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Help with Selling House in France for my Mother


D4ve
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Hi,

I'd appreciate

some help with the situation my Mum is going to be in soon, there’s a limited amount

she’ll be able to do herself so I need to help out as much as possible.

Background:

  • House is

    owned 50/50 with my brother, he does not live there.
  • Our father

    will pass away soon.
  • Our father

    wrote a handwritten will, making reference to 2015 EU Regulation 650/2012 (Brussels

    IV) about dividing up his share.
  • The house

    needs to be sold in order for my mother to return to the UK

I have lots

of questions and would really appreciate any comments or directions:

  • Help

    guide me though the process after his death.
  • How house

    selling works in France. There’s a lot of advice out there, but with a 50/50 my

    brother owns, what does that change?
  • Is it

    correct that only when both owners agree to sell, can the house begin to be sold?
  • Is it

    best to use a local (to her) notaire?
  • With the

    50/50 split of the house as it is, is it also split 50/50 between my mother and

    father? Therefore, when he passes, essentially 25% covered by his will/estate?

Finally, is there a UK based firm that I could

contact to help me sort this out as my French is terrible!

Many thanks, D

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It is very difficult at the moment with the confinement, but remember  that Notaires have to give free advice. They can only charge for acting.

They are not like Solicitors in this regard.

I would try to get a telephone interview with one (English speaking if necessary)

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Has the law changed? I understood that a will manuscript will duly signed and dated was enough?

An olographe will – the most common type in France – is written entirely by hand, dated and signed by the testator himself. It is not signed in the presence of a notaire or witnesses. French law considers that the fact that it is entirely written by hand by the testator is sufficient. It can be written in any language, not necessarily in French. It is, of course, recommended that the testator gets legal advice before drawing it up. The testator should give the original of the handwritten will to a French notaire in order for it to be kept and registered at the ‘fichier central des dispositions de dernières volontés’, the French national registry of last wills and testaments. This formality is not a condition of validity of the will but is to guarantee that it will be found and used.
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We never had a notaire witness ours.

We just copied the 'will' friends gave us and signed and dated it.

And that is fine. It could be registered with a notaire and then a copy sent, I think to Aix en Provence at the time. But one was not obliged to do so. There would have been a fee for that.

Maybe things have changed?

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[quote user="idun"]
We never had a notaire witness ours.

We just copied the 'will' friends gave us and signed and dated it.

And that is fine. It could be registered with a notaire and then a copy sent, I think to Aix en Provence at the time. But one was not obliged to do so. There would have been a fee for that.

Maybe things have changed?

[/quote]

Surely there must be a procedure in place to ensure that the document is written and/or signed by the person making the will?

I seem to remember providing my ID for everything of importance I have signed here.

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As it says, it can be registered on the fichier de testaments, but you have to pay for that to be done.

That was all we did and that was all quite a lot of people we knew did. Hand written and signed and dated.

No ID, nothing like that. However, it would have to found and adhered to after a death, and not simply destroyed by someone who wasn't suited, so I suppose that that would be why people have these registered.

To the OP. I do hope that your father has done all this to maximise the benefit to your mother, otherwise you and your brother will own 49% of his half.

So your brother would own his 50 percent and another 24.5%.

You can use which so ever notaire you want. Does not have to be local and for the sale at least there should be no charge, usually the buyer pays. However, the fees after a death can be costly.

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Hi, thanks for the help guys.

The idea was to maximise the amount for my mother, I'm not wanting any share, nor is my brother. I did read that if there is no hand written will, in this case if it's not useable, then the split is 1/3 to my brother, 1/3 to myself, 1/4 to my mother and the final 1/12 to whomever he elected. None of this seems straight forward, made all the more troublesome by what everyone is going through at present. Tricky times ahead!

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Your initial description of the ownership of the house (50% owned by your brother, without saying who owns the other 50%) and your latest ideas of how it would possibly be split is very confusing, as your brother would still own his 50% whatever happened.

You don't seem to be considering the result of French taxation of the inheritance. It is still liable to tax under French law, whatever the distribution of the estate under a UK will.

You really should get sound advice on the anticipated inheritance and resulting taxes from a French lawyer, or possibly an experienced PFA while you still have time to do so.

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My wife and I made both English and French wills about 11 years ago - after my SIL dies and her husband discovered that without a will it does not all go to the spouse.

The Law has changed and as a little PS an English will can also cover how French assets are disributed.

If I remember correctly, an English solicitor charged about £190 for mirror wills for both of us. The French notaire about 100 euros. He wrote the will and we then had to go away, write them by hand and then return the to him so that he could register them.

So, by our experience, a notaires fees are far lower than a UK solicitor.

There is an official site for notaires and has information on the languages spoken by each notaire. You can choose one who speaks English who can then provide you with advice as well as acting in the sale.

Do get correct legal advice. As your message indicates that your father is still alive he still has the ability to change his will if a notaire says that the existing one is not legal.

Just to give a little indication of how things can differ, we wanted to leave money to a couple of animal charities. The notaire said 'I do not thing this one can accept a bequest, just a minute I will phone them'. And so it proved.
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As I said in my first reply

ASK A NOTAIRE.

They deal with inheritance and its consequences  and property  sales, and

THEIR ADVICE IS FREE
unlike lawyers!

Why oh WHY are people muddying the waters??

Does anyone bother to read previous replies and think about them??

Notaires en consultation gratuite dans quel contexte ?

La loi oblige à avoir recours aux services d’un notaire, lors de l’achat ou la vente d’un bien immobilier, dans le cas d’une donation d’un bien immobilier entre époux, aux enfants ou aux petits-enfants, pour l’établissement d’un contrat de mariage.

Quel que soit le cas, l'objectif est d'établir des actes authentiques.

Ces actes ne peuvent en aucun cas être gratuits puisqu'ils ont une

valeur juridique validée par l'Etat. Cependant les notaires ont aussi un rôle de conseil.

Transmettre un patrimoine, sortir d'une indivision, mettre un bien en

adjudication notariale, faire face à une obligation alimentaire, les lois sont complexes et souvent modifiées par de nouveaux amendements.

C'est alors qu'interviennent les notaires. Au cœur des lois, ils ont pour mission de les expliquer et de trouver la combinaison idéale

qui tienne compte de chaque situation particulière et du contexte

juridique du moment. Contrairement à une idée reçue, il est inutile

d'être riche pour faire appel à un notaire. Souvent faire appel à un

notaire est même indispensable.

Concrètement, comment obtenir une consultation gratuite chez un notaire 

De façon générale, pour obtenir les dates et les horaires des permanences gratuites des notaires, il faut consulter le site de la Chambre de Notaires du département où vous habitez.

you can find one here

https://www.notaires.fr/fr

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[quote user="NormanH"]
As I said in my first reply

ASK A NOTAIRE.

They deal with inheritance and its consequences  and property  sales, and

THEIR ADVICE IS FREE
unlike lawyers!

Why oh WHY are people muddying the waters??

Does anyone bother to read previous replies and think about them?? ............. [/quote]

I read your first reply. Evidently you seem to have been luckier when dealing with Notaires than I have.

There is a notaire very close to us, who gave me totally incorrect information re taxes on a property sale we were about to make. I knew it was wrong, as I had just read a gov.fr bulletin on CGT exemption for older people.
When I told him it was on the gov't web site and showed him the printout of the text, he refused to read it, and said I shouldn't believe things I saw on the internet. His son has taken over now, but he is just as daft as his father.

I went to other notaires at increasing distances from here. Another one said the information was wrong, one said he'd check and let me know, one made a copy of the gov't advice which I had printed and thanked me for updating him! I finally drove over 100 km to see the one who had handled the purchase. He was too busy to listen properly, and said just leave the sale to them and they would look after everything. I didn't. This was when they had more property sales than they could handle, they may pay more attention these days.

I went home and started phoning notaires, and finally found one, a lady in Rivesaltes, 100 km from here. She knew all about the change in the CGT rules, explained a few finer points, and also spoke excellent English, which was a good thing, as our buyers were British. She handled the sale for us, her communications were excellent, and she was reassuring to the buyers.

When relations living overseas bought a house near us, they asked me to act for them in signing the Acte. They had given the transaction to a notaire in a town about 12 km from here, so, as it was reasonably close, I agreed, and did the paperwork for the power of attorney with the notaire.

I came to wish I'd never agreed to have anything to do with the whole business. The notaire made so many mistakes in the paperwork that it was unbelievable - wrong names, wrong towns, wrong dates in the buyers' details, etc. etc. I made about 4 trips to the office and exchanged several emails just to correct them.

Next, the description of the property and cadastral numbers were wrong. After a strong argument he found he had omitted one plot, about 1/3 of the garden, from a previous Acte, and had just copied those details to this new one.

Some weeks into the saga, the notaire phoned me and told me I had to do something about the swimming pool, as it was green, and the buyers were on the point of backing out. I had to drop everything to sort it out, and also got the impression that he knew the buyers well, and was taking their side. I have since found out they own other property in the area including a well known vineyard, a retail outlet, and also a wine business in Paris. More clout than I have.

Finally, at the actual signing, instead of raising the point earlier, the purchaser came up with a problem he had discovered which the notaire had, apparently, not found in his searches. There was an irrigation pipeline running under the garden, to which the owner had to give access, which he said meant he might have to dig up the garden, and he wanted the price reduced.

I was so fed up by then that I just stood up, told them the sale was off, and started to walk out. They suddenly became conciliatory, asked me to sit down again, and the sale was completed without further problems.

So there are at least two notaires who I would never think of using again, even just for advice, as I think free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.

EDIT: If you get free advice from a notaire it is unlikely to be in writing, so if it is wrong you have no recourse.

Please correct me NH, if I am wrong.

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As I have said before, most of the notaires I came across were as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

I did say most! So that is not all.

The problem, and I think everywhere these days is that people qualify and then, and it is my firm belief that, especially in France, that means that they start doing the job they supposedly trained for and very little can be done about it if they are useless.

It means that they can do a terrible amount of damage, emotionally and financially to families after a death.

My DIL's mother died last summer. My DIL is french. It took her almost 9 months to try and sort out a simple estate without property involved. AND they would not release money for the funeral............. we helped with those costs, for many complicated reasons, but really the money was in the banque and everyone refused to release the money to pay the bill. Also the Notaire insisted on being paid about three months in.

My DIL has been very very distressed about this, bad enough loosing her mother, but the rest was an absolute disgrace, by the notaire and the banque.

As I said, most are chocolate fireguards, and they expect to be called 'Maitre'!

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