Although it is usual for children to receive their parents’ inheritance after their death, there are reasons why they may disinherit children. Disinheriting a child requires meeting certain legal requirements; if there are none, some resort to other means to do so. As in the case of this father, who hatched a plan for years to leave his children with nothing, marrying a woman 30 years younger, to whom he would leave his fortune.
As explained by the children’s lawyer in the French media ‘Figaro Real Estate‘This businessman began his “Machiavellian” plan years before he died. “The father did not want to leave them anything,” explained the lawyer.
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To this end, during his first marriage to the mother of his children, he modified the economic regime of community property to benefit from the universal community with a clause of attribution to the surviving spouse, which allowed all assets to pass in their entirety to the surviving spouse. “This means that everything is common, even what was received by inheritance or donation. With this clause, all assets will pass to the other spouse upon death,” explained lawyer Julie Lado, which prevented the children from inheriting anything after their mother’s death.
A new wife and lifelong usufruct of the entire fortune
The rejection of their own descendants was not new. “The relationship between the father and his children had always been very complicated,” explained the lawyer, who received the case when the children came to her after the businessman’s death. “It was Machiavellian; the father had prepared everything,” he added.
The strategy was completed after his second marriage to a woman 30 years younger, who “is the same age as his eldest son,” to whom he donated the usufruct of all his assets through public deed, including eight rental properties and his habitual residence.
“The father preferred everything to be left in the hands of someone he knew less, instead of his children. It was a real hate,” said Lado. The result was that the children inherited only the bare propertythat is, they cannot sell or use the properties, and the wife can continue living in them or rent them throughout her life.
Children have the right to the legitimate but will not be able to use it
Although French law recognizes the right of children to a legitimate portion of the inheritance, as happens in Spain, in this case said reserve has been respected in the form of bare ownership, excluding them from usufruct. Therefore, it is not possible to take legal action to cancel the donation.
This means that, although the children are legally heirs, they do not have access to the use or economic benefit of the assets. They will only be able to have the use and enjoyment of the assets when the widow dies, but since she is similar in age to her children, it is very likely that she will even survive them.
The only options for the children would be to negotiate the conversion of the usufruct into financial compensation. However, none of them are easy or safe, since as the lawyer explained, her stepmother is reluctant, and the children do not have the money necessary to make this operation viable.