The owner died in the early 90s - the folks who rocked up were the grandchildren of her ex-husband.
As for people who have said “oh she should have charged for the storage” - that would have been nice, but that wasn’t the agreement, and French law treats a verbal agreement as a contract, and also places the onus in this type of situation on the person holding the goods to make extensive efforts to contact the owner and/or their heirs.
There was recently a case in the press where person sold “old junk” to an antique dealer. Antique dealer sells it at auction for fortune. Antique dealer is then forced to hand over full sum to person who sold old junk/priceless antique.
Squatters rights are incredible. A friend had their house occupied one winter while they were away, 16 years ago. The squatters had a baby. They are only legally allowed to remove them this year, when the child turns 18.
The napoleonic code. This is why France is full of abandoned properties, stuck in probate for all eternity, as finding and getting hundreds of heirs to unanimously agree on a sale or whatever is… hard.
True, but the thing with verbal agreements is that it's very difficult to prove what was agreed upon.
Your mother should have just lied.