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🇫🇷 France /Economy & Trade

Banks can again charge succession fees on accounts of deceased minors

From Le Figaro · () French

Translated from French, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News From a news agency Outcome reported
  • France's Constitutional Council struck down a part of a 2025 law that had abolished certain bank succession fees for minors.
  • The Council ruled that prohibiting banks from charging any fees in these cases disproportionately infringes on the freedom to conduct business and contract.
  • This decision overturns a measure intended to ease the burden on families, particularly after a case where parents were charged fees for their deceased child's savings account.

France's Constitutional Council has declared a portion of a 2025 parliamentary law unconstitutional, specifically targeting the abolition of bank succession fees in certain cases, including those involving deceased minors. The Council's decision, published Saturday in the Official Journal, found that prohibiting credit institutions from charging any fees, regardless of cost, constituted a "disproportionate infringement on the freedom to conduct business and contractual freedom."

The law, definitively adopted by Parliament in May 2025, had aimed to eliminate certain bank succession fees, which were sometimes criticized as a "death tax" that compounded the grief of families. The most prominent measure sought to waive these fees for heirs when the deceased was a minor. This initiative was prompted by a widely publicized case where parents had to pay 138 euros to close the savings account of their 8-year-old child who died in May 2021.

in prohibiting credit institutions from charging any fees for operations in certain cases and regardless of their cost, the text constitutes a disproportionate infringement on the freedom to conduct business and contractual freedom.

— Constitutional CouncilExplaining the reasoning behind striking down part of the law.

Under the 2025 law, the simplest estates or those involving sums below a variable threshold, currently set at 5,910 euros, were also to be made free of bank succession charges. However, the Constitutional Council's ruling invalidates the phrases "are not subject to any fees" and "in the following cases" from the first paragraph of the text, effectively reinstating fees in these scenarios.

Conversely, the Council affirmed the constitutionality of another part of the 2025 law. This section, which was also contested by Caisse d'Épargne Grand Est Europe, stipulates that for cases not covered by the fee waiver, the succession fees would be capped at 1% of the total assets, not exceeding an amount set by decree. This aspect of the law remains in effect.

a 'death tax' that aggravated the grief of relatives of a deceased minor.

— Le FigaroDescribing the public perception of bank succession fees.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Le Figaro in French. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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