouncing heir and the beneficiary (Article 930-1).

The classic use is the family business or the vulnerable child. A parent who wants one child to inherit the company intact, or to protect a disabled or fragile child with a larger provision, can ask the other children to renounce their action to reduce that specific gift; each can renounce entirely, or only up to a fixed fraction, or only as regards a particular asset (Article 929, paragraph 2). Without those renunciations, a legacy of the whole company to one child would be exposed to a reduction claim by the others and could force the company to be broken up to pay the indemnity.

Strict form: two notaries

Because it is an exception to a rule of public policy, the RAAR is hedged with formality. It must be made by a specific notarial deed received by two notaries in person, the second of whom is appointed by the president of the departmental chamber of notaries; a single deed can record several heirs' renunciations, but each must sign in the sole presence of the two notaries, so that free consent is assured (Article 930 of the Civil Code). The deceased-to-be must accept the renunciation for it to take effect, and that acceptance must be without any counterpart. The deed is registered for a fixed duty of €125. Get any of this wrong and the renunciation is void. A RAAR is, in short, a serious and largely irrevocable step — revocable only on narrow statutory grounds, such as the future deceased failing in their maintenance obligations to the renouncing heir, or the renouncing heir being left in a state of need at the death (Articles 930-3 and 930-4).

How Brussels IV and the 2021 levy change this for foreigners

For a foreign owner, the first question is whether French forced heirship applies to them at all. French-situated assets — French real estate above all — are governed by French succession law, including the reserve, unless the deceased validly chose another law to govern the estate. That choice is what the EU Succession Regulation, often called Brussels IV, makes possible. The Regulation applies to the estates of those who die on or after 17 August 2015; by default it makes the law of the deceased's last habitual residence govern the whole succession, but it lets a person choose instead the law of a country of their nationality to govern their estate (Regulation (EU) No 650/2012; EUR-Lex, Regulation 650/2012). A national of a country whose law has no forced heirship — England, most US states — can, by electing that law in a will, seek to dispose of their French estate more freely than French devolution would permit.

French law, however, has built in a counter-measure. For estates opened since 1 November 2021, where the deceased or at least one of their children is, at the time of death, a national of an EU member state or habitually resident in one, and the foreign law governing the succession allows no mechanism reserving a share for the children, each child (or their heirs) may take a compensatory levy (prélèvement compensatoire) on the assets located in France at the date of death, so as to be restored to the reserved rights that French law would have given them, up to that amount (loi 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021, Article 24; Article 913 of the Civil Code, as amended). In other words, choosing a foreign law that ignores the reserve does not reliably defeat a child's reserve where there is an EU connection: the child can reach into the French assets to make up the difference.

Outside that EU scenario — for estates whose international character is entirely outside the EU — the position rests on case law rather than the levy. The Cour de cassation held in 2017 that a foreign law designated by the conflict rule which ignores the reserved portion is not, in itself, contrary to French international public policy, and can be set aside only where its concrete application in the case would leave the children in a situation of economic precariousness or need (Cass. civ. 27 September 2017, nos. 16-13151 and 16-17198). So for a purely non-EU estate, or one opened before 1 November 2021, it may genuinely be possible to disinherit a reserved heir through a foreign law — provided the children are not thereby left in hardship.

The practical lesson for a cross-border family is that the interaction between French devolution, a Brussels IV choice of national law, the 2021 compensatory levy and the 2017 case law is technical and fact-sensitive. Whether an election of English or US law will actually let you leave your French property as you wish depends on your nationality, your residence, your children's nationality and residence, and where your assets sit — and it has to be decided before the will is signed, not argued over after the death.

Frequently asked questions about forced heirship in France

Can I disinherit my child in France?

No. A child is a reserved heir, and the reserve is an absolute right that cannot be taken away by will or by lifetime gift (Article 912 of the Civil Code). The most you can do is leave the freely disposable portion to someone else and reduce the child to their reserved share — half, or a share of two thirds or three quarters depending on the number of children (Article 913). A purported disinheritance simply fails, and the child can claim their reserve.

How much must I leave my children?

It depends on how many children you have. With one child, one half of the estate is reserved for that child; with two children, two thirds is reserved between them; with three or more, three quarters is reserved (Article 913 of the Civil Code). All descendants count as children for this purpose, and a predeceased child's share is preserved for that child's own descendants (Article 913-1).

What is the quotité disponible?

The freely disposable portion (quotité disponible) is the part of the estate that is not reserved and that you can give away by gift or will — one half, one third or one quarter of the estate according to whether you have one, two, or three or more children (Articles 912 and 913 of the Civil Code). Where you have no reserved heirs at all, the whole estate is freely disposable (Article 916). Between spouses there is an enlarged version of this portion (Article 1094-1).

Can I get around forced heirship?

Only within narrow limits. You cannot defeat the reserve by giving everything away in your lifetime, because lifetime gifts are added back when the reserve is calculated (Article 922) and excessive gifts can be reduced (Article 920). A child can agree in advance, by formal notarial deed, to give up the action to reduce a specific gift (RAAR, Article 929), and a foreign national may in some cases choose their national law under the EU Succession Regulation — but a compensatory levy can restore an EU-connected child's reserve on French assets (Article 913, as amended in 2021).

Does a spouse have a reserved share?

Only where there are no descendants. In that case the surviving, non-divorced spouse is a reserved heir for one quarter of the estate (Article 914-1 of the Civil Code). Where there are descendants, the spouse has no reserved share and is protected instead by their ordinary inheritance rights and rights over the family home. Spouses can also be given the enlarged disposable portion between spouses (Article 1094-1).

What is the difference between reduction and reporting a gift?

Reduction (action en réduction) protects the reserve: it lets reserved heirs cut back gifts that encroach on their guaranteed share, must be claimed, and is measured at the date of death (Articles 920 and 921 of the Civil Code). Reporting (le rapport) protects equality between heirs: it brings a gift's value back into the estate for division, is automatic unless the donor excluded it, and is measured at the date of division (Articles 843 and 860). A gift can be subject to both.

How our French lawyers help with forced heirship

Forced heirship rarely gives a foreign owner the freedom they expect, and the time to find that out is before the will is signed, not after the death. We advise owners, parents, spouses and heirs on exactly how much of a French estate is reserved and how much is free, how to use the freely disposable portion and the enlarged portion between spouses, whether a family business can be protected by an advance renunciation (RAAR), and — for international families — whether a choice of national law under the EU Succession Regulation actually achieves what it is meant to, given the 2021 compensatory levy on French assets. Where a reserve has already been encroached, we advise reserved heirs on the action to reduce and the strict time limits that apply.

This article is for general information only. It does not constitute legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. How forced heirship applies depends on the family, the assets, their location, and any will or choice of law. Contact our French lawyers for advice on your situation before acting.