Since 2018, the Belgian legislator has created several substantial exceptions to the traditional prohibition on agreements concerning future estates. Succession agreements make it possible to create, modify or terminate rights to a person’s future estate among the parties involved. A central innovation of the 2018 Belgian reform is the ‘global succession agreement’, also referred to as a family pact, which allows parents to establish and agree upon an individualized and subjective equilibrium with all of their children, taking into account both prior and present donations to the children, and several other elements deemed relevant to them. The equilibrium is subjective as it is not defined by objective, quantitative criteria, but rather by how the parties qualitatively, together as a family, feel about what constitutes a fair and balanced solution for them. This family confirmation of their own specific equilibrium constitutes a core condition for the validity of the global succession agreement. This contribution first examines how this equilibrium should be understood and how families can effectively attain it in practice, with particular attention to the role of family dynamics. Second, this article explores how global succession agreements can accommodate non-traditional family structures and complex family situations, with the aim of achieving a fair and equitable regulation that reflects the specific wishes and needs of all family members involved.
Thijs et al. (Tue,) studied this question.