The right of habitation is recommended here
The right of habitation is recommended here
"When I reach the age where I can go to the sun, I intend to give my son and his young pregnant wife the right to live in the villa I own. Is it necessary to draw up a lease? How can I be sure of getting my property back if they unfortunately separate one day? I can't imagine that, in such a case, she would be the one living there with a third party... "
Eric
If you sign a lease with your son, you will have to set a rent, even a modest one, and you will not have complete control over the consequences of a possible separation. The divorce judge's main task is to allocate the marital home to one of the spouses, and the presence of children has a major influence on his or her decision. To address your concerns, it would therefore be wiser to create a right of habitation in favour of your son, i.e. to give him the legal right to live in your home or to occupy part of it.
Article 777 of the Civil Code specifies that this right includes, unless it has been expressly limited to the person of the person to whom it has been granted, the right for that person to live in the encumbered property with his family and the people in his household. If you create a right of habitation in your son's name over the villa, he will be able to live there with his wife.
In the event of divorce, case law accepts resolutory conditions in relation to rights of dwelling, in the sense that it is possible to make the validity of the right in time conditional on the non-occurrence of an event. You can therefore stipulate that the right will lapse in the event of divorce. It should be noted that the courts require very precise wording when describing the conditional event. The occurrence of the condition must be easily identifiable on reading the deed.
Finally, for the sake of completeness, under article 776 of the Civil Code, the right of habitation is non-transferable and does not pass to heirs. This is the essential difference between dwelling rights and usufruct. There is therefore no need to include any specific clause to ensure that the right of dwelling does not pass to your future grandchildren when the time comes.
