However, in 1273 the arbitrators at the Parlement de Paris decided that the inheritance would be split among the sisters: Yolande got Nevers and the Château de Druyes, while her sisters Margaret and Adelaide inherited Tonnerre and Auxerre, respectively.

Her first marriage was to John Tristan, Count of Valois, son of Louis IX of France and Margaret of Provence, in June 1265;[1] they had no children, and he died of dysentery in 1270 at Tunis while on the Eighth Crusade.

Upon the death of her paternal grandfather, Hugh IV, Duke of Burgundy, in 1272, after their marriage in Auxerre the same year,[1] Yolande and her influential second husband, Robert III, Count of Flanders, claimed the Duchy of Burgundy on the basis of primogeniture, being the first-born child of Hugh's deceased eldest son.

Hugh IV, however, in his will named his third son, Robert, as heir to the Duchy while giving other fiefs to his granddaughters.

King Philip III of France, one of the arbitrators, decided in favor of her uncle, who thus became Duke Robert II, on the basis of proximity of blood.