How Jean-Marie Le Pen's surprise final will is tearing his family apart
By the time of his death in January 2025 the founder of the far-right Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had been out of front-line politics for a few years. But right until the end this deeply divisive figure still had the ability to make waves. According to a new will drawn up in August 2023 and whose existence Mediapart can reveal, Jean-Marie Le Pen bequeathed to his wife Jany the right to continue to live at the family's manor in a wealthy suburb of Paris. This has hampered his daughter Marine Le Pen, who only found out about this will after her father’s death, in her efforts to sell the property. As Karl Laske and Marine Turchi report, the veteran far-right figure's final wishes are now the subject of intense family negotiations.
BeforeBefore his death on January 7th 2025, Jean-Marie Le Pen dropped a small bombshell on his three daughters. This was in the form of a surprise, one-page will, written in an unsteady hand in blue ink a year and a half earlier, on August 5th 2023. In it, the founder of the far-right Front National (FN) – now called Rassemblement National (RN) - declared that he was “bequeathing ” to his wife Jeannine, known as Jany, the “usufruct [editor's note, use of] of the remainder of my estate … in addition to what she is entitled to as a surviving spouse”. He wrote: “These are my final wishes.”
