Matrimonial Regimes and Marriage Contracts in France

How your matrimonial regime affects inheritance

Your matrimonial regime is settled before your estate is. When a married person dies in France, the notaire does not open the succession first; they liquidate the couple's property regime first — deciding what belonged jointly to the couple and what belonged to the deceased alone — and only the deceased's resulting share becomes the estate that then passes to the heirs. Two spouses with identical wealth can leave very different estates, and their children and survivor can inherit very different amounts, purely because the couples chose different regimes. The regime is the foundation; inheritance law is built on top of it.

Every married couple in France, whatever regime they choose, is subject to a mandatory core of rules called the primary regime (régime primaire) — a set of provisions that reconcile family solidarity with the independence of each spouse and that no contract can remove. One spouse cannot sell the family home, or the furniture in it, without the other's consent (Article 215, paragraph 3, of the Civil Code); each spouse must contribute to the expenses of the household (Articles 214 and 220); and each may freely work and dispose of their earnings once the household charges are met (Article 223). On top of that mandatory floor, French matrimonial regimes fall into two families: the community regimes (régimes communautaires), which pool wealth, and the separatist regimes (régimes séparatistes), which keep it apart.

Why does the choice matter so much at death? Take the legal community. When the first spouse dies, their succession comprises one half of the community's acquests plus their own separate property (Article 1467 of the Civil Code). The other half of the community already belongs to the survivor in their own right — it is not inherited, it is simply theirs. So the estate the children and other heirs share is only a fraction of what the couple owned. Under separation of property, by contrast, there is no community to split: the deceased's estate is the whole of their own property, and their heirs take from all of it. The same death, the same family, produces a bigger or smaller estate depending entirely on the regime.

Because the regime shapes the estate, it is also the most powerful tool a couple has to protect the survivor — often more powerful than a will. A community regime can be tuned so that the survivor keeps more than half, or even all, of the common property, through what French law calls a matrimonial advantage (avantage matrimonial). The decisive feature is that these advantages are not treated as gifts (Articles 1527 and 1525 of the Civil Code): between the couple's own children they are not subject to the clawback (réduction) or the bringing-back-into-account (rapport) that would apply to a lifetime gift, and the surviving spouse is in any event exempt from French inheritance tax (Article 796-0 bis of the General Tax Code). That combination — a bigger share for the survivor, immune from the gift rules and free of tax — is why matrimonial regimes are at the centre of estate planning for couples with French assets. The rest of this article works through each regime, the clauses that reshape it, and how to change it.

The default regime: communauté réduite aux acquêts

If you married without signing a marriage contract, you are married under the legal regime of community reduced to acquests (communauté réduite aux acquêts), and French law simply presumes it (Article 1400 of the Civil Code). This is the default that catches the great majority of couples, French and foreign alike, who marry in France or whose marriage is governed by French law. Its logic is the equal sharing of what the couple builds together: property whose origin is unknown is presumed common and is split in two when the regime ends (Article 1401).

The word "reduced" is the key to the regime. Not everything becomes common — only the acquests, broadly the fruits of the marriage. A range of assets stay the separate property (biens propres) of one spouse. Property that is personal by nature stays separate even if acquired during the marriage — personal clothing, claims for bodily or moral injury, non-transferable pensions, and generally rights attached to the person, together with the tools of one spouse's trade (Article 1404). Property is also separate by origin: whatever a spouse owned or possessed on the wedding day, or later receives during the marriage by inheritance, gift or legacy, remains theirs (Article 1405). And property acquired as the accessory of separate property, or in reinvestment of it, stays separate too (Articles 1406 and 1407). Where value has flowed between a spouse's separate estate and the community — the community paying off a separate debt, or separate money buying a common asset — a system of compensation (récompenses) rebalances the accounts at dissolution (Article 1469).

Who controls the community property

During the marriage, each spouse may in principle administer and dispose of community property alone (Article 1421 of the Civil Code), and the spouse who runs a separate profession alone has the power to carry out the acts that profession requires (Article 1421, paragraph 2). But the most serious acts need both signatures. Neither spouse may alone sell, exchange, contribute or mortgage the community's real estate, businesses or non-negotiable company rights (Article 1424), nor alone grant a rural or commercial lease of community property (Article 1425), nor alone make a gift of community property (Article 1422); a legacy by one spouse cannot exceed their share in the community (Article 1423). On the debt side, borrowings and guarantees given by one spouse alone can be pursued only against that spouse's own property and income, unless the other expressly consents (Article 1415), while household debts can be pursued against everything the couple owns (Article 220).

For inheritance, the consequence is the one set out above: at the first death the community is divided, half goes to the survivor as their own, and only the deceased's half of the acquests plus their separate property forms the estate (Article 1467 of the Civil Code). The legal community protects the survivor to the extent of that automatic half, but no further — which is precisely why couples who want to do more reach for a conventional regime or an added clause.

Separation of property and participation in acquests

The two separatist regimes keep the spouses' wealth apart during the marriage, and they are chosen for very different reasons from the community. Separation of property (séparation de biens) is the regime of autonomy and of risk containment; participation in acquests (participation aux acquêts) is a hybrid that behaves like separation during the marriage and like a community at the end. Both must be adopted by marriage contract; neither is the default.

Under separation of property, each spouse enjoys their own enrichment alone (Article 1536 of the Civil Code). Each remains the owner of their personal property, keeps its administration, use and free disposal, and in return each remains liable for their own debts, whether born before or during the marriage — except household debts, for which both are jointly liable (Articles 220 and 1537). This is the regime typically recommended where one spouse runs a business or a profession that carries financial exposure, because it shields the other spouse's assets from that spouse's creditors. Separation does not prevent the couple from owning things jointly in undivided shares, and case law has had to police the boundary: spending on the acquisition or improvement of a family home is generally treated as a contribution to the charges of the marriage, which bars any claim by one spouse against the other, whereas a genuine capital contribution is not (Cass. 1re civ., 14 March 2006, no. 05-15980; Cass. 1re civ., 3 October 2019, no. 18-20828). A couple who want a communal element without abandoning separation can graft on a limited pool of common assets — a company of acquests (société d'acquêts) — governed by the rules of the legal community (Articles 1387 and 1497).

Participation in acquests works in two phases. During the marriage everything happens as if the spouses were separate in property: each keeps the administration, use and disposal of their personal assets (Article 1569 of the Civil Code). At dissolution, the regime liquidates like a community: each spouse is entitled to participate for one half, in value, in the net acquests recorded in the other's estate, measured by comparing an original estate (patrimoine originaire — assets owned at the marriage and later received for free; Article 1570) with a final estate (patrimoine final — assets existing at dissolution; Articles 1572 and 1573). If, over the marriage, one spouse's net acquests are 30,000 euros and the other's 16,000, the difference of 14,000 is halved, so the less wealthy spouse receives a participation claim of 7,000 euros and each ends with 23,000. The regime can be adjusted by clauses — for instance a clause allotting all the net acquests to the survivor, or excluding professional assets from the calculation — and such clauses can themselves amount to matrimonial advantages (Article 1581; Cass. 1re civ., 18 December 2019, no. 18-26337).

For inheritance, a separatist regime cuts the other way from a community. Because there is no common mass to divide at the first death — or, under participation, only a monetary claim to settle — the deceased's estate is the whole of their own property, and the children take from all of it. The surviving spouse under separation of property is therefore protected only by their statutory inheritance rights and by whatever the couple has arranged by will, gift or an added société d'acquêts. This is the trade-off couples must weigh: the separation that protects a spouse from the other's creditors during life gives that spouse less at death, unless the regime is deliberately reinforced.

Universal community and the clause d'attribution intégrale

Universal community (communauté universelle) is the most communal regime of all, and paired with an attribution clause it is the most radical way to protect a surviving spouse. By adopting it, the spouses form a single mass of all their property, movable and immovable, present and future, whether it was separate or common (Article 1526, paragraph 1, of the Civil Code); only property that is personal by nature under Article 1404 stays out, and even that only unless the couple agrees otherwise. In exchange, the universal community bears all the spouses' debts, present and future (Article 1526, paragraph 2), and management becomes joint (Article 1422), so neither spouse can dispose of "their" property without the other. Couples rarely choose this regime at the outset — it over-exposes the estate where one spouse takes business risk — but it appeals to older couples of some means who want to secure the largest possible transfer to the survivor.

The clause that gives universal community its force is the clause allotting the whole community to the survivor (clause d'attribution intégrale de la communauté au survivant). The spouses agree that, on death, the survivor takes the entire community (Article 1524 of the Civil Code); in return, the survivor alone must discharge all the community's debts, and cannot invoke the benefit that would otherwise cap a spouse's liability at half (Article 1483; Cass. 1re civ., 16 March 2004, no. 01-17292). The clause need not sit on a universal community — it can be added to a classic community — but it always requires a marriage contract. Its effect on inheritance is drastic and deliberate: it places the community property outside the succession. On the first death there is no undivided estate, no accounts to render and no division; the survivor simply keeps everything, and the children inherit only when the second parent dies. Because the whole community passes by the marriage contract rather than by succession, it is not a gift, so the children's action to reduce gifts is not open to them at the first death (Article 1525).

That elegance carries a tax cost worth stating plainly. Since the children inherit only once, at the second death, they get the benefit of the personal allowance and the lower tax brackets only once, instead of twice — once on each parent's death — which can substantially increase the total inheritance tax the family pays across the two deaths. The surviving spouse's own exemption (Article 796-0 bis of the General Tax Code) is unaffected, but the deferral concentrates the children's liability. There is a practical cost too: a survivor who may by then be elderly must manage the entire estate alone.

The clause alsacienne and the divorce risk

Universal community carries a specific danger if the marriage ends in divorce rather than death: the couple's property has been merged into one mass, which can make an equitable unwinding difficult. The usual answer is a recovery-of-contributions clause (clause de reprise des apports), known as the clause alsacienne, allowing each spouse on divorce to take back the property they brought in — in kind, or in value if the asset no longer exists (Article 265, paragraph 3, of the Civil Code). The Cour de cassation has confirmed that such a clause confers no matrimonial advantage on either spouse (Cass. 1re civ., 17 November 2010, no. 09-68292), so it can be included without disturbing the tax and civil treatment of the regime. A parallel clause can let the heirs of the first spouse to die recover the contributions and capital that fell into the community from that spouse (Article 1525, paragraph 2).

The blended-family limit: the action en retranchement

The attribution clause has one important limit, and it protects the children of a first marriage. Where a spouse has a child who is not also the child of the survivor, giving the whole community to the survivor would disinherit that child, who has no claim in the survivor's own estate. To protect these children, Article 1527 of the Civil Code gives them an action to cut back (action en retranchement): anything given to the survivor beyond the disposable portion allowed between spouses under Article 1094-1 is ineffective against them and is treated as a reducible gift (Article 1527, paragraph 2). The special disposable portion of Article 1094-1 is generous — it can reach one quarter in full ownership and three quarters in usufruct, or the whole in usufruct — but it is a ceiling, and the excess is clawed back in value (Cass. 1re civ., 19 December 2018, no. 18-10244). A child of a predeceased spouse who was adopted by the survivor cannot use the action (Cass. 1re civ., 11 February 2009, no. 07-21421). Non-common children may renounce the action in advance, in the special authenticated form used for renouncing the clawback of excessive gifts (Article 1527, paragraph 3, and Articles 929 and 930), which lets the survivor keep the advantage for life while preserving the children's right to act at the survivor's death. For any blended family, this limit has to be planned around before the clause is signed.

The préciput clause

The préciput clause is the surgical tool of matrimonial planning: it lets the survivor take specific assets off the top before the community is divided, without going as far as giving them the whole of it. The spouses stipulate in their marriage contract — original or later modified — that on death the survivor may draw from the common property, before any division, either a sum of money, or specified assets in kind, or a given quantity of a type of property (Article 1515 of the Civil Code). In practice the préciput most often covers the furniture, the principal residence and the couple's life-insurance contracts.

Several features make the clause attractive. It may be stipulated in full ownership or in usufruct only, and it may benefit one spouse or both reciprocally. Unlike a withdrawal-for-indemnity clause, the spouse who exercises a préciput owes no compensation to the community and no indemnity to the estate — the asset comes off the top for free (Article 1516). Like the other clauses of a conventional community, it is not a gift but a marriage convention (Article 1516), so between the couple's own children it escapes the rules on gifts. Absent a specific time limit in the contract, the right to claim the préciput prescribes only after 30 years. On divorce the clause is not delivered where the community dissolves during the spouses' lifetime, but the beneficiary keeps their rights for the event of survival (Article 1518); and, as an advantage that takes effect at dissolution, it is in principle revoked by divorce unless expressly maintained (Article 265, paragraph 2).

For inheritance, the préciput works by subtraction. The assets it covers leave the community before the half-and-half split, so they never enter the pool that is divided and never form part of the estate — the survivor keeps them on top of their ordinary half. Consider a couple married in community with a préciput over the principal residence and three children: if the common property totals 1,510,000 euros and the survivor exercises the préciput over the home, the net community surplus after the préciput is 510,000 euros, of which only one half — 255,000 euros — falls into the deceased's estate. The home has been secured for the survivor and taken out of the reckoning. Where there are non-common children, the value of the advantage counted for the action en retranchement is measured as half the value of the préciput. The clause is precise, cheap in civil terms, and easy to combine with the rest of a couple's planning — which is why it is one of the most frequently used devices in French marriage contracts.

Changing your regime

You are not bound for life by the regime you began with. In the interest of the family, spouses may change their matrimonial regime entirely, or merely adjust it, by a notarial deed (Article 1397 of the Civil Code). They can move from a separatist regime to a community regime and back, add a préciput or an attribution clause, or switch to universal community; on pain of nullity, the deed must include a liquidation of the regime being replaced where one is needed. Since 2019 there is no minimum waiting period: the former requirement to have lived under the existing regime for two years before changing it has been abolished (loi 2019-222 of 23 March 2019), so a couple can act as soon as their circumstances call for it.

A voluntary change under Article 1397 is a non-contentious (gracieuse) procedure, and it must be distinguished from the separate, contentious route: where one spouse's disorderly affairs, mismanagement or misconduct put the other's interests in peril, that spouse can apply to the court for a judicial separation of property (Article 1443 of the Civil Code). Most couples, however, change their regime not because of conflict but for planning reasons — to protect the survivor, to insulate a spouse from the other's business risk, to rebalance an estate, or simply to organise their affairs after marrying abroad without a contract.

When does a change actually help? The clearest case is protecting a survivor: an older couple, past the stage of business risk, can move to universal community with an attribution clause so that the survivor keeps everything and only deals with the succession once. A couple where one spouse launches a business can move the other way, into separation of property, to shield the family home from creditors. A couple who want a targeted improvement rather than a wholesale change can simply add a préciput over the principal residence. The right answer depends on the family — above all on whether there are children from another relationship, because the action en retranchement caps what an advantage can give the survivor at their expense.

The procedure and cost

Changing a regime under Article 1397 follows a set sequence built around a notarial deed and a protective information step. The couple cannot change their regime by their agreement alone; the change is documented in an authenticated deed drawn up by the notaire, and, where liquidation of the old regime is necessary, that liquidation is part of the deed. Around the deed, French law requires that those who might be affected are told and given a chance to object.

Two protections for creditors sit alongside this. The information step exists because a voluntary change can disguise fraud — for example spouses who were common in property adopting separation to organise the insolvency of one of them — and creditors who did not object can still attack the change by the Paulian action (action paulienne) if their rights were defrauded (Article 1397, paragraph 9). As to cost, a change of regime toward a community regime is no longer registered free: since 2020 it attracts a fixed registration duty of 125 euros and, where real estate is contributed, a land-publicity tax of 0.715% on that property (loi 2018-1317 of 28 December 2018), on top of the notaire's fees. The figures are modest against the estate-planning benefit, but the procedure and its timing need to be handled precisely — a defective information step can make the change unopposable to those who should have received it.

Frequently asked questions about French matrimonial regimes

How does my marriage regime affect inheritance?

It shapes the estate before inheritance law applies. When a married person dies, the notaire liquidates the couple's matrimonial regime first, and only the deceased's resulting share becomes the estate the heirs divide. Under the legal community, the survivor keeps their own half and only the deceased's half of the acquests plus their separate property passes (Article 1467 of the Civil Code); under separation of property the whole of the deceased's own property passes. The regime is also the strongest way to protect the survivor, because a matrimonial advantage is not treated as a gift (Article 1527).

What is the default French matrimonial regime?

Community reduced to acquests (communauté réduite aux acquêts). If you marry without a contract, French law presumes this regime (Article 1400 of the Civil Code): what each spouse earns and buys during the marriage is common and split in two at the end, while property owned before the marriage or received during it by gift or inheritance stays that spouse's separate property (Articles 1405 and 1401).

What is communauté universelle?

Universal community is a conventional regime in which nearly all the spouses' property — present and future, formerly separate or common — forms a single mass (Article 1526 of the Civil Code). Paired with a clause allotting the whole community to the survivor (Article 1524), it lets the survivor keep everything on the first death, outside the succession, so the children inherit only when the second spouse dies. It secures the survivor but concentrates the children's inheritance tax into a single transfer, and in a blended family it is limited by the children's action en retranchement (Article 1527).

Can we change our matrimonial regime in France?

Yes. Spouses may change or adjust their regime in the interest of the family by a notarial deed (Article 1397 of the Civil Code), with no minimum waiting period since 2019. The adult children of each spouse and the creditors must be informed and have three months to object; if someone objects, the deed goes to the court for approval (Article 1397, paragraph 4). A change toward a community regime costs a 125-euro fixed duty plus 0.715% on any real estate contributed, in addition to notaire fees.

What is a préciput?

A préciput is a clause allowing the surviving spouse to take specified common assets — often the home, the furniture or life-insurance contracts — off the top of the community before it is divided, without owing any indemnity (Article 1515 of the Civil Code). Those assets never enter the estate, so the survivor keeps them in addition to their ordinary half. It is a marriage convention, not a gift (Article 1516), and it can be stipulated in full ownership or in usufruct only.

Is a matrimonial advantage a gift between spouses?

No. Benefits a spouse draws from a conventional community — extra community property, unequal shares, a préciput, the whole community to the survivor — are not regarded as gifts but as marriage conventions (Articles 1527 and 1525 of the Civil Code). Between the couple's own children they escape the bringing-back-into-account and the clawback that apply to gifts, and the surviving spouse is exempt from inheritance tax (Article 796-0 bis of the General Tax Code). Where there is a child from another relationship, the advantage is capped by the action en retranchement (Article 1527, paragraph 2).

Does separation of property leave my spouse unprotected at death?

It gives the survivor less by default, because there is no community to split — the deceased's estate is the whole of their own property and the children take from all of it. Separation protects a spouse from the other's creditors during life (Article 1536 of the Civil Code), but couples who want to reinforce the survivor's position usually add a company of acquests (société d'acquêts), a will or a gift between spouses. The right balance depends on the family and the business risk involved.

How our French lawyers help with French matrimonial regimes and marriage contracts

The right matrimonial regime is the most powerful — and most underused — estate-planning tool a couple with French assets has, and the wrong one quietly decides who inherits. We advise couples on which regime and which clauses actually protect the survivor given their family, whether a préciput, a universal community with an attribution clause, a société d'acquêts or a change of regime is the right answer, and how the action en retranchement affects a blended family before anything is signed. Where a change of regime is called for, we handle the Article 1397 procedure — the deed, the information of children and creditors, and any court approval — so it is effective and unassailable.

This article is for general information only. It does not constitute legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. Which matrimonial regime suits a couple, and how it affects their inheritance, depends on the family, the assets, their location, any children from another relationship, and any existing contract or will. Contact our French lawyers for advice on your situation before acting.