What if by the greatest of luck, you discover a treasure while carrying out work in your garden or your property. What are your rights in relation to this happy discovery? What to do with it? Charlie’s details Pebbles, legal advisor for the real estate site PAP.fr.
franceinfo: If, for example, I discover gold coins while digging in my garden, can I keep them?
Charlie Cailloux: The Civil Code organizes all this in its article 716! Yes, if you discover a treasure on your property, you own it 100%. There are still several conditions: the treasure in the legal sense is something hidden or buried over which no one can claim ownership and which is discovered by pure chance.
You get the treasure if, and only if, no one can claim ownership, this is one of the important conditions: In a 2018 case, a home buyer discovered gold bars in the garden, the seller’s heirs claimed ownership of the ingots.
In this case, it is not a treasure in the legal sense, and even if you discover it on your land you cannot appropriate it, it is up to the person who can prove their ownership.
Another case: I have work done by a construction company who discovers a treasure at home! Who owns the nest egg?
Here again, the Civil Code has provided for everything: in this case, there is a 50/50 split between the inventor of the treasure, the one who discovered it, and the owner of the fund.
This was the case in 2018 for three workers who discovered 600 Belgian gold coins, bearing the effigy of King Leopold II, on the demolition site of an old house in Finistère, for a value of 100,000 euros. The owner recovered 50,000 euros and each of the three workers left with 17,000 euros.
And if by chance I discover historical remains, what should I do?
If you discover objects that may be of interest to prehistory, history, archeology or numismatics (this is the science of coins and medals), you must immediately, under penalty of criminal sanction, make a declaration to the mayor of the municipality who, himself, will forward to the Prefect who will refer the matter to the competent administrative authority.
If the objects discovered are particularly remarkable, the State can claim the finds and compensate the owner and the inventor of this treasure.
So you advise all of our listeners on this Sunday morning to take out the pickaxe and go and make some holes in their garden?
No, no, stay warm! I remind you that in the definition of treasure, there is the notion of chance. If you are looking for a treasure with a metal detector, for example, the discovery is not accidental, and you cannot, a priori, appropriate the discoveries, whether on your land or on the land of a third party ( and then, moreover, the use of metal detectors is fairly supervised).