The French musician Jean-Michel Jarre and his sister Stéphanie, who challenged before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) the decisions of the French courts depriving them of the inheritance of their father, the composer Maurice Jarre, were dismissed on Thursday.
“The Court does not see […] no reason to depart from the reasoning of the (French) courts to the extent that the ECHR “has never recognized the existence of a general and unconditional right of children to inherit part of their parents’ property” , indicates the Court in its judgment, rendered unanimously by the seven judges.
The French courts “verified that the applicants were not in a situation of economic precarity or need”, continues the court based in Strasbourg (eastern France), which agrees with French justice.
This had estimated that Maurice Jarre had the right to disinherit Jean-Michel Jarre, 75 years old, a monument of electro music, and his sister Stéphanie, 58 years old.
Installed in the United States in the mid-1960s, winner of three Oscars for composing film scores Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago And The route to India and died in 2009, Maurice Jarre bequeathed all his property to his last wife, Fui Fong Khong, via a “ family trust », legal structure provided for by Californian law, which the two applicants had unsuccessfully contested before the French courts.
In French law, you cannot theoretically disinherit one of your children, by virtue of the principle of “hereditary reserve” which does not exist in Californian law.
But in the Jarre case, the French Court of Cassation ruled in 2017 that ignoring this “hereditary reserve” was “not in itself contrary to French international public order”. In short: this is not necessarily an essential principle according to the highest French court. This had considered that the French law did not have to apply to that of California in this case.
The ECHR considers that the French courts “respected the testamentary freedom of the deceased” whose wishes reflected a “continuous and well-defined” approach to allowing their surviving spouse to benefit from all of their property”, without “fraudulent intention”.