Usufruct

What it means

The usufructuary may live in the house, rent it out and keep the rent. The naked owner holds the ownership and gets the property when the usufruct ends.

A surviving spouse frequently takes a usufruct over the deceased's share of the community property, with the children as naked owners.

Why it matters

It explains an outcome that looks wrong from outside: a surviving spouse who lives in the house for life and children who own it but cannot sell it.

It is the closest Louisiana equivalent of a life estate, and the two are not identical, so advice written about one does not transfer cleanly.

When you are likely to meet it

• On a Louisiana small succession affidavit, which asks whether a legal usufruct attaches to the property.
• Where a surviving spouse and children hold the same house in different capacities.

How this varies by state

Louisiana only.

Related terms

• Community propertyIn some states, most of what a married couple acquires during the marriage belongs to both of them equally, whatever the paperwork says.
• Life estateAn arrangement where one person has the right to use property for their lifetime, and somebody else automatically owns it afterwards.
• Naked ownershipOwning something in Louisiana that somebody else has the right to use.
• Real propertyLand and what is permanently attached to it — a house, a barn, a fixed structure. Everything else a person owns is personal property.
• Separate propertyIn a community property state, what belongs to one spouse alone — usually what they brought into the marriage, and what they inherited or were given.
• SuccessionLouisiana's word for the whole of what other states call probate — and for the estate itself.

Sahvelo guidance that uses this

• How your home passes