Following on from posts I made here in the past, I decided there was no other option but to issue my sister with a second court summons to settle my mother’s estate once and for all. She was summoned to appear in court in December, 2025.
The first summons issued in April, 2024 resulted in the estate going through automatically within two years as she offered no challenge.
My mother died in August, 2018. My sister has been living there prior and continues to do so.
There are two French lawyers acting on my behalf, one in London, the other in France. I live in London.
I am hoping someone is/was in a similar position and give me an idea of what would have happened in court etc and what happens next. I have asked my London lawyer but he didn’t really answer my questions and instead cut/pasted some legal jargon which is very frustrating.
Well either your sister appeared in court, or she didn’t, or was represented - surely your lawyers can tell you that much? They should also be able to provide you with the details of any submissions made by your sister or her representative, and what the court decided (whether an order was made, whether the order is executable immediately or is conditional on some other event, etc, or whether the court has booted the case into touch).
My area of expertise isn’t successoral or family law, so unfortunately not.
As a general rule of thumb, French courts are not particularly fast, the more so where there is no “urgency” (interpreted with regard to the applicable law). In the majority of successoral matters, there is probably not a great deal of legal urgency, so whatever the standard for the court in question happens to be - 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months - your guess is as good as mine. For all I know, the court might ask for more information from each party, or might declare that the case is ready for “mise en délibéré”, which means that the judge or panel of judges, if indeed there is a panel, is in a position to decide the case.
Not generally, unless that has formed part of the submissions. Even then, the court would have to have been made aware that some contributing factor or circumstance relating to one of the parties would make it likely that any decision would be moot or ineffective once reached. I would imagine that such circumstances are fairly rare in a dispute about a succession. Your advisors should be able to give you an idea of the approximate procedural timelines, and you should probably ask them if you haven’t done so already, and raise the question of whether any grounds for urgency might apply, so that they can discuss with you the chances of any requests in that vein making any positive difference.
Very helpful information - thank you. I will raise the question of urgency with the lawyers. The time period changed for the worse in their last email.
Hello again, Sally - nice to hear from you again, but sorry that the saga is still ongoing!
Could you clarify your post, please? You say that a “summons” was issued to your sister in April 2024, which she did not challenge, and therefore it becomes effective in December this year (2026). But then you say you have had the notaire issue a second summons, in December last year (2025).
Please can you explain?
Court proceedings in France are very different from the UK. In the Family Courts, everything is submitted in writing - the ‘Pleadings’. She would have had the right to instruct a notaire or avocat to enter Pleadings on her behalf, in response to your Claim. The judge (normally referred to here as the Tribunal) sets a date for submitting these pleadings to the court. Neither side then has any control over how long it will take for your file to get to the top of the in-tray - but it will certainly be several months later. Then a judgment is issued, setting out the judge’s ruling. If your sister has not responded to the claim, providing the application made by your notaire/avocat is correct in law, you will get what you asked for.