Nearly a quarter of French couples today live in a common-law union or PACS, but these couples are excluded from survivor’s pensions – even after decades of living together. For the surviving spouse, the financial consequences are radical: no right to receive part of the deceased’s pensioneven though married couples can receive 50 to 60% of the pension of the deceased spouse.
This exclusion creates a major legal inequality which mobilizes family associations and is part of the 2026-2027 reform projects. In the meantime, several levers exist for unmarried couples who wish to protect the survivor. Life insurance, investing in real estate, SCI, making a will… Which solution should you prefer?
Life insurance
First solution‘life insurance is obviously a tool to be favored because it remains in a more interesting tax framework for inheritance tax which is 60% », declares Frédéric Subra, partner of DELSOL Avocats and co-head of the property law and tax law department.
For payments made before the insured person turns 70, the surviving partner benefits from a individual allowance of 152,500 euros net of tax. Beyond this amount, the amounts transmitted are only taxed at a rate of 20% up to 700,500 euros, then at 25% for the higher fraction. Without forgetting the possibility of designate the partner without constraint of kinship.
Investing in stone
“ L’acquisition of property rental real estate to generate future income is a good idea to create additional incomeadds the lawyer. But be careful when buying in joint ownership, you will need to include a tontinière clause “. This rule, inserted directly into the deed of purchase at the notary, stipulates that upon the first death, the survivor is deemed to have always been the sole and exclusive owner of the property from the beginning.
If this mechanism perfectly protects the partner against attacks from compulsory heirs (the children of the deceased) who cannot block the property, the tax trap remains intact: the survivor will still pay 60% tax on the value of the recovered share, unless the property constitutes their common main residence and that its overall value is below a regulatory threshold of €76,000, an amount that has become completely anachronistic in the current real estate market.
Create an SCI
The creation of a Real Estate Company (SCI) may also be preferred, but it imposes a crucial trade-off between income tax (IR) and corporate tax (IS). If the SCI is subject to IR, property income bears the brunt of the tax pressure: “ Rents do not always allow bank debt to be repaidhe points out. Which very often forces cohabitees to reinject personal money in the form of an associate current account “.
Thanks to the accounting mechanism of the depreciation of the property and the acquisition costs, the SCI with IS generally manages to erase the entirety of its taxable profit for many years. “ Please note, when the property is resold by the company, the capital gain is subject to IS, taking into account the depreciation of the property. “, he warns.
Make a will
THE will remains an essential civil tool for formally allocating one’s available share (Editor’s note: the part of one’s assets which is not legally reserved for children) to the life partner, but it in no way resolves the 60% tax issue. To mitigate it, we can choose to bequeath or give during one’s lifetime bare ownership of a real estate or financial asset.
Its tax value depends directly on the age of the usufructuary at the time of transfer. “ If the donor is between the ages of 51 and 60, the value of the bare ownership is set by law at only 50% of the full ownership, halving the tax base. », adds Frédéric Subra. Which still leaves inheritance fees quite high.
