## Facts

- Aristide Lanari, an Italian citizen, lived in France with his second wife, Roberta Maccoun, an American citizen.
- Lanari had a daughter from his first marriage, Maria Elena Meyer, a Swiss citizen.
- Before his death, Lanari opened several bank accounts and safe-deposit arrangements in locations outside France, often jointly with Maccoun or in her name.
- Lanari also made numerous inter vivos gifts to Maccoun.
- Lanari executed a holographic will leaving most of his estate to Maccoun.
- Meyer challenged the proposed disposition, alleging that French succession law limited Maccoun to no more than one-fourth of the estate and reserved the balance for Meyer.
- Meyer also alleged that the foreign accounts, deposits, and gifts were an unlawful attempt to conceal or shift assets abroad to avoid French rules safeguarding a child’s reserved share.
- A French tribunal de grande instance agreed with Meyer and ordered apportionment of the estate under French law, treating the prior gifts and foreign asset placements as subject to that apportionment.
- Maccoun died during the proceedings and was replaced by a representative acting for Maccoun’s three sisters, her heirs.
- On appeal, Maccoun’s representative argued that gifts made outside France should be governed by the law of the place where the gifts occurred and that the testamentary disposition should be governed by Italian law based on Lanari’s nationality.

## Issues

1. Whether French succession law applied to Lanari’s estate given his domicile in France at death, despite his Italian citizenship and an Italian-law argument for the will.
2. Whether inter vivos gifts and property arrangements formed outside France (including foreign accounts and safe deposits) could be included in the estate accounting under French law when alleged to have been used to defeat the child’s reserved share.
3. Whether the court should apply the law of the place of each gift or asset (and Italian law for the will) rather than French law, where that division would allow the reserved share to be avoided.

## Decision

- The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal affirmed the lower court’s judgment applying French law to the succession.
- The court upheld the apportionment under French forced-heirship rules, limiting the surviving spouse’s entitlement to one-fourth and allocating the remainder to the child.
- The court treated the prior gifts and the foreign-held accounts and deposits as subject to the French-law calculation of the estate shares, rather than insulated by their foreign location or the place where the transfers were made.
- The court rejected the effort to apply different foreign laws to different parts of the plan (place-of-gift law for gifts and Italian law for the will) when that approach would defeat the mandatory French reserved-share rules.

## Legal Principles

- French succession law may govern the estate of a decedent domiciled in France at death, even when the decedent is a foreign national.
- French forced-heirship rules limit the surviving spouse’s share where a child has a reserved portion.
- Inter vivos gifts and arrangements transferring wealth to a spouse may be brought into the succession accounting and reduced when they impair the reserved portion.
- French courts may refuse to give effect to foreign choice-of-law arguments tied to the location of transfers or the decedent’s nationality when those arguments would allow evasion of mandatory French succession protections.

## Conclusion

The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal held that French law governed the succession of an Italian citizen domiciled in France and that the child’s reserved share could not be defeated through foreign accounts, safe deposits, or inter vivos gifts to the surviving spouse; accordingly, the court affirmed an apportionment limiting the spouse to one-fourth and awarding the balance to the daughter.


Maccoun/Watts v. Lanari/Meyer, Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal October 22, 1964 (1964)