Who are your heirs ? The question may seem preposterous but it deserves to be asked, especially in blended families, or, conversely, in those where there is no descendant.
In the absence of a will, the civil Code refers to the beneficiaries of your assets. It distinguishes two categories of heirs : the family by the blood on the one hand, the surviving spouse of the other. The allocation of assets will depend on the relationship of the heirs with the deceased, children, descendants or other family members, and the existence or non-existence of a spouse.
You have kids
* You leave your husband/wife and descendants. Has the difference of cohabiting partners and partners of a Pacs, which, in the absence of a will, do not inherit, the spouse has rights in the succession. But their extent depends on the of the heirs with whom he shared the succession. If children or grandchildren are those from the union of the deceased and the survivor, the latter inherits the choice of the usufruct of the entire estate or full ownership of one quarter of the estate. The rights of children are reduced by as much : bare ownership of the whole estate or full ownership of three-quarters. If the deceased does not leave descendants of another union, the survivor has no choice and receives one-quarter in full ownership. This distribution also applies if the deceased leaves both of the children from his union and another union.
* You do not let that children. If a person dies leaving to succeed him his children, the children inherit the entire estate. In the presence of several children, the sharing of the assets is made by equal shares. For this sharing, it is not necessary to distinguish between the legitimate children born of the marriage or natural children. For the latter, the children adultérins and children conceived outside marriage are not treated differently. For example, if a father had three children during his marriage, including one with a woman other than his wife, each will receive a third of his property. With regard to adopted children, they may inherit from their adoptive parents, as the children of the blood. In the previous example but this time with an adopted child, the division of property will be the same : one-third per child. Finally, note that if a child has been the subject of a simple adoption, he also continues to inherit from its parents by blood. In contrast, in the case of full adoption, he inherits only from his adopted parents.
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* You leave the grandchildren. The principle is simple : the small-children do not inherit from their grandparents. But it is different in two cases. The most common situation is one where the grandparents survive their children : it is then necessary to apply the mechanism of representation. The grandchildren share the share that their deceased parent would have received if he had survived his parents. Example : Peter has two children : Paul and Mary. Paul himself has two children : Antoine and Arnaud. Mary has a daughter, Chloe. Paul dies before his father, Pierre. The death of Peter, Paul and Mary would each have received half of his estate. With the death of Paul, the estate will be divided between Mary and the two grandsons of Peter. These come in representation of their father Paul and share his rights. As well, Antoine and Arnaud will each have a quarter of goods, so that Mary will receive half. Chloe, she has no right to anything. The second case is more rare. The distribution will be the same if a child, at the opening of the estate of his deceased parent, waives his rights for the benefit of his own progeny.
You have not had children
* You leave a spouse. If the deceased was married, the widower, or the widow from the estate to the brothers and sisters as well as uncles, aunts, cousins, cousins of the deceased. Its part depends only on the survival or not of the parents of the deceased. If they are deceased, the surviving spouse inherits everything, the grand-parents still alive who are not entitled to anything. If the father and/or mother is still living, he must share. The spouse inherits three-quarters of the estate if one of the parents of the deceased is alive, and half if both parents are alive.
* You leave of the brothers and sisters. If the deceased was unmarried, widowed, divorced and without offspring, his estate goes to his brothers and sisters, and his parents still live. It is necessary then to distinguish two situations. When his father and mother died before him, the brothers and sisters inherit the entire property. If Peter leaves a brother and a sister, each gets half of the estate.
on the contrary, each living parent of the deceased shall be entitled to a quarter of the estate. The brothers and sisters share the rest, that is to say, half if both parents are alive and three-quarters when only one has survived. The nephews and nieces were not intended to inherit directly from their uncle or aunt. It is otherwise when they come, as in the case of small children, to “replace” their parents are predeceased. They share then the share which was due to return to the brothers and sisters.
* You leave ascendants but not to brothers and sisters. When a person without a spouse dies without descendants, and that it has neither brother nor sister, his property will revert to its ancestors : parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. We apply then the règle of the slit of the estate. It is a technique in which, in the case of a person who died without posterity, to distribute the assets of the estate between the parents. This allocation is made based on the link of kinship with the deceased’s father (paternal line) and mother (maternal line).
The estate is divided into two equal parts : 50 % for the ascendants on the paternal side and 50 % to the ascendants on the maternal side. Then you should look for the heirs by going up from generation to generation in each of the two lines. This is the first generation that inherits life. Example : Paul dies. He was no longer his parents but his maternal grandparents and his paternal grandmother have survived. The legacy goes to half to the maternal grandparents, one-quarter each, the other half, to his paternal grandmother. If there is no ascendant in the life of a side, the maternal line or paternal in which he rest of the survivors receives the entire estate. In our example, if only the paternal grandmother survived, she inherited everything.
* You no longer have that uncles, aunts and cousins. If the deceased had no spouse, no descendant, or brother or sister, or nephew and niece, or ascending, except in the case of the long-dormant, its closest relatives are uncles, aunts, cousins. It is also use to the slot of the estate. We, therefore, determines two equal parts, 50 % for the maternal line and 50 % to the paternal line. Then, it searches for the closest parent in calculating the degree of kinship uniting each potential heir to the deceased.
To calculate a degree, it is necessary to identify the ascendant common to the deceased and his potential heir and then calculate the number of generations, so of degrees between them. Thus first cousins are relatives to the fourth degree, since there are four generations between them (father of the deceased, grand-parent, common father of the heir’s potential and finally potential heir). Has equal degree of kinship, the sharing is carried out by equal shares. In the event of a difference of degree in the same line, the nearest degree inherits all the share of this line. Example : Paul leaves two cousins in the fifth degree on the maternal line, a cousin to the fourth degree, and a cousin in the fifth in the paternal line. The two cousins of the maternal line will share the half of his estate. In the paternal line, only the parent in the fourth degree inherits.
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Finally, if there is a person in one of the two families, the parents of the other family who receive the full inheritance. In our example, if Paul never left his cousins in the paternal line, the cousin in the fourth degree would inherit everything. Conversely, if there were only the cousins of the maternal line, they would share the estate. Ditto if, in one of the rows, there are heirs, beyond the sixth degree : everything goes to the other line.