Conflictual succession: Watch out for the forced auction of the property in joint possession!

A brother and a sister do not agree on the sharing of real estate inherited from their mother. Justice tries to force them to sell them at auction.

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A legacy Can be providential as well as to transform into a poisoned gift. Mr. F. and his sister had bitter experience. On the death of their mother, both inherit three buildings. Unfortunately for the sister, her brother had been sentenced a few years earlier to pay significant sums to a bank. This one seeing in the inheritance the opportunity to finally be paid, it inscribes mortgages judicial on the three buildings of which Mr. F. is co-indivisory with his sister. The bank requests the sharing of joint ownership to obtain the payment of the sums that Mr. F. owes him.

The catch is that the brother and the sister fail to agree on how to share the buildings. The bank then assigned them to justice to achieve its ends. The court, noting the failure of any amicable solution between the brother and the sister, orders the Sale of buildings by judicial license. Also called sale at the helm, this procedure designates the sale of real estate before the judicial court, at public auctions. This is a last resort solution, when it is impossible to share an amicable or in kind undivided property.

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A sale price often lower than that of the market

There Sale at the helm is often used in the context of conflicting successions between heirs or separations from unmarried couples but owners in joint possession. Adonis law firm considers it as “A radical solution, which dispossesses all the joint owners in block, generates additional costs and deadlines and requires a price set by the judicial market, often lower than the free market”. In fact, the judges put the three buildings at only 50,000, 110,000 and 165,000 euros.

If there is a subject on which the brother and the sister ended up finding common ground, it is on the interest of filing himself in cassation. On February 5, 2025, the Court of Cassation in fact annulled the court’s decision, invoking article 1377 paragraph 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, according to which “The judge cannot order a sale by license that if goods are not easily shareable in kind»». The objective: to preserve, as much as possible, the property rights of each. By demanding a prior verification of the possibility of sharing in kind, the law indeed protects the heirs against a forced sale.

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Procedural omission

“”Sharing in nature is the principle and the auction the exception »insists the Court of Cassation. However, the judges did not check if the buildings could be shared between the heirs without going through a sale.

A “Procedural omission which is enough to invalidate the whole procedure»» Auction of the three buildings, deciphers the cabinet Adonis, which spotted this decision of the Court of Cassation. The consequences of this case are no less heavy for the brother and the sister. Admittedly, their three buildings are not sold out, the auction being canceled. But the procedure for sharing these goods must start again, with notary fees, and undoubtedly also of lawyers, to the key.