How Inheritance Works in France: Heirs, Spousal Rights, and Succession Rules

French inheritance law, known as héritage, follows a fixed order of statutory heirs and gives a surviving spouse rights that change depending on who else survives. This guide explains who inherits without a will, how heirs choose to accept or refuse a succession, the deadlines involved, and what happens when no heir comes forward.

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

Jurisdiction scope: This article describes French domestic succession law under the French Code civil. It does not cover every country's inheritance rules. An estate connected to more than one country, for example through a foreign nationality, a foreign habitual residence, or property located abroad, may be governed in whole or in part by another country's law. The EU Succession Regulation (Regulation 650/2012) can direct a cross-border estate connected to France toward the law of another country instead of French law, depending on the deceased's habitual residence or an express choice of law. Readers with connections to more than one country should not assume French rules automatically apply, or that they do not.

How Inheritance Works in France: The Basics

French succession law is often summarized under the single word heritage, but the term covers several distinct legal questions: who is legally entitled to inherit, how much each heir receives, what a will can and cannot change, and how the transfer of ownership is actually carried out. The starting point is the Code civil, which sets out a default scheme that applies whenever a person dies without leaving valid, complete instructions covering the whole estate.

In most cases, a notaire is involved early in the process. The notaire identifies the heirs, establishes an official record of who they are, and prepares the documents needed to transfer bank accounts, securities, and real estate into the heirs' names. For estates that include French real estate, involving a notaire is generally unavoidable.

French law also limits how far a person can depart from the statutory scheme through a will or lifetime gifts. A portion of the estate, called the reserved share, is set aside by law for certain heirs and cannot be given away, a point covered in detail on the dedicated forced heirship page. The sections below walk through the order of heirs, the surviving spouse's position, the choices available to an heir, the key deadlines, and what happens when no heir can be found.

The Order of Heirs When There Is No Spouse (Art. 734)

When a person dies without a surviving spouse, Article 734 of the Code civil sets out four successive orders of heirs. Each order is called to inherit only if no heir exists in the order before it; the categories do not share the estate with one another.

The first order is made up of the deceased's children and their own descendants, inheriting by representation if a child has already died. If at least one child or descendant exists, no one in the later orders inherits anything under the intestate rules.

The second order covers the deceased's parents together with the deceased's siblings and the siblings' own descendants, meaning nieces and nephews. This order is called to inherit only if there is no surviving child or descendant.

The third order consists of other ascendants beyond the parents, such as grandparents. The fourth and final order covers other collateral relatives, meaning relatives connected through a common ancestor who are not siblings or their descendants, typically aunts, uncles, and cousins within the degrees recognized by law.

This structure means a distant relative in a later order never inherits alongside a closer relative in an earlier order. It also means that, absent a spouse, children and their descendants take priority over everyone else, including the deceased's own parents.

The Surviving Spouse's Rights, Depending on the Family Situation

A married, surviving spouse has rights under the Code civil that exist alongside, not instead of, the order of heirs described above. Those rights change significantly depending on who else survives the deceased.

If the deceased leaves descendants, Article 757 gives the surviving spouse a choice, but only when every child is common to both spouses: the spouse may choose either the usufruct of the entire estate, meaning the right to use the assets and receive their income for life while the underlying ownership eventually passes to the children, or one quarter of the estate in full ownership. If any child is not common to both spouses, for example a child from an earlier relationship, the spouse does not get this choice and receives only one quarter in full ownership.

If the deceased leaves no descendants but both parents are alive, Article 757-1 gives the surviving spouse one half of the estate, with each parent receiving one quarter. If only one parent is alive, that parent's share passes to the surviving spouse instead, so the spouse ends up with three quarters of the estate. If neither parent is alive and there are no descendants, Article 757-2 gives the surviving spouse the entire succession.

A registered partner under a PACS civil partnership contract does not automatically receive these spousal inheritance rights, since they are reserved by the Code civil for a married, non-divorced spouse. The position of PACS and unmarried partners is addressed separately on the page about civil partnerships in France.

Accepting, Accepting Up to Net Assets, or Renouncing a Succession

An heir is never obligated to accept an inheritance. French law recognizes three distinct options once a succession opens.

The first option is pure and simple acceptance, under which the heir takes on the assets and, in principle, the debts of the deceased without limitation. The second option, acceptance up to net assets, known as acceptation a concurrence de l'actif net, lets the heir accept the succession while limiting personal exposure to the deceased's debts to the value of the assets actually received. This option is often used when an estate's overall financial position is unclear or when there is a real risk that debts could exceed assets. The third option is outright renunciation, under which the heir gives up any claim to the estate as though never called to inherit.

Choosing acceptance up to net assets involves a formal declaration and an inventory of the estate's assets, carried out under the procedure set out in the Code civil. The choice among the three options has significant financial consequences, and heirs facing a complicated or debt-heavy estate often take advice before deciding.

The Notaire's Role and the Legal Deadlines (4 Months / 10 Years)

French law does not force an heir to make an immediate decision. Article 771 of the Code civil provides that an heir cannot be compelled to choose among the three options described above until at least four months have passed from the date of death. This gives heirs time to gather information about the estate before committing to a course of action.

At the other end of the timeline, Article 780 sets an outer limit: the right to choose, whether to accept or renounce, is time-barred ten years after the death. An heir who has not made a decision within that period is treated as having renounced the succession.

Within that window, the notaire handling the succession plays a central administrative role: identifying the heirs, valuing the estate, preparing the documents needed to transfer ownership, and, where real estate is involved, recording the transfer with the relevant land registry. Notarial fees for this work follow a regulated tariff rather than being freely negotiated.

What Happens If No Heir Comes Forward: Vacant Succession and Dechearance

Occasionally, no heir is known, or every known heir renounces the succession. French law treats this situation in stages rather than transferring the estate to the State immediately.

The estate first becomes a succession vacante, meaning a vacant succession. In this stage, the situation is treated as temporarily unresolved: an heir may still come forward, or an unknown heir may later be identified. If the situation is never resolved and no heir claims the estate, it falls into a further state called dechearance, or desherence.

Under Article 724 of the Code civil, an estate that ends up in this position is not simply inherited by the State the way an ordinary heir would inherit. The State must apply to the tribunal judiciaire to be formally sent into possession of the estate, a step known as envoi en possession, before it can take control of the assets. This distinction matters in practice: it means the State's claim goes through a court process rather than an automatic transfer, and it means succession vacante and dechearance describe two different legal stages, not the same thing.

Inheritance and Wills: What French Law Protects (The Reserved Share)

A will can change many things about how an estate is distributed within the family, but it cannot override the reserved share that French law sets aside for certain heirs, principally children. This protection applies regardless of what a will or a lifetime gift says, and it is enforced through a legal action described in detail on the forced heirship page referenced above.

The three recognized will formats in France, including the entirely handwritten holographic will, are covered on the separate page about writing a will in France. That page also explains how a notaire can help register and safely store a will so that it can be located after death.

Because the reserved share limits what a will can do, anyone drafting a will in France, or considering one, generally needs to understand both sets of rules together: the freedom a will provides, and the limits the reserved share places on that freedom.

Cross-Border Successions: Expats and Property Located in France

An estate connected to more than one country raises questions that a purely domestic succession does not. Under the EU Succession Regulation, the law that generally governs a cross-border succession is the law of the country where the deceased had their last habitual residence, unless the deceased made a valid choice of law, known as a professio juris, selecting the law of a country of which they were a national.

This means French law does not automatically apply to every estate with a connection to France, and conversely, a person living in France at death is not automatically covered by their country of origin's law. Property located in France, a French nationality, or a habitual residence in France can each be relevant to which country's rules apply, and more than one country's law can end up governing different parts of the same estate.

France has also enacted a specific rule, discussed in more detail on the forced heirship page, that can allow a child to claim compensation from French-situated assets in some cross-border cases where the foreign law that otherwise applies offers no protection for children at all. In current notarial practice, this rule is treated as rarely applicable where the foreign law includes its own protective mechanism, such as the family provision regimes recognized in England and other common law jurisdictions. Anyone with assets, family, or a habitual residence connected to more than one country should treat cross-border succession planning, including any inheritance tax exposure, as a distinct question from the domestic rules described above.

The questions below address some of the most common issues that come up around inheritance in France.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about 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. Succession law is fact-specific and can be affected by international elements, marriage contracts, prior gifts, and other individual circumstances. Anyone dealing with an actual succession, particularly one connected to more than one country, should consult a notaire or qualified lawyer.