The first warning is rarely a summons. It is a PDF from the bank’s legal department, or a rider stapled to a 3-6-9 commercial lease, asking the foreign président of a SAS (société par actions simplifiée) or the gérant of a SARL (société à responsabilité limitée) to sign as caution — the person who, under French law, promises to pay the company’s debt if the company does not. The document is often titled acte de cautionnement solidaire (joint and several suretyship) and looks like a formality standing between the company and an IBAN. It is not.

From 1 January 2022 the Civil Code, rewritten by ordonnance n° 2021-1192 of 15 September 2021, treats a natural-person guarantor as a protected party even when that person is the director of the debtor company. The mention you write yourself, the cap in words and figures, the creditor’s duty to warn you, the reduction of a disproportionate commitment, and the annual letter due before 31 March all sit in articles 2288 to 2320. Guarantees signed before that date remain, as a rule, under the old Consumer Code. Leaving the company, or putting the French subsidiary to sleep, does not by itself extinguish an open-ended guarantee of future debts.

This article is for the foreign owner who has just been asked to sign, or who has just received a mise en demeure (formal demand). A personal cautionnement is not a director’s liability for mismanagement, not an URSSAF (Union de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales) reassessment, and not a first-demand garantie autonome. Mixing those regimes is how a founder discovers that the bank pack still follows him after the Kbis (extrait Kbis, the official extract from the registre du commerce et des sociétés, RCS) has changed.

I. Do you have to sign a personal guarantee as a foreign director of a French company?

A. When the bank or the landlord can demand a cautionnement — and what the 2022 reform actually requires

French law does not force a director to pledge his own assets as the price of a corporate IBAN or a shop lease. The demand is contractual. Banks treat a foreign-owned SAS or SARL as a thin-capital vehicle until they see a natural person behind it. Landlords of a bail commercial (commercial lease) do the same: the tenant on the lease is the company, and the director is asked to stand behind the rent, the service charges, the dilapidations and sometimes the eviction indemnity. The CCI Paris Île-de-France practical sheet on deposits and suretyship records that when the tenant is a SARL, SAS or SA, the landlord “often” asks the director to stand as caution. That is market practice, not a statutory condition of the 3-6-9 regime. You can refuse, cap, or replace the personal deed with a parent-company guarantee, a cash deposit or a bank guarantee. You can also lose the account or the premises. The legal question is not whether the other side may ask. It is what happens if you sign.

Article 2288 of the Civil Code now opens the chapter: “Le cautionnement est le contrat par lequel une caution s’oblige envers le créancier à payer la dette du débiteur en cas de défaillance de celui-ci.” The contract is accessory. It can be given at the debtor’s request or without that request, even without the debtor’s knowledge. Article 2292 adds that “Le cautionnement peut garantir une ou plusieurs obligations, présentes ou futures, déterminées ou déterminables.” That single sentence is why a current-account facility, a revolving credit and a lease that will generate rent for nine years can all sit inside one deed. Article 2294 then draws the hard edge: “Le cautionnement doit être exprès. Il ne peut être étendu au-delà des limites dans lesquelles il a été contracté.” A foreign director who signs “all sums due by the company to the bank” has still signed only what the deed actually says, but the deed is often written to catch future facilities. Read the future-debts clause before you argue about the rest.

The 2022 reform is the point most English-language bank packs still get wrong. Article 2288 and the articles that follow it in the rewritten chapter have been in force since 1 January 2022. The Cour de cassation still applies the old Consumer Code mention and disproportion texts to deeds signed before that rewrite: the 5 April 2023 decision discussed below was a 2011 SARL guarantee, and the 18 December 2024 decision was a 2009 deed. A guarantee signed in 2018 is therefore not rewritten by the new Civil Code for validity and disproportion. Annual information and default notices, by contrast, now live in articles 2302 to 2304, which the 30 April 2025 decision treats as the successors of the abrogated Monetary and Financial Code and Consumer Code information duties. The practical split is brutal. Formal validity, the handwritten formula and disproportion for a 2019 deed are still argued under the Consumer Code as it stood when you signed. Annual information and default notices, from 1 January 2022, follow articles 2302 to 2304.

For a deed signed on or after 1 January 2022, the mention is no longer the old Consumer Code recitation, but it has not disappeared. Article 2297 is mandatory on pain of nullity: “A peine de nullité de son engagement, la caution personne physique appose elle-même la mention qu’elle s’engage en qualité de caution à payer au créancier ce que lui doit le débiteur en cas de défaillance de celui-ci, dans la limite d’un montant en principal et accessoires exprimé en toutes lettres et en chiffres.” If the words and the figures differ, “le cautionnement vaut pour la somme écrite en toutes lettres.” If the caution is deprived of the bénéfice de discussion (the right to require the creditor to sue the company first) or of the bénéfice de division (the right to split the claim among several cautions), “elle reconnaît dans cette mention ne pouvoir exiger du créancier qu’il poursuive d’abord le débiteur ou qu’il divise ses poursuites entre les cautions.” If that second limb is missing, “elle conserve le droit de se prévaloir de ces bénéfices.” The last sentence of 2297 is the one a foreign founder using a French lawyer as attorney-in-fact cannot ignore: “La personne physique qui donne mandat à autrui de se porter caution doit respecter les dispositions du présent article.” A power of attorney does not wash the mention away.

Pre-2022 deeds are still fought on the old formula. The Cour de cassation, commercial chamber, on 5 April 2023, pourvoi n° 21-20.905, published in the Bulletin, recalled article L. 341-2 of the Consumer Code in its wording before the 2016 recodification: “toute personne physique qui s’engage par acte sous seing privé en qualité de caution envers un créancier professionnel doit, à peine de nullité de son engagement, faire précéder sa signature de la mention manuscrite suivante, et uniquement de celle-ci.” The statutory sentence required the caution to bind “ses revenus et ses biens.” In that case the director of a SARL that had borrowed to buy a fonds de commerce had written “ses revenus ou ses biens.” The Court held that the court of appeal, “après avoir constaté que la formule écrite de la main de la caution prévoyait que celle-ci s’engageait sur ses revenus ou ses biens, et non sur ses revenus et ses biens, conformément à la mention manuscrite légale, ce qui en modifiait le sens et la portée quant à l’assiette du gage du créancier,” had failed to draw the legal consequences and had violated the text. A one-word substitution voided the guarantee. That is the standard that still governs a 2011–2021 private deed. It is not the standard that governs a 2026 deed, but it is the standard that still governs most of the guarantees foreign directors signed when they opened the company.

Service Public Entreprendre, in the fiche “Garantir une dette avec un cautionnement” verified on 13 February 2023, describes the mechanism in administrative language and points to Civil Code articles 2288 to 2320. What it does not do is write your negotiation. A foreign président is not obliged to accept an unlimited, undated, joint and several deed covering “all present and future obligations.” The bank may prefer that deed. The landlord of a Paris shop may prefer it. Your counter is a capped amount in words and figures, a term that dies with the facility or with the current lease period, and a refusal to convert the suretyship into a first-demand instrument. Those are the three points that decide whether the document is a manageable credit support or a personal balance-sheet event.

Do not confuse this contract with the statutory liability of a gérant under article L. 223-22 of the Commercial Code, which targets “des infractions aux dispositions législatives ou réglementaires applicables aux sociétés à responsabilité limitée,” “des violations des statuts” and “des fautes commises dans leur gestion.” That action belongs to the company or to third parties who have suffered a distinct injury. It is not a shortcut for a landlord who forgot to take a cautionnement, and it is not a defence for a director who did sign one. The Kbis change of président, the INPI (Institut national de la propriété industrielle) filing and the bank KYC pack are a different file again: they move corporate authority. They do not, without more, move a personal guarantee.

B. How to cap the guarantee, keep discussion rights, and avoid an autonomous first-demand trap before you sign from abroad

Article 2290 of the Civil Code is short and it is the clause you actually negotiate: “Le cautionnement est simple ou solidaire. La solidarité peut être stipulée entre la caution et le débiteur principal, entre les cautions, ou entre eux tous.” Solidarity is not implied by the new Civil Code. It has to be stipulated. Bank and landlord templates almost always stipulate it, which is why the 2297 mention must record that you cannot require the creditor to sue the company first or to divide the claim. Article 2305 then defines the right you are being asked to give up: “Le bénéfice de discussion permet à la caution d’obliger le créancier à poursuivre d’abord le débiteur principal. Ne peut se prévaloir de ce bénéfice ni la caution tenue solidairement avec le débiteur, ni celle qui a renoncé à ce bénéfice, non plus que la caution judiciaire.” If you sign as caution solidaire, the bank does not have to empty the company’s account, seize the till or wait for a judgment against the SAS before it comes to you. That is the point of the clause.

A cap is not a courtesy. Article 2297 requires “un montant en principal et accessoires exprimé en toutes lettres et en chiffres.” A deed that says “unlimited” or that leaves the figures blank is not a complete 2297 mention. Article 2296 adds that the suretyship “ne peut excéder ce qui est dû par le débiteur ni être contracté sous des conditions plus onéreuses, sous peine d’être réduit à la mesure de l’obligation garantie.” You can guarantee only part of the debt and on milder terms. The negotiation with a French desk that has never seen a non-resident directeur is therefore concrete: a figure in euros that you can actually pay from disclosed assets; a term aligned on the facility or on the current three-year lease window, not on “the life of the company”; a list of the contracts covered, not “all sums”; and a clause that the guarantee does not extend to future amendments unless you sign again. Article 2295 will otherwise pull in “les intérêts et autres accessoires de l’obligation garantie, ainsi qu’aux frais de la première demande, et à tous ceux postérieurs à la dénonciation qui en est faite à la caution,” unless you have contracted out of that expansion.

The document that should stop the pen is not a harsh cautionnement. It is a garantie autonome. Article 2321 of the Civil Code defines it: “La garantie autonome est l’engagement par lequel le garant s’oblige, en considération d’une obligation souscrite par un tiers, à verser une somme soit à première demande, soit suivant des modalités convenues.” Two sentences later the trap is explicit: “Le garant ne peut opposer aucune exception tenant à l’obligation garantie.” Abuse, fraud or collusion of the beneficiary with the principal can still be raised; the ordinary defences of the company’s loan or lease cannot. “Sauf convention contraire, cette sûreté ne suit pas l’obligation garantie.” Some bank packs and some commercial-lease riders slip “à première demande” into a document still labelled cautionnement. The label does not save you. If the instrument is autonomous, the 2297 mention, the 2300 reduction and the accessory defences of suretyship are the wrong toolbox. Ask for the heading, the payment trigger and the exceptions clause to be rewritten as a 2288 cautionnement, with a cap, before you discuss anything else.

Signing from abroad does not create a parallel, gentler law. Article 2297 requires the natural person to affix the mention “elle-même.” Service Public Entreprendre notes that the contract may be prepared electronically; it does not repeal 2297. A foreign director who sends a scanned signature page without the mention, or who asks a French employee to “just sign for the bank,” has not built a valid post-2021 suretyship and has created a dispute about what, if anything, was agreed. If you give a mandate, 2297 still applies to the principal. Apostille of the power of attorney, a sworn translation, and a French-language mention that you have actually written or typed yourself are the mechanical conditions of a deed that will survive the first challenge. They are also the mechanical conditions of a deed that will be enforced against you. Formal validity cuts both ways.

The corporate side of the file is a different signature. When the company itself is asked to guarantee a sister company’s debt, the person who signs for the SAS or the SA is exercising a corporate power, not standing as a personal caution. The Cour de cassation, commercial chamber, on 10 May 2024, pourvoi n° 22-20.439, published in the Bulletin, held on the SA management board that “si le président du directoire a le pouvoir d’exécuter une décision prise par cet organe, le cas échéant, pour certains actes au nombre desquels le cautionnement, en vertu d’une autorisation donnée au directoire par le conseil de surveillance, il ne peut, en l’absence d’une telle décision, décider par lui-même de consentir un engagement de caution au nom de la société que s’il a reçu du directoire délégation pour ce faire” (decision 22-20.439). A foreign président of a SAS must still read the statutes and any internal limitation before binding the company as guarantor. That corporate cautionnement is not the personal deed this article is about. Mixing the two is how a director discovers that he has signed twice: once for the company, once for himself, on the same afternoon, with two different invalidity regimes.

A parent-company guarantee from the foreign shareholder is often the cleaner substitute. It keeps the risk in the group, it can be capped, and it avoids turning the individual’s Paris flat or UK salary into the bank’s second line. It is not cost-free: the parent then needs its own corporate authority, and a French creditor will still ask for an enforceable instrument and a solvent signatory. It is, however, a different conversation from “please mortgage your personal wealth to the greffe’s tenant.” For a first French hire, a first lease and a first professional account, the foreign founder who treats the personal deed as the default will sign the widest document the other side has in the drawer. The founder who treats it as a last-resort, capped, dated accessory will still sometimes sign. He will sign less, and he will still have a 2315 exit if the deed is an open-ended guarantee of future debts.

The choice of vehicle does not dissolve the issue. A SAS président is assimilé salarié for social security; a majority gérant of a SARL is not (SAS versus SARL, director status and the bank). That distinction matters for URSSAF and for the cost of the mandate. It does not matter for article 2288. Both are natural persons. Both can be asked for a cautionnement. Switching from SARL to SAS to please a bank’s onboarding team, or the other way to please a social-security budget, leaves the existing personal deed untouched unless the creditor agrees to a release. The same is true of a branch: a succursale of the foreign company does not create a French legal person, so the creditor who cannot take a French-company cautionnement will look even harder at the foreign director. Personal suretyship follows the human being, not the box on the Kbis.

II. How do you contest a disproportionate guarantee or get released after you leave the company?

A. Disproportion, the creditor’s duty to warn you, and the five-year clock after a formal demand

Once the deed exists, the fight moves from drafting to numbers. Article 2300 of the Civil Code is the post-2021 disproportion rule: “Si le cautionnement souscrit par une personne physique envers un créancier professionnel était, lors de sa conclusion, manifestement disproportionné aux revenus et au patrimoine de la caution, il est réduit au montant à hauteur duquel elle pouvait s’engager à cette date.” Three words in that sentence decide the file. The test is the moment of conclusion, not the moment of the demand. The sanction is reduction, not automatic disappearance of the entire deed. The comparison is with the caution’s income and assets, not with the company’s business plan. A foreign director who declared a modest salary and a mortgaged flat, and who guaranteed a seven-figure facility, has a 2300 argument. A director who omitted assets, or who signed through a personal holding that was itself empty, has a different argument, and a worse one.

Older deeds still live under the Consumer Code version. The Cour de cassation, commercial chamber, on 18 December 2024, pourvoi n° 22-13.721, published in the Bulletin, quoted article L. 341-4 in its wording before the 2016 recodification: “un créancier professionnel ne peut se prévaloir d’un contrat de cautionnement conclu par une personne physique dont l’engagement était, lors de sa conclusion, manifestement disproportionné à ses biens et revenus, à moins que le patrimoine de cette caution, au moment où celle-ci est appelée, ne lui permette de faire face à son obligation.” The old safety-valve — the creditor may still enforce if, at the time of the call, the caution can pay — has no equivalent in article 2300. The 2024 decision also shut a procedural door that foreign directors sometimes try to walk through too early. The Court held: “Le droit reconnu par ce texte au créancier de démontrer que, au moment où il appelle la caution, le patrimoine de celle-ci lui permet de faire face à son obligation, s’oppose à ce que la caution puisse, avant d’avoir été appelée, agir à titre principal pour que le créancier soit déchu du droit de se prévaloir du cautionnement en raison de la disproportion manifeste dont cet engagement était affecté au moment où il a été consenti.” You do not, under that old text, sue in 2020 to bury a 2009 guarantee that nobody has yet called. You wait for the call, then you raise disproportion as a defence on the merits.

The duty to warn is a separate lever. Article 2299 provides: “Le créancier professionnel est tenu de mettre en garde la caution personne physique lorsque l’engagement du débiteur principal est inadapté aux capacités financières de ce dernier. A défaut, le créancier est déchu de son droit contre la caution à hauteur du préjudice subi par celle-ci.” The warning is about the company’s capacity, not about yours. The sanction is forfeiture to the extent of your loss, not a free-standing damages claim that replaces the whole guarantee. A bank that onboards a newly incorporated SAS with no turnover, no French resident director and a business plan that is still a slide deck, and that still takes an unlimited personal deed from the founder, is in the 2299 zone. A landlord who has seen three years of unpaid rent from the same tenant and who then takes a new personal deed from the same director, without a word about the arrears, is in the same zone. The file is documentary: what the creditor held on the company the week you signed, and what it told you.

Time-bar is where foreign directors lose otherwise good defences. The 18 December 2024 decision, still on pourvoi n° 22-13.721, stated the starting point in terms that the commercial chamber intends to be used: “Il résulte du second de ces textes que le point de départ de l’action en responsabilité de la caution à l’encontre de l’établissement de crédit créancier, fondée sur un manquement à son devoir de mise en garde ou sur une disproportion de l’engagement de caution, se prescrit par cinq ans à compter du jour où elle a su que les obligations résultant de son engagement allaient être mises à exécution du fait de la défaillance du débiteur principal, soit à compter de la mise en demeure qui lui a été adressée.” The “second of these texts” is article L. 110-4 of the Commercial Code, which provides that “Les obligations nées à l’occasion de leur commerce entre commerçants ou entre commerçants et non-commerçants se prescrivent par cinq ans si elles ne sont pas soumises à des prescriptions spéciales plus courtes.” The court of appeal had started the clock on the day of signature, as a lost chance not to contract. The Cour de cassation reversed: the clock started on the formal demand of 23 March 2011. A director who files the PDF in a drawer because he is no longer in France, and who waits six years, is arguing a different case.

The same decision added a point that matters for registered letters sent to an old Paris address: “Le défaut de réception effective par la caution de la mise en demeure, adressée par lettre recommandée, n’affecte pas sa validité.” A mise en demeure that was properly sent is still a mise en demeure if you had already left the flat. Update the address on the deed, on the bank file and on the Kbis at the same time as you leave. A guarantee that can still be called is a guarantee that must still receive mail.

Disproportion and warning are not the same as “I am a director, so I was a sophisticated caution and I have no rights.” Article 2299 and article 2300 both speak of a “caution personne physique” facing a “créancier professionnel.” They do not carve directors out. Marketing notes that announced, in 2021, the death of the handwritten mention for directors did not repeal article 2297. The mention changed shape. It did not vanish. A foreign founder who is told that “since 2022 directors just tick a box” should put the Civil Code on the table and ask the bank to show the article it is relying on. If the deed is pre-2022, the old Consumer Code formula is still the validity test, as the 5 April 2023 decision shows. If the deed is post-2022, 2297 is the validity test. In both worlds, the director is a natural person. That is enough to open the section.

Evidence for disproportion is prosaic and it has to be dated. Tax returns, bank statements, a statement of net assets, the French or foreign mortgage on the home, and the absence of a hidden current account in the company are more useful than a narrative about “cash flow at the parent.” The court looks at what you had when you signed. A later inheritance, a later sale of shares, or a later collapse of the French subsidiary does not rewrite article 2300. Under the old L. 341-4 text, a later fortune can, conversely, revive the creditor’s right at the moment of the call. That is why the date of the deed is the first line of any defence memo, before the figures.

B. Annual information, default notices, termination of future debts, and what insolvency of the company does not do

The information duties are the part of the file that still works after you have left France. Article 2302 requires the professional creditor, before 31 March each year and at its own expense, “de faire connaître à toute caution personne physique le montant du principal de la dette, des intérêts et autres accessoires restant dus au 31 décembre de l’année précédente au titre de l’obligation garantie, sous peine de déchéance de la garantie des intérêts et pénalités échus depuis la date de la précédente information et jusqu’à celle de la communication de la nouvelle information.” During that gap, payments by the company are imputed first to principal as between creditor and caution. The same article requires the creditor, under the same sanction, “de rappeler à la caution personne physique le terme de son engagement ou, si le cautionnement est à durée indéterminée, sa faculté de résiliation à tout moment et les conditions dans lesquelles celle-ci peut être exercée.” The last paragraph extends the duty to a legal-person caution given to a credit institution or a finance company to secure a facility granted to an enterprise. Article 37, III, of the ordonnance, already quoted, applies 2302 to 2304 even to older deeds.

The Cour de cassation, second civil chamber, on 30 April 2025, pourvoi n° 22-22.033, published in the Bulletin, was still applying the pre-abrogation texts, and it refused to treat a payment incident as a reason to stop the annual letter. After recalling article L. 313-22 of the Monetary and Financial Code and article L. 341-6 of the Consumer Code “dans leur rédaction antérieure à leur abrogation par l’ordonnance n° 2021-1192 du 15 septembre 2021,” the Court held: “Il résulte de ces textes que l’obligation d’information annuelle de la caution se poursuit jusqu’à l’extinction de la dette garantie par le cautionnement.” It added: “La défaillance du débiteur principal, dont la caution personne physique doit être informée en application de l’article L. 341-1, devenu L. 333-1, du code de la consommation, dans sa rédaction antérieure à son abrogation par l’ordonnance n° 2021-1192 du 15 septembre 2021, dès le premier incident de paiement non régularisé, ne dispense pas le créancier professionnel de son obligation d’information annuelle prévue aux articles L. 313-22 et L. 341-6 précités” (decision 22-22.033). Default notice and annual notice are cumulative. A bank that sent a 2017 demand and then went silent until 2024 has a 2302 problem for the interest and penalties of the silent years, not a magic extinction of principal.

The same logic already applied when the director had given both a personal suretyship and a mortgage. The commercial chamber, on 2 June 2021, pourvoi n° 19-20.140, published in the Bulletin, held that “lorsqu’une même personne se rend caution personnelle des engagements d’un débiteur envers un établissement de crédit et lui affecte aussi un ou des biens en garantie hypothécaire de ces mêmes engagements, cet établissement lui doit l’information annuelle prévue par le dernier texte,” the last text being L. 313-22 (decision 19-20.140). A foreign director who put the Neuilly flat up as well as his signature does not lose the annual letter because the bank later chooses to enforce the mortgage. The information duty follows the personal cautionnement. It is not cancelled by the parallel real security.

Article 2303 is the default letter: the professional creditor “est tenu d’informer toute caution personne physique de la défaillance du débiteur principal dès le premier incident de paiement non régularisé dans le mois de l’exigibilité de ce paiement, à peine de déchéance de la garantie des intérêts et pénalités échus entre la date de cet incident et celle à laquelle elle en a été informée.” A landlord who lets arrears pile up for eighteen months and then calls the director for rent, interest and a penalty clause will meet 2303 on the accessories. A bank that issues the 2303 letter to the company’s registered office and not to the caution’s address in the deed has not informed the caution. Keep the address current. Ask, every April, where the 2302 letter is. The sanction is not academic: it is the interest and the penalties, which on a French facility are often the number that makes the demand unpayable.

Leaving the company is not a release. Article 2315 is the exit that actually exists, and only for one kind of deed: “Lorsqu’un cautionnement de dettes futures est à durée indéterminée, la caution peut y mettre fin à tout moment, sous réserve de respecter le délai de préavis contractuellement prévu ou, à défaut, un délai raisonnable.” If the deed has a term — five years, the life of the lease, the life of the facility — 2315 does not give you a unilateral off-switch. If the deed guarantees identified present debts only, there is nothing to terminate except by payment or by the creditor’s discharge. Article 2316 then keeps you on the hook for what has already been born: “Lorsqu’un cautionnement de dettes futures prend fin, la caution reste tenue des dettes nées antérieurement, sauf clause contraire.” A director who resigns, files the INPI change of président or gérant, updates the Kbis and flies home, without serving a 2315 notice on the bank and the landlord, has changed the corporate records and has left the personal deed intact. Serve the notice. Keep the proof of receipt. Then negotiate a written release for the debts already outstanding, because 2316 will not give you that release.

Insolvency of the French company is the moment at which foreign directors expect the personal deed to die. Article 2298 says the opposite, in the sentence that matters: “Toutefois la caution ne peut se prévaloir des mesures légales ou judiciaires dont bénéficie le débiteur en conséquence de sa défaillance, sauf disposition spéciale contraire.” The stay of individual proceedings against the company, the freeze of interest, the safeguard plan that haircuts the bank, are the company’s protections. They are not, without a special text, the caution’s protections. The caution may still raise the exceptions that belong to the debt, “personnelles ou inhérentes à la dette,” under the first sentence of 2298, subject to article 2293. A void facility is still a void facility. A court freeze of the company is not a freeze of you. If the company is wound up or merged, article 2318 keeps the caution bound for debts born before the operation became enforceable against third parties, and extends it to later debts only with a fresh consent, except for operations on the creditor side that were authorised in advance.

Subrogation is the last internal protection, and it is easy to give away without noticing. Article 2314 provides: “Lorsque la subrogation aux droits du créancier ne peut plus, par la faute de celui-ci, s’opérer en sa faveur, la caution est déchargée à concurrence du préjudice qu’elle subit. Toute clause contraire est réputée non écrite.” If the bank releases the company’s securities, lets a mortgage lapse, or returns a pledge that you would have needed after paying, your exposure shrinks by the prejudice. You cannot, however, “reprocher au créancier son choix du mode de réalisation d’une sûreté.” A foreign director who pays should ask, the same week, for an assignment of the creditor’s rights, for the securities file, and for a receipt that starts the recourse against the company and against any co-cautions under article 2312.

For a company whose seat is in Paris, the commercial dispute on a commercial cautionnement is the daily business of the Tribunal de commerce de Paris. For Nanterre, Boulogne, Levallois or a La Défense SAS, the file sits with the Tribunal de commerce de Nanterre. Bobigny, Créteil and Évry follow the seat in the same way. There is no special “foreign director” chamber. There is a greffe that will serve at the address on the Kbis if the caution’s personal address in the deed is stale. A power of attorney in French, with the 2297 mention handled by the principal, is enough to sign a release or a 2315 termination without flying in. A dispute on the amount, on disproportion or on a missing 2302 letter is enough to justify a French lawyer on the record before the first hearing. The Île-de-France specificity is practical, not substantive: the same Civil Code, the same five-year clock, and a court that has seen hundreds of director cautions attached to 3-6-9 leases in the first, second and eighth arrondissements and to professional accounts opened after a thin Kbis.

The working sequence, once a demand has arrived, is therefore narrow. Identify the date of the deed, because that date chooses 2022 Civil Code or old Consumer Code. Read the heading, because a 2321 first-demand instrument is not a 2288 cautionnement. Check the mention against 2297 or against old L. 341-2, word for word. Collect the 2302 letters and the 2303 default notice. Calendar the five years from the mise en demeure. Build the 2300 or L. 341-4 figures as at the date of signature. If you have already left the company and the deed is an open-ended guarantee of future debts, serve the 2315 notice even while you contest the past. None of those steps requires you to accept the quantum in the PDF. All of them require you to treat the PDF as a French civil-law instrument, not as an English-law “personal guarantee” that you can renegotiate by email with a relationship manager who has already assigned the file to recoveries.

Conclusion

A French bank or a French landlord may ask a foreign director to stand as caution. Neither of them may invent a statute that makes the signature compulsory, and neither of them may enforce a deed that the Civil Code, or the old Consumer Code for pre-2022 instruments, treats as void, reduced or stripped of interest. Article 2288 defines the contract. Article 2297 still requires a natural person to write the mention and the cap. Article 2299 sanctions a professional creditor that failed to warn you about a company that could not carry the debt. Article 2300 reduces a post-2021 deed that was manifestly disproportionate when you signed it. Articles 2302 and 2303 keep the annual letter and the default letter alive until the debt is gone, as the Cour de cassation recalled in 2025 on the pre-abrogation texts. Article 2315 is the only clean unilateral exit from an open-ended guarantee of future debts, and article 2316 keeps the past. Article 2298 refuses you the company’s insolvency shield. Article 2321 is the neighbouring instrument that you should not sign if you still want suretyship defences.

The Cour de cassation has not been gentle with approximate mentions, with clocks that start on the day of signature, or with creditors who treat a mortgage as a reason to stop informing a personal caution. It has also not been gentle with cautions who sue too early on old L. 341-4 disproportion, or who ignore a registered demand sent to an address they no longer occupy. The foreign founder who is still at the bank’s onboarding table should cap, date and keep discussion rights, or replace the personal deed with a parent instrument. The founder who is already on the receiving end of a mise en demeure should stop treating the Kbis change of président as a release, and should put the deed, the letters and the five-year date in front of a French lawyer before the next silence makes the defence look like an afterthought.

Need a quick opinion on your case.

Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with an avocat of the cabinet, to read the deed, the date of signature, the mention, the cap and the letters the bank or the landlord actually sent.

The discussion is built on your documents: the acte de cautionnement or first-demand instrument, the facility or the commercial lease, the mise en demeure, the 2302 correspondence, and the Kbis if you have already left the mandate.

Call Maître Reda Kohen on +33 6 46 60 58 22 (06 46 60 58 22 in France) or use the firm’s contact form.

The firm advises companies in Paris and Île-de-France, including before the Tribunal de commerce de Paris and the commercial courts of the inner suburbs.