Economy. Bank inheritance fees now capped at €850

Fees charged by banks for transactions on a deceased person's account will not exceed 850 euros, according to a decree published this Thursday in the Official Journal following the vote on 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 euros, or in the case of simpler inheritances. For more "complex" inheritances, 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 this Thursday restricts it even further: in all cases, fees cannot exceed 850 euros, even if 1% of the funds held exceed this amount. This limit will be reassessed annually to keep pace with inflation. Parliament definitively adopted this law in May, proposed by Socialist MP 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.