Bank charges for an inheritance cannot exceed 850 euros

Fees charged by banks for transactions on a deceased person's account may not exceed €850, according to a decree published Thursday, August 14, in the Official Journal following the passage of a law on the subject in May. This text had already prohibited banks from applying fees from November 13, 2025—for example, to close a savings account—if the deceased was a minor, if the total balance of the accounts was below a certain threshold—currently set at €5,910—or in the case of simpler inheritances.

For more "complex" estates, for example when the deceased had a mortgage or had no designated heir, the law had authorized fees to be charged, but had set an initial ceiling of 1% of the amount of the sums held. The decree published Thursday restricts this even further: in all cases, the fees cannot exceed 850 euros, even if 1% of the sums held exceeded this amount. This limit will be reassessed each year to keep pace with inflation.

Parliament definitively adopted this law in May, proposed by MP (Puy-de-Dôme, Socialist Party) Christine Pirès Beaune and supported by the government. This initiative followed the high-profile case of parents having to pay €138 to close the Livret A savings account of their 8-year-old child who died in 2021.

After the law was passed, the Minister Delegate for Trade and the Social and Solidarity Economy, Véronique Louwagie, welcomed "a step forward to protect families and ensure confidence in the banking system." "The pain of absence should not be compounded by excessive bank charges, which are often misunderstood and unclear," she added.

"Banks are and will remain at the side of their customers, particularly in the most difficult times," the French Banking Federation (FBF) responded in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse. "The banking profession takes note of the published texts while regretting the implementation of administered pricing which denies the reality of the work accomplished," the FBF said.