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Do You Need A French Will for a Maison Secondaire ?


roxy1968
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We bought a "4 walls and a Roof ruin" 5 years ago in Cher and hope to completely renovate the property, finishing in about 2 years time.   To date we have spent all our holidays hard at work but recently we retired and now spend about 5 months a year working on the project.   We expect the property to be worth about E.150,000/180,000 when completed.

Could someone advise us as to whether or not we have to draw up a French will, or not, as we still have our UK address as our permanent residence.   We have not had any children, (this is our first marriage for both of us)_my husband's parents are deceased and he does not know of any relatives since his parents divorced when he was very young and not very communicative.    I have many cousins, nieces and nephews.

We look forward to hearing your comments.   

 

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Although in your particular situation a French will is probably not totally necessary (without a will, property will most likely be split between spouses then distributed among surviving blood relatives) it would be a good idea. Any French property, regardless of whether you live in France or not, is subject to French inheritance laws and wills made in other countries would probably not have any legal status.
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Sounds like having your marriage made into a communaute universelle would be the best thing. This can be done via solicitors in the UK. It means that the french will treat your marriage as it is in the UK, ie when one of you dies your other half gets the lot and you can sell up if you want etc.
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ClarkKent, their property will be worth well over the ceiling for tontine and I think that they should take that into consideration. That is why I think that changing their marriage regime might be  a better solution.

Before doing anything ofcourse, good legal advice is necessary from more than one source.

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ClarkKent, their property will be worth well over the ceiling for tontine

We expect the property to be worth about E.150,000/180,000 when completed.

TU, the value of the property is only their assessment of what it might be - no one can foretell the future, and the taxable element of the tontine is half the value of the property. I don't know what the current threshold is but €75,000 - 80,000 may be below it.

All I can say about my case was that my property was conservatively valued - by the notaire - so that it would not attract any tax.

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