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Patrimonial Law

The challenges

Given the increasingly complex legal and tax environment in which people and assets move around the world more freely than ever before, estate planning currently represents a unique challenge, which needs to be managed as carefully as a business. All privately or professionally wealthy owners will face major decisions at various stages of their lives, which require general reflection taking into account various areas of private and tax law. Apart from the financial implications, these decisions also require careful consideration of the client’s personal situation and relations with relatives.  

Our practice areas

Estate planning:

  • Advice on passing on family businesses
  • Advice on passing on private wealth
  • Arranging gifts.

Inheritance:

  • Advice on inheritance arrangements
  • Drafting wills
  • Settling national and international inheritance disputes (co-ownership agreements, division of assets and partition)
  • Inheritance tax advice
  • Drafting declarations
  • Assistance with tax disputes.

Marital regimes - Family law:

  • Analysing and selecting a marital regime
  • Drafting marriage contracts
  • Managing changes of marital regime
  • A nalysing and managing the property implications of divorce (liquidation, partition, compensatory allowance)
  • Strategy for protecting a surviving spouse and relatives.

Organisation and management

  • A dvising on estate structuring methods particularly through company structures
  • Asset management advice
  • Advising on subdivision of property rights. 

International law in association with our international taxation teams:

  • A dvising on estate planning and inter vivos dispositions in an international context
  • International tax advice for optimisation
  • Structuring private investment in France by non-residents
  • A dvising on the legal and tax implications in France of foreign law institutions (trusts and foundations).  

Our approach

  • A multidisciplinary approach based on our expertise in civil law: law on gifts and inheritance, marital regimes, property law, international private law.
  • Cooperation with our specialists in national and international taxation, corporate law, employment law and litigation.
  •  Decision-making assistance involving advisory services and taking each client’s personal objectives into account.
  • Assistance with legal and tax litigation.  

Our clients

Our services are designed exclusively for privately or professionally wealthy individuals, whether French residents or non-residents.

 
Pierre Devis
Pierre Devis
Partner
France, Lyon
Pierre Devis joined CMS Francis Lefebvre Lyon in 1990