Hello,
I’m fairly desperate, hopefully someone here has some experience in this. My brother died last year. He had a small house here in France and he died in the UK. The house is left to his father, myself and my sister. Our father abandoned us over 40 years ago and is 96 yrs old. He happily refused the inheritance. By French law, I have been told by my notaire that his daughter by another marriage and her children and grandchildren all have to sign to refuse and those under 18 have to go before a judge. It’s therefore easier if our father just accepts the money. The solicitor in the uk who can handle the French documents etc for a straightforward acceptance want over £10k. Our father is very old and not well. He can’t handle all of this and certainly doesn’t have that money. (The inheritance is 6500€)!
Does anyone know if there is a way around this ridiculous chain of inheritors, and does anyone know if a simple signature and translation of a French acceptance form can be done more cheaply??
Thanks for your help.
By the way, as the majority, future, shareholder I read that I can renovate and even rent the property out if it is towards the upkeep of the property. Any thoughts on that?
I would ask the French notaire if he/she can process this if provided with certified identity documents and letter from the UK. Difficult successions are a staple of their business so can’t be first time this has happened.
Also then set up a way that this doesn’t happen again when your father dies!
However Service Public info (attached) makes it sounds possible to do it yourself. Have attached english version which is a bit clunky. If your French is ok then flick back to original language vie drop down top right.
That is very good @JaneJones, I don’t know whether it will help @Gas22, welcome aboard by the way 
, or me. But I will read it more closely later to see if one of the possible hiccups in the inheritance I’m currently involved in is covered. I didn’t see a relevant heading at a quick glance.
Thanks for that link Jane. I asked the notaire about that and she said no, it must be the French document and it needs to be notarized by a French speaking solicitor. She won’t accept just his signature despite his wife speaking fluent French. (I have the impression sometimes that she’s learning on the hoof)! I’ve made an appointment with another notaire just to get a different angle.
A notaire in France or the UK? There are plenty of French registered notaires in the UK so seems totally daft that it should costs anywhere near 10k!
Here’s yet another one
Thanks. I contacted the first one and indeed nowhere near the same price! They were shocked when I told them how much I’d been quoted.
I’ll do an edit to my post to explain what happened. Thanks so much for your help.
EDIT: Hello again, I thought it may help someone else if I were to update the situation. My Notaire’s husband (also notaire) asked her why she was bothering to chase all the way down the family line when we are talking about so little money (!) he had a case with 150 members of the same family to find. He decided to stop the search after the first set of inheritors. My notaire has decided to accept my father’s refusal of the inheritance and his daughter’s both using the standard form that we can find online. They’ve been sent a copy that has been filled in for them with a standard online translation for them to refer to. This should be returned to the notaire who will send it to the clerk at the pertinent court to register and stamp. Done. So it would seem that the notaire can make a judgement call and NOT follow the law to the letter. I would imagine that if a grandchild wanted to question the decision later then they could and they’d probably have a case but not for their share of 7000€! They wouldn’t bother.
I hope my mess has helped someone out there! As you can imagine, huge relief on my side!! Happy New Year everyone!
Glad to hear it’s a case of “all’s well that ends well”! Happy New Year!
I am fed up with the whole business and, in my mind, have kissed goodbye to the €5,000 odd in Fran’s name which I can see dragging on for a decade simply because, 3 people, possibly on discovering there is no money right now, are dragging their feet and the notaire is obviously not pressing them. None of them have answered my queries of the last couple of months so I am washing my hands of them.
Seriously thinking how I can squirrel away some of the money, possibly as an advance inheritance gift to my son, the only one who has the slightest interest in me and contacts me regularly from the other side of the world.
That’ll teach 'em. 
“Assurance Vie” at Credit Agricole is an account where one can deposit some money (regularly or not) and you “name” the person who is to “benefit” on your death. It bypasses the Notaire and is not deemed to be part of the estate…
Trouble is, to us Brits it translates as Life Insurance, which it is NOT. 
talk with your Bank…
Yes, assurance vie is outside the tax/inheritance system. But especially if one is over 70 the limits are quite low (max €30k) and the charges can be high. Something to look into, but need to take advice on suitability.
Very interesting, thanks to both of you, and I admit I thought it was life assurance. Do you know if you can draw out of it or if once the money is in there it is only accessible to the named inheritor?
Is that over 70 when opening or for contributions past 70 to one opened pre 70?
As far as I recall… I can “touch” mine if I want to… and when I want to. and it might be next to nuffink by the time I pop my clogs
Truly… it’s got to be worth discussing with your bank. 
I’ll do that, but they did lead me astray over the LEP accessibility and subsequent destination of it. Also, on the good side, they said funeral expenses couldn’t be paid out of it. Untrue, up to a maximum of €5,000.
Yes. Ours are intended as a back stop for care-home fees. The French one says that they will even pay the care home directly if one looses one’s mental or physical marbles (and obviously with safeguards in place).
So how is it different to an ordinary bank account? There must be a downside to the advantage to deny it on inheritance to only those you choose. Isn’t there?
It is an investment product not a bank account that just contains your money. Different options as to what it is invested in and the risks:rewards vary.
On death the whole amount passes on to the beneficiaries, but if you want to withdraw money then you are taxed on the gains. The company calculates what proportion of a withdrawal would be gain.
The tax on these gains is higher if you have held the account fewer than 8 years. And there is an annual management charge (which often taken from annula profit so you don’t notice it).
You can also leave the amounts to charities as well as individuals. We plan to leave the entirety of our AV funds to charities such as the SPA, not having any children etc.
One detail - Credit Agricole use administrators (Predica) who - maddeningly - take the CA management fees directly from our bank account, not from the capital of the AVs themselves (which would have made them much less painful, psychologically). I believe CA changed their practice - people who invested through them in the past have the fees deducted from the AV investments, not from their current accounts. I’ve never had investments where the management fee was deducted from anything other than the investments themselves, and I don’t understand why CA do this (unless its market practice now in France to do so). I wish I’d better understood this prior to investing with them, as I find it quite off-putting to see relatively sizeable amounts coming out of our bank account. Bar our annual food bill, the second biggest item deducted annually is Predica’s charge…
A cynic might wonder if it’s because, at a casual glance, it makes the return look better if the fees don’t come out of the AV.