Buying Property in the Languedoc: Inheritance Law

You might have wondered why there are so many wonderful old buildings in France falling into ruin. The reason is a law designed to prevent the accumulation of wealth in few hands, by ensuring that it gets dispersed as widely as possible each generation.

In France, as in England, the traditional mode of inheritance was based on primogeniture. The eldest son got the lot. In the Languedoc the traditional mode was to divide the inheritance between all the children. This was why it was common to find forty or fifty co-seigneurs for the same siegneurie in the middle ages. This division was widely accepted as one of the main causes of the weakness of Ramon of Toulouse, when faced with the feudal French and their ranks of rich and powerful nobles.

When the Languedoc was annexed to France, the French system of primogeniture was introduced, and this lasted until the French Revolution. The Revolutionaries were also aware that primogeniture built large and powerful families, and for this reason they favoured the old system of the Languedoc. It was a way of dividing and ruling, designed to prevent the accumulation of power in dynastic families.

Whether it succeeded or not is questionable, but it explains why the French concept of liberty does not extend to allowing you to leave all your property to who you want. There are strict statutory regulations about what you can and cannot leave in your will.

Broadly the system operates rather like the rules of intestacy in English law jurisdictions - with the important difference that in those jurisdictions these rules are applied only when there is no valid will. In France these rules apply whatever you put in your will. When people had large families a property might be jointly inherited by say six children. By the next generation there might be forty co-owning cousins. By the next generation the possition would be impossible. The property could not be sold without all co-owners agreeing. Even if they could all be found, the chances of them agreeing on anything was remote. Worse, no-one had an interest in maintaining the property since that would benefit all the non-contributers.

That's the historical background. For the practical implications, click here.