his son Jean-Michel Jarre and his sister rejected by the European Court of Human Rights

The musician Jean-Michel Jarre and his sister Stéphanie, who challenged before the ECHR the decisions of the French courts depriving them of the inheritance of their father, Maurice Jarre, were dismissed but are appealing.

Disappeared in 2009 in the United States where he had settled, the composer Maurice Jarre bequeathed all his property to his last wife. Since then, his children Jean-Michel and Stéphanie have contested this inheritance. The French justice system having remained deaf to their requests, it was towards the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that they turned in 2018 to challenge the court decisions which deprived them of their father’s inheritance . Thursday February 15, they were rejected but they are appealing. They say they fear in particular a “potential impact” on business “similar”.

“The Court sees (…) no reason to depart from the reasoning of the (French) courts to the extent” notably where the ECHR “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.

French courts have “verified that the applicants were not in a situation of economic precariousness or need”, continues the court based in Strasbourg, which therefore agrees with French justice. This had estimated that Maurice Jarre had the right to disinherit Jean-Michel, 75 years old, and his sister Stéphanie, 58 years old. They “have taken note with regret of the judgment rendered (…) against them”, indicated in a press release sent to AFP Me Nicolas Olszak, their lawyer.

A case that resonates with the Hallyday estate

“Given the issues attached to this decision, and its potential impact on other similar cases, we will make a request for referral (…) to the Grand Chamber in the coming weeks” of the ECHR, which acts as an appeal, he added. “The ECHR validates the ‘testamentary freedom of the deceased’ who removed his estate from French law. Is thus closed the ‘saga’ dispute over the international estate of Maurice Jarre (echoing other famous successions, including that of Johnny Hallyday…)”, has commented on the social network (ex-Twitter) the lawyer Nicolas Hervieu, specialist in European law.

Installed in the United States in the mid-1960s, winner of three Oscars for composing film scores Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago And The road to India, Maurice Jarre, who died in 2009, had bequeathed all his property to his last wife Fui Fong Khong via a “family trust”, a legal structure provided for by Californian law, which the two applicants had, in vain, 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 California law.

The “testamentary freedom of the deceased” respected

But in the Jarre case, the Court of Cassation considered in 2017 that ignoring this “hereditary reserve” was not “not in itself contrary to French international public order”. In short: this is not necessarily an essential principle according to the highest French court, which concluded that French law did not have to apply to that of California in this case.

The ECHR considers that the French courts have “respected the testamentary freedom of the deceased” whose will reflected a “continuous and well-defined” approach to allow his surviving spouse to benefit from all of his property”, without “fraudulent intent”.

The contested succession of Maurice Jarre came to light at the start of the legal battle over the inheritance of Johnny Hallyday, between his widow and the rock star’s two eldest children who are contesting the American will of their father having disinherited them, there again under California law.

France “dispossessed of a cultural heritage”

In a case similar to that of the Jarre estate, the ECHR also dismissed on Thursday three children of Michel Colombier, arranger among others of Serge Gainsbourg and Madonna, who died in 2004 and who had also organized his estate via a “family trust”. excluding them from his inheritance.

These two requests, introduced in 2018, then constituted a theme “unpublished” for the ECHR, said a spokesperson. “As a result of successive legal decisions, other French families may now be deprived of any right to review the use that will be made of the works of their deceased relative abroad,” lamented Me Olszak, lawyer for the Jarre children. “This is how France is also dispossessed of a cultural heritage which, although intangible, is no less emblematic of French cultural identity”, he added.