Forced Heirship in France: The Reserved Share Explained

France applies forced heirship: a portion of every estate, the reserved share, is set aside by law for children and cannot be given away by will or lifetime gift. This article explains how the reserved share is calculated, how it is enforced, and what it means for a cross-border estate connected to another country.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This article presents general legal information, not legal advice.

Jurisdiction scope: This article describes the reserved share under French domestic succession law. It does not cover every country's forced heirship or family provision rules. An estate connected to more than one country may be governed in whole or in part by another country's law under the EU Succession Regulation (Regulation 650/2012), and the interaction between the French reserved share and a foreign law is addressed later in this article. Readers should not assume the French rules described here automatically apply to every estate with a connection to France.

What Is the Reserved Share?

Forced heirship is a foundational feature of succession law in France. Rather than leaving the entire estate to be distributed however a person's will or lifetime gifts direct, French law sets aside a portion of every estate, called the reserved share, for certain heirs. The remaining portion, which the deceased is free to give away by will or gift, is called the freely disposable share, known in French as the quotite disponible.

Children are the principal reserved heirs under French law. Where there are no descendants, a surviving, non-divorced spouse becomes a reserved heir instead, though with a smaller protected share, described further below. The reserved share is not merely a default rule that applies only in the absence of a will; it is a mandatory limit that constrains what any will or gift can validly do, even when the will is otherwise perfectly clear about the deceased's wishes.

This is a significant difference from legal systems built around full testamentary freedom, where a person can generally leave their estate to anyone, including excluding a child entirely. Anyone with property or family connections in France, including someone who ordinarily lives under a different legal system, needs to understand this distinction before assuming an existing will controls the outcome for French assets.

Reserved Share and Freely Disposable Share: The Proportions by Number of Children (Art. 913)

Article 913 of the Code civil sets the exact proportions based on how many children the deceased leaves at death. With one child, the freely disposable share is one half of the estate, meaning the reserved share is the other half. With two children, the freely disposable share drops to one third, meaning the reserved share rises to two thirds, shared among the children. With three or more children, the freely disposable share is one quarter, meaning the reserved share is three quarters, regardless of how many children there are beyond three.

In other words, the reserved share does not keep climbing indefinitely as the number of children increases; it is capped at three quarters of the estate once there are three or more children. The freely disposable share is the portion the deceased can direct through a will or lifetime gifts to anyone, including a spouse, a partner, a charity, or one child in preference to another, without infringing the reserved share of the other reserved heirs.

The Surviving Spouse as a Reserved Heir When There Are No Descendants (Art. 914-1)

When the deceased leaves no descendants at all, the reserved share shifts from the children to the surviving spouse, provided the spouse is not divorced from the deceased. Article 914-1 caps gifts and legacies, whether made during life or by will, at three quarters of the estate in this situation, which means the surviving spouse has a reserved share of one quarter.

This spousal reserved share only exists where there are no descendants. Where the deceased leaves children or other descendants, the reserved share belongs to them under Article 913, and the surviving spouse's position is instead governed by the separate spousal inheritance rules described on the general inheritance overview page, which cover a spouse's rights as an heir rather than as a reserved heir. A PACS partner or an unmarried partner has no reserved share at all under French law, a distinction covered further on the page about civil partnerships in France.

Can a Child Be Disinherited in France? (No, and Here Is Why)

A frequent question, particularly from someone used to a legal system built on testamentary freedom, is whether a parent can simply leave a child out of a will entirely. Under French law, the answer is no for a French-resident testator with children: a child cannot be disinherited.

This is a direct consequence of the reserved share described above. Because a defined portion of the estate is legally set aside for children, a will that purports to exclude a child, or a lifetime gift that effectively achieves the same result, does not succeed in removing that child's protected entitlement. The child's reserved share survives the attempt, and the excess can be clawed back through the mechanism described in the next section.

This protection is specific to reserved heirs. It does not extend to every relative; a sibling, a cousin, or a friend has no reserved share and can indeed be left nothing by a will. The protection is also distinct from the question of who inherits by default when there is no will at all, which follows the order of heirs rather than the reserved share.

The Action en Reduction: How the Reserved Share Is Actually Enforced

The reserved share is not merely a principle; it has a specific enforcement mechanism. Article 920 of the Code civil provides that gifts and legacies, whether direct or indirect, that infringe a reserved heir's share are reducible to the freely disposable share as it stands when the succession opens.

In practice, this means a gift or a legacy that goes too far is not automatically void from the outset. Instead, once the person who made it has died, the affected reserved heir can bring an action en reduction, an action for reduction, to have the excess portion reduced so that the reserved heir ultimately receives what the reserved share guarantees. The calculation involves valuing the gifts and legacies made and comparing them against the freely disposable share available at the time the succession opens.

This is the legal tool that makes the reserved share more than words on paper. A determined effort to disinherit a child, whether through a single large gift, a series of smaller gifts, or a will provision, can be unwound after death through this action, up to the limit of what the reserved share protects.

Cross-Border Successions and Expats: The Droit de Prelevement Compensatoire

Cross-border estates raise a distinct question: what happens when a person subject to the French reserved share dies while their succession, or part of it, is governed by a foreign law that does not protect children in the same way, or at all? Under the EU Succession Regulation, a person can choose the law of a country of which they are a national to govern their succession, a professio juris, which can result in a law other than French law applying even to assets located in France.

In response to concerns that this choice-of-law freedom could be used to strip children of French protections, a 2021 law, loi n. 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021, in force since 1 November 2021, added a specific rule to Article 913 of the Code civil: the droit de prelevement compensatoire, a compensatory levy. Where the deceased or at least one child is a national of an EU member state or habitually resides there, and the foreign law that applies to the succession provides no protective mechanism for children at all, a child can claim compensation out of assets located in France, up to the level of protection French law would have given.

This rule sounds broad, but its practical reach is narrower than it first appears. Because the text only applies where the foreign law offers no protective mechanism for children at all, French notarial guidance now treats it as inapplicable wherever the foreign law includes its own functional equivalent, even if that equivalent works differently from the French reserved share. Following a complaint that the rule could conflict with the free choice of law built into the EU Succession Regulation, the prevailing notarial-practice position is that family provision regimes recognized under English law, and similar Anglo-Saxon mechanisms that allow a court to award support to a child from an estate, count as such an equivalent. In practice, this means the droit de prelevement compensatoire is rarely engaged against a succession governed by English law or a comparable common law system, even though it remains available in principle where the foreign law truly offers no protection at all.

This is a developing area resting on notarial practitioner guidance rather than a published court ruling, so anyone with a cross-border estate connected to France and a common law jurisdiction such as England or the United States should treat the interaction between a foreign will and the French reserved share as a question for individual advice, not a settled, one-size-fits-all answer. Broader cross-border succession questions, including which country's law applies in the first place, are addressed on the inheritance overview page, and inheritance tax consequences are addressed separately on the inheritance tax page.

The questions below cover the most common issues that arise around the reserved share and forced heirship in France.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about the reserved share and forced heirship under French succession law as of the verification date above. It is not legal, tax, or financial advice, and it does not create an attorney-client or other professional relationship. The interaction between the French reserved share and a foreign law is fact-specific and depends on nationality, habitual residence, and other individual circumstances. Anyone with a cross-border estate connected to France should consult a notaire or qualified lawyer.