DandNHill

Yes you must be right that it all depends on being married or not.

patricialloydmorris

We moved to Begard in March. My two married sons cams over a day later and bought our furniture over for us and stayed for a week. Which is more than I ever saw them in the UK and they both lived within five miles of our house, the youngest 100 yards away. Since then the eldest has been here three times, bringing my two young grandsons with him for a week. He is coming next week again with the children for a week. The day he returns my youngest son, wife and two daughters arrive for a week, and have already booked another week in August. My husband's daughter and two kids were here last week for five days, and my brother and his wife for ten days before then. So to date we have had three days without seeing family members. We also text or Skype most days.

Back in the UK I babysat my three grandsons on Saturdays and my two grandaughters on Sunday's. I really only saw my sons fir ten minutes as they dropped off the kids. So go for it, you will find you have so much more quality time with the family than when you were in the UK.

I still miss the feeling they are only ten minutes away if I want to see them for impromptu hugs Ect though. Also there's an element of guilt that is always lurking when the grandchildren say "I miss you Nana".

We are trying to sort out the inheritance situation at the moment, which is so difficult, so be very aware there is no easy solution in France if you have children from former marriages. One set is always going to be at a disadvantage with the inheritance tax I think.

Good luck and I hope that all your dreams come true!

Pollyana

Its France. Its just across the water, people go there for lunch! Its closer to many parts of England than Scotland is
And the children are adults, they have their own lives.

dmu

The respective sets of children will pay little or no Inheritance Tax on their share of their parent's inheritance. Things get complicated when the surviving spouse dies and there are several unrelated second-generation joint owners. The Notaire is best placed to find a way to protect every one's interests...
Your situation is different from the OP's, in that they only have one set of children and they are simply "partners", and they'lll have all the issues mentioned in #11 if they aren't legally bound. There again, the Notaire will advise....

Novocastrian

The kids are grown up now. We left our 2 sons in Toronto and Regina respectively. There's been no problem, both have visited us in either France, the UK or both in the last 2 years. They'll both be arriving next month for another visit but with a twist: the one in Toronto is travelling on a one way ticket and intends to settle in either Germany or Scotland.

We always said that whether or not we'd stayed in Canada, we would have no idea where they would be in 5 years so this issue was moot.

Novocastrian

Another :good post:

But things can get complicated even without complications in France. My deceased MIL and her now also deceased two sisters jointly inherited a house on Omaha Beach from their grandmother. (The mother died in the War). The three grandchildren treated the place as a sort of time share, dividing up the pleasant weather months between them.

Between them they had a total of 7 children including my OH. One of these children unfortunately pre-deceased both his parents leaving 3 children of his own to eventually split his split of the property.

Thus there are now 8 co-proprieters who own the place, with fractional ownership ranging from 1/27th to 1/3rd (the latter because one daughter bought her brother's share of 1/6th from him).

Making any decision about the maintenance or improvement to the property is a task of similar complexity to Brexit. Herding cats is trivial in comparison.

French property inheritance law is, frankly, stupid.

EuroTrash

Inheritance is a tricky business however you go about it.
The UK system can cause even more bad feeling between siblings when they all try and elbow each other out of favour.

Novocastrian

That's not our experience. Both my parents are dead and had simple wills: the first to go left everything to the survivor and the second left everything divided equally between myself and my two sisters. My FIL died earlier this year and his will was the same. Our UK will is the same too.

There's never been a hint of friction in either family.

Cad

Lucky you, I can assure you it's not the case for a lot of families.

Chatter Static

Being far enough away helps with friction, Voodoo dolls don't work cross borders either unless I purchased a dud.

patricialloydmorris

I think voodoo dolls do work across the great divide, as someone has certainly got it in for me at the moment. Won't bore you with the details, but one step forward, ten back at the moment. I think I want to go home. Only kidding, I love it here, but I wish lifer were a bit easier sometime.

We are just going to make English wills as we both have children from previous marriages.

Novocastrian

Common sense and the lacking of a misplaced feeling of entitlement helps more though.

EuroTrash

There's families like yours. And then there are dysfunctional families...

Novocastrian

... and then there's French property inheritance laws.

The problem with the house on the beach is that we now have a group of owners of vastly different means. The oldest is my OH, retired like I am, and well off, as are others, but the youngest is a 22 year old daughter of the deceased cousin I mentioned, who is a low paid social worker. She and her siblings each own 1/27th but simply can't afford 1/27th of the cost of bringing the house up to safe standards.

We (and others of the group) have been struggling for years to sort it all out but have no real chance of success.

To complicate the whole matter further, everybody grew up having access to the wonderful place as children and nobody wants to let their access go. We (my wife and her sister) could easily afford to buy the rest out but nobody wants to sell. Except perhaps, in the circumstances, us (my wife and her sister) but nobody except one cousin can afford to do that (and she doesn't want to piss of one of her other cousins (who is on the phone as I type).

C'est compliqué.

dmu

Be aware that French Inheritance Tax will be levied on French property, whoever inherits.