Forced Heirship - Louisiana

Louisiana

In Louisiana, Civil Code article 1493 dictates that children under 24 at the time of death and interdicts (individuals permanently incapable of caring for themselves) who are not disinherited (LCC art. 1494) qualify as forced heirs. The legitime is equal to 25% of the patrimony (if one forced heir); or 50% (if more than one); and each forced heir will receive the lesser of an equal proportion of the legitime or what they would have received through intestacy (LCC art. 1495, Succession of Greenlaw). If a person who would have otherwise qualified as a forced heir dies before the parent, rights to that share may pass to that person's children, although how that share is distributed among them if one or more is an interdict remains unsettled law. Forced heirs may demand collation, whereby certain gifts received by a forced heir within three years of the death of the parent may be subtracted from their share. Louisiana does not have a forced heirship provision for spouses, however at death the spouse's interest in any community property is converted to his or her separate property; and a usufruct is granted over the remaining community (with the forced heirs as naked owners of their respective shares). That usufruct terminates at death or remarriage.

Wealthy individuals in the U.S. sometimes seek to circumvent forced heirship laws by transferring assets into an offshore company and seeking to settle the shares in the offshore company in a trust governed by the laws of a jurisdiction outside their domicile.