Your father lived in Kent all his life and owned a stone house in the Dordogne where the whole family spent every August. Your sister settled in Lyon ten years ago and your brother never left Manchester. When the owner of that French house dies, three questions arrive together in the same envelope: does France tax the house even though the deceased lived in England, how much will each child actually pay once allowances and rates are applied, and can the family stop the same property being taxed twice, once by HM Revenue and Customs in London and once by the Direction generale des finances publiques in France? Since Brexit the answers matter more than ever, because British nationals are now third-country nationals in France and every cross-border step, from the succession declaration to the land registry, is examined more closely. This guide explains, in plain English and with UK spelling throughout, how French inheritance tax, known as droits de succession, applies to British heirs of French property, which allowances reduce the bill, how the 1963 France-UK succession treaty removes double taxation, what an English will can and cannot do to a French house, and how to challenge an assessment you believe is wrong. Every decisive rule below is linked to its official source, French or British, so your adviser can verify each point.
I. Which Part of a British Family Estate Does France Tax After Brexit, and How Much Does Each Heir Pay?
A. When does France tax the worldwide estate and when does it tax only the French house?
French inheritance tax is called droits de mutation a titre gratuit, which means duties on transfers without payment, and deaths are only one of the transfers it covers. The territorial scope of the tax is set by Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code, and its opening words leave no room for doubt: “Sont soumis aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit : 1° Les biens meubles et immeubles situés en France ou hors de France”, followed by a long list of assets, “lorsque le donateur ou le défunt a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 B”. In ordinary language, where the deceased was a French tax resident, a person with their domicile fiscal in France, France taxes the worldwide estate, wherever the assets sit. The second branch of the same article deals with the opposite case: where the deceased was not French tax resident, France taxes the movable and immovable property situated in France, whether held directly or indirectly. So the first practical question for a British family is always where the deceased was tax resident. A parent who retired to France, registered with the local tax office and filed French returns as a resident falls under the worldwide rule. A parent who stayed in Kent, visited the Dordogne house for holidays and remained UK tax resident falls under the French-situs rule, and France taxes the French house and its contents but not the Manchester semi or the UK bank accounts.
Two traps deserve attention at this stage. The first is indirect ownership. Article 750 ter provides that a building counts as indirectly owned where it belongs to companies or bodies in which the deceased, alone or with close family, held more than half of the shares or rights, through however many intermediate entities. British families who hold a French house through a societe civile immobiliere, the SCI or private property company so popular with foreign buyers, must therefore understand that the shares do not hide the bricks: France looks through the company to the house. Our companion guide on the British family SCI for a French house explains how that structure is taxed during ownership and how it passes on. The second trap is the family trust. Many British wills place assets in a trust, a legal arrangement with no exact equivalent in French law, and the French courts have had to decide when tax falls on trust property. In a ruling given on 18 November 2020, appeal number 18-14.242, the Commercial Chamber of the Cour de cassation, France’s highest court for tax and business matters, held that “le fait générateur des droits de mutation à titre gratuit est constitué par le transfert de propriété, qui, s’agissant de biens placés dans un trust, s’opère par l’effet de la distribution de l’actif du trust au bénéficiaire final, au jour de sa clôture, laquelle peut être postérieure au décès du constituant”. In plain terms, where French property sits in a trust, the taxable event is the transfer of ownership that happens when the trust assets are distributed to the final beneficiary on winding up, and that date can be later than the settlor’s death. A British family that assumes everything was settled on the day of death may therefore receive a French assessment years later and should keep trust deeds, distribution minutes and valuations from the start.
The treaty layer sits on top of these domestic rules. The United Kingdom and France signed a succession double tax convention on 21 June 1963, given effect in Britain by the Double Taxation Relief (Estate Duty) (France) Order 1963, and explained on the French side by the official tax commentary BOI-INT-CVB-GBR-20-20. That commentary states: Under the convention of 21 June 1963, double taxation on the estates of persons domiciled in France or the United Kingdom, whatever their nationality, is removed partly by situs rules allocating inherited assets as against the state other than the domicile state (Articles 3 to 5 of the convention) and partly by a credit granted by the domicile state for tax levied by the other state (Articles 6 and 7). Two ideas matter here. First, the convention allocates taxing rights asset by asset: immovable property is taxable where it stands, so a Dordogne house is taxable in France whoever inherits it. The commentary confirms this for British-domiciled deceased persons: where a person domiciled in the United Kingdom dies, French succession duty falls on the estate assets situated in France within the meaning of Article 4 of the convention. Second, double taxation is removed by a credit, an imputation, granted by the state where the deceased was domiciled, against the tax charged by the other state. The French house is taxed in France, the UK estate is taxed in Britain, and the credit mechanism reconciles the two so the same value is not fully taxed twice. The detailed claiming procedure, including the five-year time limit, is examined in the second part of this guide.
B. How much does each British heir pay: allowances, the rate scale and the surviving spouse?
Once France has established what it taxes, the calculation runs heir by heir, on the net share each person receives. French law starts with abatements, fixed sums deducted from each share before rates apply, and the most important one for British families is the parent-child allowance. Article 777 of the General Tax Code states the principle of the whole calculation: “Les droits de mutation à titre gratuit sont fixés aux taux indiqués dans les tableaux ci-après, pour la part nette revenant à chaque ayant droit”. Each heir is therefore taxed separately on their own net portion, after their own allowance, which means three children sharing a house equally are each taxed on one third, not jointly on the whole. For children, Article 779 of the General Tax Code provides that “il est effectué un abattement de 100 000 € sur la part de chacun des ascendants et sur la part de chacun des enfants vivants ou représentés par suite de prédécès ou de renonciation”. Each living child, or the family line standing in for a child who died first, deducts 100,000 euros from their share before any rate bites. Take a concrete example: a Dordogne house valued at 360,000 euros, left equally to three children, gives each a 120,000 euro share, minus the 100,000 euro allowance, leaving 20,000 euros taxable per child. The same house left to a single child leaves 260,000 euros taxable after one allowance, which shows why the number of heirs changes the bill so dramatically.
On the taxable remainder, the direct-line rate scale rises in bands. For the share descending from parent to child, the verified scale runs from 5 per cent on the slice up to 8,072 euros, 10 per cent between 8,072 and 12,109 euros, 15 per cent between 12,109 and 15,932 euros, 20 per cent between 15,932 and 552,324 euros, then 30 per cent up to 902,838 euros, 40 per cent up to 1,805,677 euros and 45 per cent beyond. In our three-children example, each child’s 20,000 euro taxable slice falls almost entirely in the lower bands, producing a modest bill; a single heir receiving 260,000 euros taxable reaches the 20 per cent band and pays substantially more. Brothers and sisters face a separate, heavier scale with a much smaller allowance, and unrelated beneficiaries such as stepchildren not legally adopted, unmarried partners outside a civil solidarity pact and friends face the heaviest rate of all, so blended families should check the exact category of each heir rather than assuming everyone is taxed like a child. The official English-language summary of these rates on service-public.fr is a useful cross-check before signing anything the notaire, the French public officer who settles successions, prepares.
One category pays nothing at all. Article 796-0 bis of the General Tax Code provides: “Sont exonérés de droits de mutation par décès le conjoint survivant et le partenaire lié au défunt par un pacte civil de solidarité.” The surviving husband or wife, and the partner bound by a PACS, the French registered civil partnership, are fully exempt from French death duties. For a British couple with a French holiday home, this means the first death usually produces no French inheritance tax on the share passing to the survivor, while the second death, when the house passes to the children, is the moment the allowances and rates above apply in full. Couples who are neither married nor pacsed should take advice before a death occurs, because the surviving cohabitant is taxed as a non-relative. Where the family has already made gifts, remember that earlier donations can be added back to the estate for allowance purposes, another reason to keep a complete file of every deed signed before a French notaire.
II. How Do British Heirs Protect Their Share, Claim Treaty Relief and Challenge the Bill?
A. Can an English will disinherit a child from the French house, and which court decides?
English law gives a testator wide freedom to leave property to whomever they choose, while French law reserves a protected portion for the children. That protected portion is called the reserve hereditaire, the forced heirship share, and the disposable remainder is the quotite disponible, the free portion the deceased may give to anyone. Article 913 of the Civil Code fixes the fractions: gifts by lifetime deed or by will “ne pourront excéder la moitié des biens du disposant, s’il ne laisse à son décès qu’un enfant ; le tiers, s’il laisse deux enfants ; le quart, s’il en laisse trois ou un plus grand nombre”. With one child, half the estate is reserved; with two children, two thirds; with three or more, three quarters. For decades British buyers were told that choosing English law in their will, under the European Succession Regulation number 650/2012, whose habitual-residence rule and choice-of-law option continue to shape Franco-British estates even after Brexit, would sweep the French reserve aside for their French house. The position is now more balanced, and the reason sits in the final paragraph of the same Article 913: “Lorsque le défunt ou au moins l’un de ses enfants est, au moment du décès, ressortissant d’un Etat membre de l’Union européenne ou y réside habituellement et lorsque la loi étrangère applicable à la succession ne permet aucun mécanisme réservataire protecteur des enfants, chaque enfant ou ses héritiers ou ses ayants cause peuvent effectuer un prélèvement compensatoire sur les biens existants situés en France au jour du décès, de façon à être rétablis dans les droits réservataires que leur octroie la loi française, dans la limite de ceux-ci.” Where the applicable foreign law gives children no reserved-share protection, each child may take a compensatory levy from the assets situated in France at the date of death, restoring the French reserved rights up to their limit. A child who is an EU national or habitually resident in the EU, such as a daughter settled in Lyon, can therefore reach into the French house to recover what English testamentary freedom took away, even where the will validly chose English law.
The courts illustrate both halves of this story. Before the compensatory levy existed, disputes turned on whether the French reserve could override a foreign law applicable to French immovables. On 4 July 2018, in appeal number 17-16.515, the First Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation approved judges who had held that “la dévolution successorale desdits immeubles devait tenir compte des règles de la réserve héréditaire, laquelle, d’ordre public interne, ne pouvait être écartée par des dispositions testamentaires établies selon la loi du domicile du défunt et régissant son statut personnel”. At that time, for French-situs buildings governed by French law under the former conflict rule, testamentary dispositions made under the law of the deceased’s domicile could not brush the domestic reserve aside. That reasoning belongs to the pre-Regulation world for many estates, but it still explains why French notaires treat the reserve as a serious constraint rather than a formality. The modern calculation mechanics were restated very recently: on 10 June 2026, in appeal number 24-10.363, the same Chamber recalled that “L’indemnité de réduction se détermine après avoir calculé la quotité disponible, ce qui suppose la réunion fictive des biens donnés à la masse des biens successoraux, prévue à l’article 922 du code civil, même lorsqu’il n’existe aucune indivision successorale à partager.” The reduction indemnity, the payment owed to a reserved heir whose share was eaten into by gifts or legacies, is therefore worked out after a fictitious reunion of donated property with the estate mass, even where there is no joint ownership left to divide. For British heirs, the lesson is practical: lifetime gifts of French property, donations recorded by a notaire years earlier, are pulled back into the arithmetic, and siblings should never assume that an old gift is forgotten.
Jurisdiction is a separate question from applicable law, and confusing the two is a classic and costly mistake. On 14 April 2021, in appeal number 19-24.773, the First Civil Chamber recalled, for successions opened before 17 August 2015, that “La nature de l’action successorale est déterminée selon la loi du for.” The court added that “la détermination de la juridiction compétente ne dépendait pas de la loi applicable au litige, mais de la nature de l’action successorale”. The court with power to hear the case is not necessarily the court whose law governs the inheritance, and French courts remain competent for immovables situated in France even where a foreign law applies to the merits. Since the Succession Regulation fully applies to deaths from 17 August 2015, the habitual residence of the deceased at death is now the starting point for both jurisdiction and applicable law, with a limited option to choose the law of one’s nationality, but the 2021 ruling remains a warning that forum and law must be analysed separately. In practice, a British family disputing a Dordogne house should expect the French tribunal judiciaire, the ordinary civil court, to be involved for the property itself, should file protective claims there within the limitation periods rather than litigating only in England, and should read our companion guide on choosing English law for a French house by will before assuming the choice settles everything. Gifts made during lifetime to organise the transmission, including the donation-partage that divides property between children early, are examined in our guide to gifting a French house to children.
B. What are the deadlines, how is the declaration filed, how is the treaty credit claimed and how can the bill be challenged?
French succession procedure runs on strict time limits, and Brexit has not softened them. Article 641 of the General Tax Code provides that “Les délais pour l’enregistrement des déclarations que les héritiers, donataires ou légataires ont à souscrire des biens à eux échus ou transmis par décès sont : De six mois, à compter du jour du décès, lorsque celui dont on recueille la succession est décédé en France métropolitaine; D’une année, dans tous les autres cas.” Where the deceased died in metropolitan France, the heirs have six months from death to file; in every other case, including a death in Manchester, Edinburgh or Cardiff, they have one year. The declaration itself, the declaration de succession, is governed by Article 800 of the General Tax Code: “Les héritiers, légataires ou donataires, leurs tuteurs ou curateurs, sont tenus de souscrire une déclaration détaillée.” Heirs, legatees and donees must file a detailed return, with only narrow exemptions for very small estates that have received no prior gifts. In cross-border cases the notaire usually prepares and files the declaration, values the French house with supporting evidence, lists UK assets for information where worldwide taxation applies, computes each heir’s allowance and rates, and arranges payment. Interest for late filing and penalties for late payment accrue quickly, so the file should be opened within weeks of the death: death certificate with apostille and sworn translation, will and grant of probate with translations, marriage contracts, prior gift deeds, property valuation, bank statements and trust documents where relevant.
The treaty credit is then claimed to remove the double charge. Where the deceased was domiciled in France and some assets were also taxed in Britain, or conversely where a UK-domiciled person leaves French-situs property taxed in France, the state of domicile grants a credit for the tax levied by the other state, limited to the share of its own tax attributable to the doubly taxed assets. The official commentary explains that heirs may obtain, either when paying the duty or later by way of refund, a reduction equal to the amount of tax collected in the United Kingdom, and adds the essential warning: any claim for reduction or refund of tax based on the convention must be presented within five years of the date of death. The claim can be made when paying or later by refund, but it must be presented within five years of death, or five years from the later event if the charge arises afterwards, using the bilingual forms exchanged between the two administrations. Heirs who paid British inheritance tax on the worldwide estate and French droits on the Dordogne house should therefore diarise two clocks: the French filing deadline of six or twelve months, and the five-year treaty claim window. Keep every HMRC assessment, receipt and computation, because the French office will want proof of the British tax actually charged on the same property before granting the credit, and the same file will serve if the position must be defended before a judge.
If the assessment looks wrong, challenge it methodically rather than ignoring it. The common errors in British files are misapplied residence, where a UK-domiciled deceased is taxed as worldwide when only French-situs assets were taxable, or the reverse; forgotten allowances, especially the 100,000 euro parent-child allowance applied per child and per family line; valuations copied from an estate agent’s optimistic brochure instead of a reasoned expert figure at the date of death; and treaty credits refused for lack of HMRC evidence or missed form-filling. The first step is a written reclamation, a formal complaint, to the tax office that issued the notice, setting out the correct legal basis with the official references used in this guide, attaching the evidence, and asking for a discharge or reduction within the statutory complaint period shown on the notice. If the administration maintains the charge, the dispute moves to the administrative court, the tribunal administratif, for tax matters, where the judges re-examine both the facts and the law. Throughout, pay or formally request a stay where required, because enforcement does not always wait for the outcome, and keep copies of everything sent. Families who receive a reassessment after an earlier gift, who discover an old donation-partage that changes the allowances, or who face a refusal of the treaty credit should seek advice early: the combination of the one-year filing deadline and the five-year treaty window means delay directly destroys rights. Our related analyses of selling a UK house as a French resident and of UK dividends taxed in France show the same treaty-credit logic applied to other cross-border income and gains.
Conclusion
A British family inheriting a French house faces three layers of French law that fit together in a fixed order. First, Article 750 ter decides what France taxes: the worldwide estate where the deceased was French tax resident, only the French-situs property where they were not, with trusts and company-held houses looked at in substance following the 2020 trust ruling. Second, the 1963 succession treaty allocates the French house to France and removes the double charge through a domicile-state credit claimed within five years, so the family pays each country once and reconciles the overlap on paper rather than paying twice. Third, the children are taxed individually after their 100,000 euro allowance each, at the rising direct-line scale, while a surviving spouse or PACS partner pays nothing, and the children’s reserved share is protected by Article 913 including the compensatory levy against foreign-law wills that leave them nothing. The procedure that holds these layers together is unforgiving on time: a detailed succession declaration within six months of a death in France or twelve months otherwise, payment on filing, and treaty refund claims within five years. Open the notaire’s file within weeks, value the house honestly, keep every HMRC paper, and challenge errors in writing with the exact legal basis. Handled in that order, a Franco-British succession ends as it should: the house passes to the next generation, each heir pays no more than the statute requires, and no tax is paid twice on the same bricks.
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