Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Albania: Are Albanian Legal Rules on Divorce Adequate for High-Conflict Divorces?
- Australia: Reform and Complexity: A Difficult Balance
- Brazil: The Social Food Bank and the State's Duty to the Child in the Face of the Non-Fulfillment of Child Support Executions
- Canada: Habitual Residence of Abducted Children and Divorce Act Reform
- China: On Protection of the Child's Right to Care under the Minor Guardianship System in China
- England and Wales: Familial Relationships: Entrances and Exits
- The Faroe Islands: A New Family Law is Born
- France: A Chronicle of French Family Law
- Hong Kong: Slow Progress Towards Family Law Reform?
- Ireland: ‘Best Interests’ as a Limited Constitutional Imperative
- Italy: The Divorce Allowance in Italian Law: The Role of Jurisprudence in the Formation of the Legal Rule in the Family Sphere
- Korea: AID and Surrogacy in Korean Law
- Namibia: Towards a New Juvenile Justice System in Namibia
- New Caledonia: Legal Pluralism and Diversity of Interpretation of Fundamental Rights (Common Law, Customary Law, Reservation Related to Indigenous Rights): The Example of New Caledonia
- New Zealand: Reform is in the Air
- Papua New Guinea: State and Customary Laws and the Underlying Law of Papua New Guinea: A Family Law Conundrum
- Portugal: What's Mine is Mine and Won't be Yours: The Newly Introduced Possibility of Opting Out of the Mandatory Succession Effects of Marriage in Portugal
- Serbia: Transgender Issues before the Constitutional Court of Serbia
- The Seychelles: The Seychellois Family Tribunal and its Implementation of the Family Violence (Protection of Victims) Act 2000
- UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Reflections on Family Law Issues in the Jurisprudence of the CRC Committee: The Convention on the Rights of the Child @ 30
- United States of America: Same-Sex and Different-Sex Relationships: Is it Time for Convergence?
- Index
France: A Chronicle of French Family Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2019
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Albania: Are Albanian Legal Rules on Divorce Adequate for High-Conflict Divorces?
- Australia: Reform and Complexity: A Difficult Balance
- Brazil: The Social Food Bank and the State's Duty to the Child in the Face of the Non-Fulfillment of Child Support Executions
- Canada: Habitual Residence of Abducted Children and Divorce Act Reform
- China: On Protection of the Child's Right to Care under the Minor Guardianship System in China
- England and Wales: Familial Relationships: Entrances and Exits
- The Faroe Islands: A New Family Law is Born
- France: A Chronicle of French Family Law
- Hong Kong: Slow Progress Towards Family Law Reform?
- Ireland: ‘Best Interests’ as a Limited Constitutional Imperative
- Italy: The Divorce Allowance in Italian Law: The Role of Jurisprudence in the Formation of the Legal Rule in the Family Sphere
- Korea: AID and Surrogacy in Korean Law
- Namibia: Towards a New Juvenile Justice System in Namibia
- New Caledonia: Legal Pluralism and Diversity of Interpretation of Fundamental Rights (Common Law, Customary Law, Reservation Related to Indigenous Rights): The Example of New Caledonia
- New Zealand: Reform is in the Air
- Papua New Guinea: State and Customary Laws and the Underlying Law of Papua New Guinea: A Family Law Conundrum
- Portugal: What's Mine is Mine and Won't be Yours: The Newly Introduced Possibility of Opting Out of the Mandatory Succession Effects of Marriage in Portugal
- Serbia: Transgender Issues before the Constitutional Court of Serbia
- The Seychelles: The Seychellois Family Tribunal and its Implementation of the Family Violence (Protection of Victims) Act 2000
- UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Reflections on Family Law Issues in the Jurisprudence of the CRC Committee: The Convention on the Rights of the Child @ 30
- United States of America: Same-Sex and Different-Sex Relationships: Is it Time for Convergence?
- Index
Summary
INHERITANCE RESERVE AND INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC POLICY
On 27 September 2017, the French Court of Cassation gave two important decisions about inheritance reserve and international public policy. Inheritance reserve is an important concept in French inheritance law. Article 912 of the French Civil code states that:
The reserved portion is that part of the assets and rights of the succession whose devolution, free of charges, legislation assures to certain heirs, called forced heirs, if they are called to the succession and if they accept.
International public policy is a well-known concept in international private law. It allows for the exclusion of foreign law as designated by the French conflict of laws rule, when this law violates the fundamental values of French law.
In recent years, scholars have been wondering whether the inheritance reserve was part of international public policy, especially since the EU ‘successions’ regulation entered into force on 17 August 2015. In this regulation, the conflict of laws rule designates the law of the deceased's last habitual residence, though the deceased may also choose the law applicable to his/her succession. In some common law countries, especially, the law does not contain any inheritance reserve. When the French conflict of laws rule designates the law of a common law country, must the law be ignored if it does not contain an inheritance reserve?
In both decisions of 27 September 2017, the descendants were famous composers: Maurice Jarre and Michel Colombier. Both had lived in France. They had had families and children in France, but later they divorced and moved away to live in California. They married again in this state and had other children. Their estates were composed of movable assets. So, the applicable estate law including any forced share was the Californian one. But the inheritance reserve doesn't exist in California, and the deceased had written wills to transfer their properties to their second wives and to the children from these second families. It was in order to get their inheritance reserve that the children of the first marriages brought their cases before the French judges.
In both cases, the French Court of Cassation affirmed ‘the foreign law, designated by the French conflict of laws rule, is not contrary to the French international public policy’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- International Survey of Family Law 2019 , pp. 113 - 128Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2019