Matteo Dubourg walks families through the everyday tools of French succession — donation-partage, life insurance, and dismemberment — so wealth passes on smoothly.
Nobody likes thinking about inheritance. But in France, doing nothing has a specific price — the succession tax on a straightforward transfer can quietly reach 30-45 %, and families often discover it in the worst possible moment. The kinder thing you can do for the people you love is to plan while you're still around to explain your choices.
Matteo Dubourg helps families across France do exactly this, without heavy legalese and without imposing a plan. Here's the simple version of what he does.
1. Understand what you actually own
Before doing anything, Matteo sits down with a client and lists everything: real estate, savings, life-insurance contracts, business shares, gold, art, foreign accounts. Most people have never done this. Just seeing the list in one place changes the conversation.
2. Use the abattements the state already gives you
French law lets you gift a lot to your family every 15 years, tax-free:
- **100 000 €** per parent, per child.
- **31 865 €** per grandparent, per grandchild.
- **80 724 €** to your spouse (though married spouses inherit tax-free anyway).
If you have three children and 15 years of runway, that's *600 000 €* of tax-free transfers between you and your spouse. Most families never use this — Matteo makes sure his clients do.
3. Assurance-vie is your best succession tool
This is a big one. Assurance-vie contracts don't follow the normal succession rules. You can name any beneficiary — spouse, children, grandchildren, a friend, an association — and each beneficiary gets up to 152 500 € tax-free on the amounts you invested before age 70.
If you have three grandchildren, that's potentially 457 500 € transferring completely outside your estate and outside inheritance tax. It's one of the most under-used tools in French wealth planning.
4. Consider a démembrement
You can split an asset into two rights: the *usufruit* (right to use and enjoy it) and the *nue-propriété* (bare ownership). If you give the nue-propriété of a property or portfolio to your children while keeping the usufruit, the value of the gift is *much* lower for tax purposes (based on your age), and when you pass away the two rights reunite automatically — with no additional tax.
It sounds complex. It's a one-hour conversation with the right advisor.
5. Donation-partage — sharing while you can
A donation-partage lets you formally distribute part of your wealth between your children *now*, with legal clarity about who gets what. It avoids the classic family conflicts at succession time ('but Papa said…') and locks in today's asset values instead of tomorrow's contested valuations.
6. Talk about it
The single biggest gift you can give your family isn't tax savings — it's clarity. Matteo often runs a joint session with clients and their adult children so everyone understands the plan, the timing, and the reasoning. That one conversation prevents most family conflicts down the road.
Start with the free audit
Matteo's 45-minute audit is a perfect entry point for a first inheritance conversation. Bring rough numbers, an idea of your family situation, and leave with a plain-language plan.
- Book a call: calendly.com/matteo-dubourg/md-patrimoine-premier-echange
- Website: mdpatrimoineconseils.com
- Email: matteo.dubourg@mdpatrimoineconseils.com
Tell him Julius sent you.
