France: Donations Can Be Revoked for Ungrateful Children
In France, a donation made to a child can be revoked if the child has been ungrateful: a former notary shares an example
In principle, a donation is irrevocable: the donor cannot take back the property once given. But a few rare exceptions, such as the donee’s ingratitude, allow for this rule to be bypassed.
“There was no apparent conflict at the time the notarial deed was signed.” In 2017, a widow decided to prepare her estate. She gave her daughter full ownership of her 120-square-meter family home in the Paris suburbs. At the time, the house was valued at €280,000. “According to the terms of the donation, the mother added a partial usufruct reservation for the ground floor—that is, the right to occupy and use that space as her residence. Her daughter had free use of the upper floor and the outbuildings (basement, attic, upstairs kitchen). It was a practical arrangement: the mother remained in her familiar environment, while the daughter became the owner, with the prospect of obtaining full ownership at no additional cost upon the mother’s death,” explains Coralie Daven, a former notary and founder of a platform dedicated to making legal concepts easier to understand.
A few months later, having separated from her partner, the daughter moved into the parts of the house she had free disposal of (the upper floor). But little by little, living together with her mother deteriorated. “The daughter’s strategy was gradual and insidious,” observes the former notary. She began by restricting access to certain shared rooms in the house. “She locked the living room, supposedly due to renovations, and limited access to the kitchen on the pretext of remodeling.” Daily intimidation followed: “She would turn up the music upstairs, host noisy parties in the evenings, and refused to turn off the shared lights at night.” The daughter also cleared out the outbuildings without warning, throwing away her mother’s personal belongings, then stopped contributing to common expenses (electricity, heating, water), forcing her mother to pay everything alone. “Finally, she barred her mother from using the summer kitchen by putting up a fence, even though that space brought her comfort.”
This was too much for the mother, who went to court to have the donation revoked and recover full enjoyment of her property. In principle, a donation is irrevocable, but the judge ruled in favor of the mother on the basis of the law: “A donation between living persons may be revoked for cause of ingratitude.” Several grounds may apply: abuse, serious misconduct or insults, threats to the donor’s life, or refusal of maintenance or assistance. In this case, the judge found that the daughter’s behavior—the removal of personal belongings and the intentional deprivation of the mother’s enjoyment of the property—constituted serious insults. The judge also highlighted the daughter’s failure to meet her implicit obligations as a donee: respecting the usufruct, providing assistance to her widowed mother, and behaving decently toward her benefactor.
Testimonies from neighbors and relatives “confirmed the deliberate and malicious nature of the acts. This was not mere negligence, but a real strategy of exclusion. The daughter felt dispossessed of her own home by her mother’s constant presence. She wanted full enjoyment of the property, despite the terms of the donation.”
As a result, the judge ordered the revocation of the donation: the donee had to return the property to the donor. The mother thus regained full ownership of the house. “Revocation for ingratitude is an automatic legal protection under French law, but it is not always explicitly mentioned in the notarial deed,” notes Coralie Daven. The former notary warns, however, that simply having no relationship with one’s children does not constitute ingratitude. “Not inviting one’s mother for Christmas or not wishing her a happy birthday, for example, is not punishable.”
After this event, the mother decided to draft a will. “Aware that she could not completely exclude her daughter because of the forced heirship rules, she opted for a balanced strategy,” explains the former notary. She bequeathed the disposable portion (50% of her estate) to her granddaughter and designated her as the primary recipient of the family home during the estate distribution. The granddaughter would then be required to pay compensation to her mother to cover her reserved share. “A way to protect the moral legacy while respecting the legal framework.”
