In brief: Court of Cassation, Civil Chamber, No. 625 of 18 September 2002. A succession comprising 3 buildings to share among 5 heirs. Procedure: the first-instance court ordered an appraisal → the expert directly assigned a lot to each heir without valuing or drawing lots → the judgment endorsed the report → confirmation on appeal. Cassation: annulment. “The partition of property (qismat al-usul) requires the valuation of the shares and the designation of the moudrik to proceed to the draw of lots, or else the sale of the property by public auction.” The expert describes and quantifies the divisible masses; it never decides who gets which lot — the draw of lots decides, or the auction if division is impossible. Practical consequence: any partition endorsed without a draw of lots (or without an auction sale if indivisible) is void, even if all heirs agreed at the time.
1. The original fault: the expert who thinks he is a notary
The expert report as endorsed by the trial judges contained an operation that was efficient in appearance: “to heir A goes building No. 1, to heir B goes building No. 2, to heir C goes a share of building No. 3…” Everyone leaves with something, the matter seems settled. Except that this distribution is legally not a partition within the meaning of Moroccan law — it is a mere arbitrary distribution, and the Court of Cassation does not accept it.
The rule is old and has never changed: succession partition (qismat al-usul) presupposes two steps separated in time and entrusted to two different persons. First the expert values the masses and identifies the reference element that will make the lots comparable — the moudrik(مدرك), that is, the value allowing equivalence. Then, and only then, the court proceeds to the draw of lots between the heirs. Skipping the first step amounts to assigning blindly; skipping the second amounts to substituting the expert's decision for that of chance.
2. The key passage of the ruling
“The partition of property (qismat al-usul) requires the valuation of the shares to be divided and the mention of the reference element (al-mudrik) allowing the draw of lots to be carried out, or else the sale of the property to be divided by way of public auction. Having relied on a report that merely assigned the lots directly to the heirs, without prior valuation or draw of lots, the impugned judgment violated the rules of partition and must be quashed.”
This reasoning locks the Court of Appeal and the first-instance court into a simple alternative: either partition in kind (with valuation + draw of lots), or the public auction sale and distribution of the price. There is no third path — least of all one that would let the expert alone decide the composition of the lots.
Contested succession? A RICS market valuation of each building is what makes the lots comparable and the report cassation-proof.
Request an appraisal3. Why this rule genuinely protects heirs
One might think it is a formalism. In practice, it is exactly the opposite: it is the rule that prevents manoeuvres and pacifies families. Three buildings never have the same value — one is in Casablanca, another in Settat, the third in Nador. One is leased, another vacant, the third occupied by an heir settled for 20 years. If the expert is allowed to assign freely, two risks appear immediately:
- Economic risk: one heir receives a property valued at MAD 1,200,000, another a property valued at MAD 800,000, without any balancing payment or quantified rebalancing. The inequality only appears at resale, when it is too late.
- Relational risk: the heir who feels wronged will always suspect a collusion between the expert and an influential co-heir. The draw of lots, because it is random, is the only procedure that eliminates this suspicion.
The prior quantified valuation makes the lots comparable; the draw of lots makes the result acceptable. Together, they produce a partition that no one will usefully challenge six months later. This is precisely why the Court of Cassation refuses any shortcut.
4. And if the division is not materially possible?
This is the other branch of the alternative set by the ruling: the public auction sale. When the properties are not divisible into lots of equal value — a single apartment, a plot whose subdivision would devalue it, an indivisible business — the Court of Cassation validates the forced sale and the distribution of the price among heirs according to their shares. The expert's role remains the same: it quantifies the market value that will serve as the reserve price. It is the judge, and the judge alone, who then orders the sale.
In the case commented on, the expert had three distinct buildings — therefore matter divisible in kind, provided it was properly valued. It had no technical reason to overstep its mission. Its haste cost the whole family a cassation procedure and a remand before another court, meaning in practice several additional years before the actual liquidation.
5. What this changes for successions opened in 2026
The 2002 ruling has never been softened. Since the Family Code of 2004, the Cassation case law has reaffirmed on several occasions the separation between valuation by the expert and assignment by the draw of lots. The concrete consequences for a lawyer or an MRE heir in 2026 are as follows:
- Before requesting the endorsement of a partition appraisal report, verify that the report contains a quantified valuation masse by masse, and that it clearly identifies the reference element (moudrik) on which the draw of lots will be based.
- If the report directly assigns lots to named heirs, refuse to sign it and request a supplementary appraisal — this is the only way to avoid a late cassation after several years.
- If division in kind is technically impossible (single property, economic indivisibility), favour the judicial auction sale from the outset with a reserve price set by the expert — the procedure is faster than a contested appraisal.
- Where there are MRE heirs residing abroad, anticipate the power of attorney legalised at the consulate before the opening of the procedure: a draw of lots carried out in the default of an absent heir is regularly challenged.
6. The exact role of the real estate expert in a succession partition
The technical mission of a RICS expert appointed in a partition file comes down to four deliverables:
- The exhaustive inventory of the divisible properties (land titles, surfaces, descriptions, real rights, current charges).
- The market valuation of each property according to RICS Red Book methods (direct comparison, rental capitalisation, depreciated replacement cost for specialised buildings), with documented market sources.
- The divisibility analysis: is it technically possible to form lots of equivalent value? Under what planning, topographical, functional conditions?
- The proposed moudrik: the equivalence value on which the court can base the draw of lots, together with any balancing payments if perfect divisibility is impossible.
What the report never contains: the name of the assignee heirs. This is the red line the Court of Cassation drew in 2002 and has never erased since.
An expert report that directly assigns the lots to the heirs — even with their verbal agreement at the time — will not withstand a cassation appeal. The only safe procedure: quantified valuation + draw of lots or judicial auction sale. Any other path exposes the partition to annulment years later, when one of the heirs or one of their own successors decides to reread the file.
Are you an heir or lawyer in a contested succession?
ReaConsult delivers expert reports consistent with the Cassation 2002 grid: inventory, RICS market valuation, divisibility analysis, proposed moudrik. No lot assignment — the court decides, as the law requires.
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