A daughter forces her 85- and 87-year-old adoptive parents to leave their home, and the courts agree with her: “This whole ordeal is killing us”

You would like to think that with family a handshake would suffice to seal an agreement. However, as the story of an elder couple who are about to be evicted from their home goes to show, always get everything in writing.

Yves, 85, and his 87-year-old wife, who has been bedridden for the past three years, have been ordered by a court to vacate their home on 2 June 2025, at the behest of their adopted daughter. They made an informal agreement with her, turning over ownership of their house as a “gift” but on the condition that they could live there until they died.

What led the adopted daughter to have her parents evicted?

The predicament of Yves and his wife as told by L’Indépendant began decades ago. Yves, who had been a film inspector, and his wife, who worked as a childcare worker for social services, generously opened their home in Sarthe, a province about 120 miles southwest of Paris, to 29 foster children over the years.

However, they only formally adopted one of them, a four-year-old girl at the time, who has asked a court to have them evicted from their current home in Perpignan, located in the south of France.

While they had paid off their mortgage on their house in Sarthe, they ran into financial difficulties and creditors were on the verge of seizing their property. In order to keep their only daughter’s inheritance safe, they transferred the ownership over to her in 1986.

They made an oral agreement with her that they would live in the house until they died. Then, in 2002, the couple decided to sell that house and relocate to Perpignan and again made the same deal with their daughter. But they didn’t sign any legal agreement, nor even draw up a rental contract.

For nearly two decades, they covered all the maintenance expenses and property taxes. They covered their costs with a €1,800 monthly pension (about $2,000) and Yves’ side hustle delivering flyers. But then Yves’ wife fell ill, and then he did too in 2017, and they couldn’t make ends meet.

Their expenses began to exceed their incomes and they went into debt, no longer able to afford to pay the tax bill on the property which was drawn directly out of their bank account. So, the tax authorities went to collect from the legal owner, the adopted daughter who still lives in northern France. So, she sued her adoptive parents in 2019.

“We’re not going to live another 20 years—just wait a little…”

She asked the court to have her parents evicted so that she could sell the house on the grounds that she was facing financial hardship and claimed that her parents were “living off the fat of the land.” However, in 2021 the court ruled in the elderly couple’s favor, saying they were entitled to live in the house and would have to be compensated if forced to leave.

But they had to pay €1,800 in outstanding property taxes and allow viewings of the home for potential sale. The couple consulted an attorney who recommended appealing the decision and that’s when things went wrong.

In March 2025 they lost and they were given two months to pack their things and get out. “I want to stay in my home with my wife. And my cats—they roam the neighborhood and come see me every day,” pleaded Yves. “We paid for this house. We shouldn’t be thrown out like dogs.”

“This whole ordeal is killing us,” he added. “Anyway, we’re not going to live another 20 years—just wait a little…”

Yves is making a last-ditch effort to avoid being evicted next week. He’s retained a new lawyer who is planning to file a petition, if there is still time, to revoke the donation of the property on the grounds of “ingratitude” while at the same time securing a mortgage guarantee.

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