Bank charges for inheritance will now be capped at 850 euros

Until now, banks could deduct up to 1% of the amounts held by the deceased.

Quoted by France Inter, the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir hailed it as "a major victory for families." The fees charged by banks for transactions on the account of a deceased person cannot exceed 850 euros, according to a decree published Thursday, August 14 in the Official Journal, after the vote on a law on the subject in May .

This text had already prohibited banks from applying, from November 13, 2025, fees – 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 euros, or in the case of the simplest inheritances.

For more "complex" estates, for example, when the deceased had a mortgage or no designated heir, the law had authorized fees to be charged, but set an initial ceiling of 1% of the amount of the sums held. The decree published Thursday restricts this ceiling even further: in all cases, fees cannot exceed 850 euros, even if the percentage of the sums held is higher than this amount (i.e., sums of more than 85,000 euros). This limit will be reassessed annually to keep pace with inflation.

"Banks are and will remain at the side of their customers, particularly in the most difficult times," the French Banking Federation responded in a statement sent to AFP. "The banking profession takes note of the published texts while regretting the implementation of administered pricing that denies the reality of the work accomplished," the banking lobby believes.

"Too often, banks charged several hundred, even thousands of euros, even in simple situations," Juliette Woods, Banking and Insurance Officer at the UFC-Que Choisir association, reacted to France Inter . "The heirs found themselves faced with opaque, poorly explained fees, which felt like a double punishment, especially during the pain of bereavement."