France’s new trust law

David Anderson, solicitor and chartered tax adviser at Sykes Anderson LLP, a
City of London law firm, discusses France’s new fiduciary law. Sykes Anderson
LLP is involved in establishing such French “trusts” and the analysis of their tax
treatment both under English and French law.

Please note that tax law is a complex subject and you should not rely on this article without
professional advice on the facts of your case.

“Aux armes citoyens!” – “Quoi ! des cohortes étrangères, feraient la loi dans nos
foyers”

Trust law has effectively not existed in France since the Revolution (1789 to 1799)
abolished feudalism and created a principle in French law that ownership of property
cannot be divided into various rights. In a recent worrying trend the Republic’s
governing “First Estate” has had a change of heart, and dropped some of its ésprit
revolutionaire in favour of interpreting la constitution republicaine as permitting a
form of trust vehicle to be recognised in French law. There has been little academic
protest about this, which shows how bourgeois les intellectuels français have become.
Instead however of simply adopting the Anglo-Saxon trust vehicle, which has been
developed and served well for a millennium, the French law makers have developed
further the Roman law concept of a fiduciary or fiduciare. Little do they know that
this is a Trojan........

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