When a farmer dies in France, do the plots the farmer rented, and the premiums and payment entitlements they brought in, have a value to enter in the estate? In a reported decision of 3 November 2016, the Third Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil and commercial matters) upheld a court of appeal’s ruling that a French farm lease (bail rural) has no patrimonial value, but that the farm business, because it generated identifiable values, had to be valued apart from the land and entered in the estate’s assets.
The facts
Two spouses married under community of property died, the husband on 20 February 1992, the wife on 13 November 2007. Their four daughters disagreed over settling the estates. One of them farmed plots at Vervins; according to the appeal, those plots had been let to her mother, whose rights as tenant she had taken over (subrogation). She asked for “the farm business” (l’exploitation) at Vervins to be excluded from the estate’s assets, and applied for the preferential allocation (attribution préférentielle, allotment to a single heir against an equalising payment) of shares in an EARL (exploitation agricole à responsabilité limitée, a limited-liability farming company) and of agricultural land.
On 3 February 2015, the Amiens Court of Appeal found that she had included the areas of the Vervins farm in her declarations for the grant of suckler cow premiums and single payment entitlements (droits à paiement unique, EU farm subsidy rights), on the account of an EARL. It dismissed her claim and held that the farm business had to be valued independently of the land, already counted separately in the assets. On preferential allocation, it held that no ruling could be made as matters stood and sent the parties back to the liquidating notaire (notaire liquidateur, the French civil-law notary handling the estate).
The daughter appealed. In her view, the right to the lease is strictly personal to the tenant, non-transferable and devoid of any patrimonial value (articles L. 411-34 and L. 411-74 of the Rural and Maritime Fishing Code, code rural et de la pêche maritime), and, absent a constituted fonds agricole (a farm business formally declared as a transferable asset), a farm cannot be an asset (article L. 311-3 of the same code). She also criticised the court of appeal for holding that a farm business “is worth its capacity to generate income” (translated from the French, as are the quotations below).
The decision
The Cour de cassation dismissed the first ground of appeal (Cass. 3e civ., 3 November 2016, appeal no. 15-20.366, reported). It noted that the court of appeal had held, “rightly, that a farm lease has no patrimonial value in itself”, and found, besides the declarations of premiums and entitlements, that, “according to the supporting documents produced, that farm business generated identifiable values, such as to make it a fruit-bearing economic entity, without counting the leases concluded over part of the plots”. It concluded that the court of appeal, “by a reasoned decision, could deduce from this that it had to be valued independently of the value of the land and entered in the estate’s assets”. Frugifère (fruit-bearing) means producing income, fruits in the legal sense.
The lack of value of the lease is approved “rightly”, as a rule of law; valuing the farm business apart from the land is an inference the court of appeal “could” draw from the documents produced, not an automatic one. The Court neither adopted nor disapproved the court of appeal’s reasoning based on the capacity to generate income, and did not expressly answer the argument based on the absence of a fonds agricole.
On the second ground, the Court partly quashed the decision under article 4 of the Civil Code, which forbids a judge to refuse to decide: the court of appeal could not send the parties back to the liquidating notaire without ruling on preferential allocation. It remitted that point to the Amiens Court of Appeal, differently constituted.
What this changes for valuation
The lease at zero. The valuer separates the deceased’s land, leases and farm business. The farm lease receives no value: the decision states that rule without citing any statutory provision, and does not deal with the lease transferable outside the family (bail cessible hors du cadre familial, articles L. 418-1 et seq. of the same code), which follows a separate regime.
The farm business at its identifiable values. The values retained here are livestock premiums and single payment entitlements, since replaced by other Common Agricultural Policy entitlements. The valuer lists those entitlements, priced from transfers between farmers, then, if the deceased owned them, the livestock, equipment and stocks. The decision does not rule on the valuation method: it accepts the valuation in the light of supporting documents establishing identifiable values. The report starts from those documented values; the méthode par le revenu (income method) can check their consistency.
Documents, and a single count. Area declarations, entitlement statements, premium payments and accounts underpin the figures. As the declarations here were made on an EARL’s account, the valuer checks who holds entitlements sitting in a company whose shares are also valued, so as not to count them twice.
Before and after the death. The appeal disputed that the farm’s income since the death should accrue to the joint estate (indivision, the assets the heirs hold jointly until partition). The Court did not expressly decide that point, but its dismissal left in place the appeal ruling which, according to the appeal, had added to it the values and rights produced by the plots the heir farmed. As a precaution, the report separates what existed at the death from what the heir acquired afterwards, notably for paying a co-owner who manages joint assets (article 815-12 of the Civil Code).
The land on its own side. The estate’s land is valued separately and, if let, as let, as the First Civil Chamber held in 2025 for the farmland sold to the tenant son and for the farm let to the allottee’s company. Those decisions do not contradict the 2016 one: the décote pour occupation (discount for occupation) measures the burden of the lease on the landowner, the value of the farm business what the tenant’s work produces. Where an estate includes both, the values add up, with no line for the lease.
This valuation differs both from the outgoing tenant’s indemnity, limited to the amortised cost of improvements, and from the price of elements actually transferred on a change of farmer.
What the valuer takes from it
- A farm lease has no patrimonial value in itself: it does not appear as such in the assets of the tenant’s estate (the decision does not deal with transferable leases).
- Farming the let land may generate identifiable values, premiums and payment entitlements, valued independently of the land and entered in the estate’s assets.
- Those values are proved by documents, dated element by element, without double counting a company’s shares.
- The estate’s land is valued separately, as let if it is let (Cass. 1re civ., 26 March and 10 December 2025); the farm business’s value is added.
Further reading
The Market value page describes the assignment, its timescale and its fee. The guide Drafting a market value expert remit for a partition in France and the glossary entries attribution préférentielle, méthode par le revenu and décote pour occupation complement this article. Two other farm lease decisions of autumn 2016 are discussed separately: Outgoing French farm tenant: amortised cost, not added value and Change of farm tenant: know-how can be a transferable asset. On the same theme: Renewed farm rent: the tenant’s unauthorised buildings stay out and Swapping the use of farm plots does not create a farm lease. The decision is available on Légifrance.
What next
A farm business to enter in an estate, alongside the land?
I list and value what the deceased farmer's business produces, payment entitlements, premiums, livestock and equipment, separately from the land and with no value for the lease. The report allows the notaire, the heirs or the court to make up the estate's assets on values supported by documents.
Free quote, by email or by phone. No commitment before the quote is accepted. Fees are never linked to the value of the property (Charte de l’expertise, Title I, §2.1).
