Inheritance Law

We regularly advise our clients, on the occasion of or independently of any dispute, to organise the transmission of their personal or professional assets during their lifetime. Our firm advises its clients in the context of donation projects, shared donations, whether or not accompanied by dismemberments of ownership (bare ownership/usufruct), or the creation of death insurance policies (commonly known as “life insurance”), which sometimes make it possible to avoid, upstream, the difficulties associated with the division of an estate and disputes arising from the application of testamentary provisions

In addition, we implement all amicable or, failing that, contentious procedures intended to allow the settlement of successions (“post-successional indivisions”), in particular by drawing up and filing petitions for the delivery of legacies or by instituting legal proceedings aimed at ordering the division or reduction of gifts granted by the deceased and exceeding the available share.

Here again, the devolution of the estate may be accompanied by difficulties that we try to resolve and that are sometimes due to the existence of wills, donations made by the deceased during his lifetime or the existence of children born of several unions.

Whether it is a voluntary transfer of assets or a devolution by death, our assistance does not only concern the civil aspect, but also the problem of the payment of inheritance tax (droit de mutation à titre gratuit), which must be carried out within a certain period of time from the date of death, which can be optimized during one’s lifetime, and which is not reserved for inheritance only, since, contrary to a generally accepted idea, the transfer of the capital of a life insurance policy is not always carried out free of duty.