A Dutreil weakened by a property company
The holding owned a property company unrelated to the business. The ineligible portion reduced the exemption. The perimeter was isolated before the collective undertaking.
ASTÉRALE Cassinia › Gifts, Dutreil pact, life insurance
Handing over without damagePassing on is not only about reducing duties. It is deciding who receives what, when, with which powers — and making sure that both the business and the family survive the operation.
Simple gift, shared gift, graduated or residual gift. The shared gift has one decisive merit: it fixes value at the date of the deed and forecloses later disputes between heirs.
Giving bare ownership while keeping the usufruct reduces the taxable base according to the donor's age, and the usufruct extinguishes free of duty on death. Provided future income has been anticipated.
A 75% exemption on the value of shares passed on, under strict conditions: collective then individual undertakings, a management role, genuine operating activity. One condition missed brings the whole down.
A succession regime of its own, outside the civil estate in most cases. What matters is not the policy but the beneficiary clause, which must be drafted bespoke and reread every five years.
The holding owned a property company unrelated to the business. The ineligible portion reduced the exemption. The perimeter was isolated before the collective undertaking.
Parents had given outright a portfolio from which they drew most of their income. Three years later they depended on their children. Split ownership would have avoided it.
« My spouse, failing that my children in equal shares » on a €3m policy, with one disabled child and another divorcing. The clause was split and a future protection mandate put in place.
The split-ownership scale changes every ten years, notably at 61 and 71. But age is not the only criterion: giving without first securing one's own income is the commonest mistake.
It is demanding. It is the follow-through conditions — holding period, management role, annual filings in some cases — that bring pacts down, not their setting up.
Save for a reversion clause or very particular cases, no. That is why the map of the estate always comes before the gift, never the other way round.
General information: this page is neither personalised advice, nor an offer, nor an investment recommendation. Legal and tax deeds are drawn up by your notary, lawyer and accountant, whom we coordinate. All investment carries a risk of capital loss. Regulatory statuses and full legal notice on the Legal notice page (French).
If you head a family estate that nobody sees in full any more, that is what the first meeting is for: rebuilding the whole picture and telling you, plainly, whether there is a case for working together.