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LES ECHOS

Death & Debt: More French Heirs Renounce Succession Of Departed, Indebted Parents

Inheritance can provide a nest egg for children of the deceased. But increasingly in France, deceased parents leave a mountain of debt to children who can't afford to pay it off. A sign of both economic hard times and shifting demographics.

Death & Debt: More French Heirs Renounce Succession Of Departed, Indebted Parents

*NEWSBITES

PARIS - Europe's grim economic news now appears to be following more and more families all the way to the grave. In France, a new report shows that a rising number of people are dying in debt, leaving children unable to cover the costs to creditors -- and ultimately forced to legally renounce succession.

Disclaimed inheritances increased by 33.5% between 2004 and 2010, according to figures given by the Ministry of Justice. This upward trend seems to be accelerating in 2011, which could well turn out to be a record year. The high cost of living and rising housing and energy prices has forced more retirees to take loans to make ends meet; and when they die, their debts are passed onto their heirs, with burdens averaging between 20,000 and 60,000 euros.

Beyond the current economic cycle, this situation is linked to France's longterm aging population. In order to cope with the costs of paying for retirement or home medical care, families are forced to sell their house, leaving no inheritance -- or even worse, debts.

When people renounce their inheritance, the succession is then said to be vacant. It's up to tax services to try and sell some of the estate's items to repay the creditors of the deceased, though it is typically not enough to cover the outstanding debt.

Read the entire original article in French by Catherine Rollot

Photo – John Althouse Cohen

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

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Geopolitics

Journalist Spy, Subversive 13-Year-Old: Law And Order In Totalitarian Russia

Even beyond the bloodshed of its war in Ukraine, lesser acts of aggression by the state are a clear expression of the intentions of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Photo of an anti-war drawing by a 13-year-old girl

Incriminated drawing by Maria, 13

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

They are "minor” incidents compared to the bloody frontline near Bakhmut, or the missiles raining down on Ukrainian cities. But these same incidents say a lot about what is going on in Russian society, behind the relatively normal facade that has been preserved for a year.

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Two arrests occurred Thursday, one of a Russian citizen whose story is one of aberrant cruelty; the other of an American journalist turned hostage in the proxy confrontation between Moscow and Washington.

Aleksei Moskalyov is a single father of a 13-year-old girl, Maria, a status which is in itself considered abnormal in Russian society. But above all, Maria was taken away from her father and placed in an orphanage for having drawn an anti-war picture at school. Her own teacher reported her to the authorities.

The father was sentenced to two years in prison for having criticized the Russian army. He fled, but was arrested in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, probably betrayed by the activation of his cell phone. He risks an even harsher sentence, and likely will not see his daughter again for years.

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