Lifting a decree, is a type of redress that someone may use when they have been evicted from their property by means of an adjudication by decree; Roman law accorded two years to the evicted party to exercise this buy back and regarded this very favorably, as one sees in the last law in the code de jure dominii impetrando [ of the right to obtain ownership ].

Yet, this restitution against decrees is not generally allowed. There are even three of our customary law codes which formally reject it; Auvergne, the March and the Bourbonnais; and in common law, a wrong committed by the other party, not even an enormous wrong, does not constitute a means for restitution against the decree.

Some authors, including Dumolin, Gouget, and Brodeau, claimed that it would be a matter of fairness in these cases to allow for this restitution, but the jurisprudence is contrary. [1]

The ordinance of 1629 made an exception for minors and this arrangement was followed by the Parliament of Dijon and in some other parliaments, in which a considerable wrong was judged to be sufficient in order to make restitution for the minor, but this did not take place in the parliament of Paris.

The statutes of Bresse give the concerned parties six months to recover their auctioned goods by reimbursing to the buyer the principal price and the legal costs.

But the actual lifting of the decree, strictly speaking, only takes place in Languedoc: this repurchase or regression was founded there on Roman law, but the parliament of Toulouse extended its duration up to 10 years.

When the property had been declared by a decree and when on the demand for a lifting there had intervened a judgment which allowed the party to exercise the action of appealing, this action, being personal in nature, could be exercised for thirty years: the jurisprudence was not entirely certain on this matter, but it was fixed by a declaration of the king dated 16 January 1736.

Following this declaration, it is only the owners of the properties decreed or their descendants who are able to appeal by asking for the decree to be lifted . This action only lasts ten years, in whichever jurisdiction the decree was made; the period only runs from the day of possession; it runs against orphans and minors, except their appeals, if they fail, against the guardians or trustees. The demand for a lifting of decree can only be formed in the parliament of Toulouse, or in the cour des aides  [2] in Montpellier, as applicable to each of their own respective jurisdictions; even if the decrees were made in front of inferior judges, the plaintiff must make genuine offers to the purchaser, and in the case of refusal, deposit with the clerk’s office, the contract costs to reimburse following the received settlement. The fruits of the decreed properties belong to those who obtained the lifting of the decree on the day on which the prize was received by the purchaser, or when it was deposited, but he must also pay the interests of the contract costs; the purchaser can only be dispossessed by paying him the settled sum for the contract costs and the interests, unless there is a delay on the part of the purchaser, in which case one can appeal in order to cease the interest and even sentence the purchaser to relinquishing, unless he makes an appeal for the settlement. See  the traité de la vente des immeubles par decret [treatise on the sale of properties by decree] by M. de Héricourt, chap. xii. n.6, [3] and the entries, Put up for auction, Public notice, Decree, Effective seizure.

1. The first references here seems to be to Charles Du Moulin (1500-1566), Le grand coustumier general (Paris, 1567). The second reference seems to be to Nicolas Gouget, Traité général des criées et décrets, hypothecques et nantissemens (Paris, 1616). Julien Brodeau (1585?-1653) was another legal scholar; it is not clear to which of his books the author refers.

2. The c our des aides was a sovereign court of the Old Regime that was established for disputes concerned with certain taxes: aides , tailles , and gabelles . See Roland E. Mousnier, The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy (1589-1789): Society and the State , trans. Brian Pearce (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).

3. Louis d’Héricourt du Vatier, Traité de la vente des immeubles par decret, new edition (Paris, 1739).