STARTING POINT
Most organisations and familiezs we are asked to advise were built without a formal legal or successoral framework. This becomes apparent the moment the collection must serve a larger purpose: transmission, wealth structuring, patronage, institutional engagement.
Our task is to give the collection a legal and successoral framework suited to its value, in close coordination with the family's existing advisors.
OUR INTERVENTIONS
Succession planning
Mapping of intergenerational expectations, projection of tax scenarios, activation of available instruments — including dation en paiement (settlement of tax through artworks), dismemberment of ownership, and gifts to foundations. Conducted in close coordination with the family's notary and existing advisors.
Legal structuring
Setting up dedicated vehicles — civil partnership (société civile), foundation of public interest, foreign-law structures where the family situation calls for them. Design of family governance tools around the collection: charter of use, management committee, decision and arbitrage procedures.
Patronage & gifts
Design and conduct of patronage operations — corporate acquisition of works by living artists, dation, gifts to foundations or museums, long-term institutional deposits. Orchestration of the tax, transmission and recognition dimensions together.
Expert reports & litigation
Expert reports prepared for legal proceedings — contested successions, divorces, disputes between co-owners, provenance challenges, customs appeals. Reports drafted to be admissible before French civil courts and usable in international arbitration.
WORKING WITH EXISTING ADVISORS
All our engagements are conducted in explicit coordination with the client's principal wealth and legal advisors. We bring the dimension none of them covers alone: a fine knowledge of the works, of the market, and of the arbitrage that follows.
THREE DOMAINS
Strategy, legal, transactions.
Large-scale collections
Building and managing collections of scale. A collection of hundreds or thousands of works. The foundations of a future museum. A collection that has outgrown informal oversight. We advise on acquisitions, sales, active portfolio management, and provenance research. A bespoke offer, built for each client.