You remarried after a divorce or a bereavement, you and your new spouse bought a house in France together, and the purchase deed contains a tontine clause. The idea felt reassuring at the signing: when one of you dies, the survivor keeps the whole house. Then a letter arrives from the children of your first marriage, or from their solicitor, claiming a share of the French property and threatening to force a sale. For British blended families with a foothold in France, this is one of the most distressing post-Brexit disputes, because two legal worlds collide: the English freedom to leave property to a spouse, and the French system of forced shares for children. This guide explains, entirely in English and with every French term defined on first use, how the tontine works when the first spouse dies, whether children from an earlier relationship can still take part of the house, what death tax the surviving spouse pays, and which practical routes exist to challenge an excessive bill or an unfounded claim. A tontine, also called a clause d’accroissement, is a special term written into the purchase deed under which the surviving buyer is treated as having owned the whole property from the outset. The notaire is the French public officer who draws up the authentic purchase deed. Indivision means joint ownership where each person holds an undivided share. The réserve héréditaire is the forced share of an estate that French law guarantees to children. Droits de mutation à titre gratuit are French transfer duties on gifts and inheritances. A réclamation is the formal written complaint sent to the French tax administration before any court action.
I. Will the Tontine Really Leave the Whole French House to the Survivor Despite Children from a First Marriage?
A. How Does the Tontine Clause Work When the First Spouse Dies?
Start with the ordinary position, because the tontine only makes sense against that background. When two people buy a French house together without any special clause, they normally hold it in indivision, which is the French form of joint ownership where each person owns an undivided share of the whole, called a quote-part, typically one half each. While both buyers live, each enjoys the whole property together. When one dies, that person’s half passes into his or her estate and goes to the heirs, which may include children from an earlier relationship. The survivor does not automatically absorb the half. Worse for the survivor, any joint owner can in principle force an end to the arrangement, because Article 815 of the Civil Code provides: “Nul ne peut être contraint à demeurer dans l’indivision et le partage peut toujours être provoqué, à moins qu’il n’y ait été sursis par jugement ou convention.” In plain terms, nobody can be forced to stay in joint ownership, and a partition, called a partage, can always be demanded. In a blended family that rule is the doorway through which the children of the first marriage can demand either a buyout or the sale of the house, through a court-ordered sale procedure known as licitation.
The tontine clause closes that doorway by preventing any shared ownership from arising at all. The First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, France’s highest civil court, defined it in these exact terms in its opinion of 15 June 2022, appeal no. 21-80.743: “La clause de tontine, ou clause d’accroissement, est celle par laquelle, lorsque plusieurs personnes acquièrent un bien, le survivant des acquéreurs est réputé avoir été seul propriétaire depuis l’acquisition.” The survivor is deemed to have been the sole owner since the purchase. There is no half passing into the estate of the first to die, no joint ownership between the survivor and the stepchildren, and therefore nothing for those children to partition or sell. The same opinion explains what each buyer holds while both are alive: “Tant que la condition de survie demeure pendante, un acquéreur en tontine a, sous la réserve de stipulations contraires, la possibilité d’aliéner seul les droits qu’il tient du pacte tontinier et qui consistent, d’une part, en la jouissance indivise du bien, d’autre part, en la propriété du bien conditionnée au prédécès de ses coacquéreurs.” Each buyer therefore holds shared enjoyment of the property plus ownership conditional on outliving the other, and the whole arrangement turns on one uncertain event: who survives whom.
A recent French court decision shows the clause operating exactly as written in a second-marriage family. In its judgment of 18 February 2025, case no. 22/01752, the Grenoble Court of Appeal dealt with a couple married under separation of property who had bought a building plot together, and the purchase deed contained this term, quoted word for word by the court: ‘il est convenu entre les acquéreurs, à titre de clause aléatoire, que le premier mourant d’entre eux sera considéré comme n’ayant jamais eu la propriété du bien objet des présentes, laquelle sera censée avoir toujours reposé sur la seule tête du survivant. Aucun des coacquéreurs ne pourra demander le partage ou la licitation du bien acquis. Par suite : jusqu’au décès, chacun des acquéreurs sera donc propriétaire du bien acquis sous condition résolutoire de son prédécès et sous condition suspensive de sa survie ; au décès du prémourant, ses héritiers ne pourront prétendre à aucun droit sur ledit bien et le survivant sera considéré comme ayant été seul propriétaire à compter de la date des présentes’. When the husband died, his son from his first marriage claimed money against the widow and the notaire. The courts dismissed the claims and confirmed that the widow owned the whole property, with no partition available to the son. For a British couple buying in France, this is the strongest available protection for the survivor, but it only works if the clause is drafted into the authentic purchase deed, the acte authentique, at the time of acquisition, with both buyers present and advised, and it must be distinguished from a superficially similar device in Article 1873-13 of the Civil Code, which merely lets joint owners agree that “chacun des survivants pourra acquérir la quote-part du défunt” on payment of its value to the estate. That buyout pact keeps the deceased’s share inside the estate and payable to the heirs; the tontine removes it from the estate altogether.
Three practical conditions decide whether a notaire will agree to insert the clause for British buyers. First, the buyers should contribute equally and take equal shares, because the clause must remain a genuine gamble, an aléa, on survival rather than a disguised gift from one buyer to the other. Second, the buyers should be of broadly comparable age and health, for the same reason: where one buyer is far older or seriously ill at signing, the uncertainty disappears and the clause becomes vulnerable. Third, the clause must be accepted by the lender if the purchase is mortgaged, since most French banks review the deed before releasing funds. British buyers sometimes ask whether they can add a tontine later to a house they already own outright. The honest answer is that a later tontine between existing joint owners is far weaker and heavily litigated, because the property is already in the parties’ estates; the safe route is to structure the acquisition correctly from the start, or to sell and rebuy through the proper deed, always on written notarial advice. Couples who instead sign an agreement to stay in joint ownership, a convention d’indivision allowed by Article 1873-1 of the Civil Code which states: “Ceux qui ont des droits à exercer sur des biens indivis, à titre de propriétaires, de nus-propriétaires ou d’usufruitiers peuvent passer des conventions relatives à l’exercice de ces droits”, should know that such an agreement only organises the joint ownership and, under Article 1873-3 of the Civil Code, a fixed-term agreement cannot exceed five years, so it never gives the survivor the whole house the way a tontine does.
B. Can Children from Your First Marriage Still Claim Part of the House?
This is the question that brings most blended families to a lawyer, and the short answer is reassuring but qualified. French law guarantees children a forced share of their parent’s estate, called the réserve héréditaire, with the freely disposable remainder called the quotité disponible. Article 912 of the Civil Code defines them in these words: “La réserve héréditaire est la part des biens et droits successoraux dont la loi assure la dévolution libre de charges à certains héritiers dits réservataires, s’ils sont appelés à la succession et s’ils l’acceptent. La quotité disponible est la part des biens et droits successoraux qui n’est pas réservée par la loi et dont le défunt a pu disposer librement par des libéralités.” And Article 913 of the Civil Code fixes the fractions: “Les libéralités, soit par actes entre vifs, soit par testament, 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.” Children who feel short-changed can bring a reduction action, an action en réduction, to claw back excessive lifetime gifts and legacies into the disposable share. English readers often assume this machinery will defeat the tontine. It normally does not, for one principled reason: the tontine is a gamble, a contrat aléatoire, not a gift, a libéralité, so there is nothing to reduce.
The Grenoble case decided the point directly. The son from the first marriage argued that the combination of transactions harmed his forced share and that the notaire should have prevented it. The widow’s answer, recorded in the judgment, was that, the arrangement being an aleatory contract rather than a gift, it could not harm the forced share, and the court agreed: the property was never in the father’s estate, so the forced-share arithmetic had nothing to bite on. The judgment confirms the lower court’s finding that there was no harm to the son’s reserved rights, and it rejected the claims against the notaire as well, holding that a regular accretion clause matching both spouses’ wish for mutual protection cannot be blamed on the drafter. For British parents this is the central precedent to understand: where the tontine is genuine, regularly drafted and entered into for mutual protection, the children of the first marriage cannot use the forced share to take part of the French house, because legally the house never belonged to their deceased parent at death.
Three exceptions keep advisers honest, and each maps onto a different challenge you may face. The first is the absence of any real gamble. If one spouse paid the whole price while the other contributed nothing, or if one spouse was terminally ill at signing so that survival was a certainty rather than a chance, the disappointed children can argue that the clause was a disguised gift, a donation déguisée, which unlike a true tontine falls back into the reduction machinery. The Grenoble son ran a version of this argument, pointing to money movements and separate property, and lost on the facts because the construction had been funded by joint bank loans rather than the father’s separate funds. The lesson for British buyers is organisational: keep proof of equal contributions, joint loan documents and bank statements showing both names, because that file is what defeats a disguised-gift attack ten or twenty years later. The second exception concerns the surviving spouse’s own protections overlapping with the tontine. Even without any clause, a married survivor who lived in the home as the main residence enjoys one year of free use by right, since Article 763 of the Civil Code provides: “Si, à l’époque du décès, le conjoint successible occupe effectivement, à titre d’habitation principale, un logement appartenant aux époux ou dépendant totalement de la succession, il a de plein droit, pendant une année, la jouissance gratuite de ce logement, ainsi que du mobilier, compris dans la succession, qui le garnit.” A longer lifelong right of habitation can exist under Article 764 of the Civil Code, which states: “Sauf volonté contraire du défunt exprimée dans les conditions de l’article 971 , le conjoint successible qui occupait effectivement, à l’époque du décès, à titre d’habitation principale, un logement appartenant aux époux ou dépendant totalement de la succession, a sur ce logement, jusqu’à son décès, un droit d’habitation et un droit d’usage sur le mobilier, compris dans la succession, le garnissant.” These rights cushion the survivor but they do not transfer ownership, so in a blended family they complement rather than replace the tontine.
The third exception is the choice of English law, which many British wills now contain. Under the European Succession Regulation that France applies, a person may choose the law of his or her nationality to govern the whole succession, and the official text of Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 on succession matters remains the reference your notaire will use. Choosing English law does not destroy the tontine, because the accretion operates as a contract outside the estate, but it changes the surrounding landscape: English freedom of disposition may govern the rest of the estate while French forced-share logic continues to police disguised gifts. A related trap is the compensatory levy added to Article 913, which lets a child deprived by a foreign law without any forced-share mechanism take compensation from French assets, but only where the deceased or at least one child is a European Union national or habitually resident in the Union and the applicable foreign law offers no protection. A British child living in France may therefore have arguments worth examining, while a British child living in England with English law chosen faces a narrower path. Do not treat either outcome as automatic: the interaction between the tontine, the chosen law and the family’s residence must be mapped file by file before anyone writes an aggressive letter, whether you are the survivor defending the house or the child asserting rights. The public service-public.fr guide on organising your succession gives a useful overview of the French framework, and the GOV.UK Living in France guide is the British government’s starting point for nationals settled across the Channel, but neither replaces advice on your own deed.
II. What Tax Does the Surviving Spouse Pay on the French House and How Do You Challenge the Bill?
A. How Is the Survivor’s Gain Taxed When the Tontine Operates?
Tax is where the tontine surprises even well-advised families, because civil law and tax law point in opposite directions. For civil purposes the survivor was always the sole owner, so nothing is inherited. For tax purposes the law pretends otherwise. Article 754 A of the General Tax Code states: “Les biens recueillis en vertu d’une clause insérée dans un contrat d’acquisition en commun selon laquelle la part du ou des premiers décédés reviendra aux survivants de telle sorte que le dernier vivant sera considéré comme seul propriétaire de la totalité des biens sont, au point de vue fiscal, réputés transmis à titre gratuit à chacun des bénéficiaires de l’accroissement. Cette disposition ne s’applique pas à l’habitation principale commune à deux acquéreurs lorsque celle-ci a une valeur globale inférieure à 76 000 €, sauf si le bénéficiaire opte pour l’application des droits de mutation par décès .” The tax administration’s official doctrine confirms the principle in the BOFiP guidance on property received under an accretion or tontine clause, which confirms that transfer duties are in principle due on property received under an accretion or tontine clause inserted in a joint acquisition contract. In other words, the survivor is taxed as if the deceased’s share had been given to him or her, on the value of that share at the date of death, even though civilly no transfer occurred.
For a married British couple this deemed transfer is normally tax-free. Since 2007, 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 therefore pays no death duties on the accreted share, whatever its value and whatever the couple’s nationality or residence. That exemption is the reason the tontine is so attractive to married couples: full civil protection plus a nil tax bill. Do not confuse this with the position of unmarried partners, for whom the same accretion is taxed at the rate for strangers. The scale in Article 777 of the General Tax Code charges “Entre parents au-delà du 4e degré et entre personnes non-parentes 60”, meaning sixty per cent above a tiny allowance, which is why unmarried British buyers need different planning. Married readers should also note the small-home exception in Article 754 A: where the shared main home is worth less than 76,000 euros in total, no duty arises at all unless the survivor opts into the death-duty regime, a detail that occasionally helps with modest flats. Children from the first marriage sometimes argue that abatements should have reduced some bill, and it helps to know the scale of what they gave up: Article 779 of the General Tax Code grants “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”, a 100,000 euro allowance per child that applies to ordinary inheritances and gifts but is simply irrelevant to property that never entered the estate.
Valuation disputes are the most common source of excessive assessments. The taxable base is the value of the deceased’s share, usually one half of the whole property’s market value at death, and the notaire declares it in the succession paperwork within six months of the death where the deceased was French-resident, or twelve months otherwise. If the tax office considers the declared value too low, it notifies an adjustment with penalties, and the survivor discovers that a civil victory, keeping the house, can be followed by a fiscal demand. Keep the estate agent valuations, the notaire’s comparative market analysis and any surveyor report from the year of death, because a reasoned valuation file is what wins the later argument. A second, quieter trap concerns couples who financed the purchase unequally: the administration may accept the fifty-fifty split for civil purposes yet examine the funding for gift-tax purposes, and large one-sided payments documented by bank transfers can be recharacterised. Equal contributions protect the civil clause and the tax position at the same time. Finally, British-domiciled readers sometimes ask whether the United Kingdom taxes the same event. The accretion is a French creature unknown to English law, and the UK treatment depends on domicile and the nature of the interest, so the file should be reviewed on both sides of the Channel rather than assumed to be taxed once. The Franco-British double tax treaty on inheritances allocates taxing rights over French real property to France in the first place, which is why the French assessment comes first and must be handled under French procedure.
B. How to Challenge a Claim or a Tax Bill on Time and Before the Right Judge
Three different challengers require three different responses, and confusing them wastes the deadlines that matter. First, the notaire refuses to insert the clause at purchase. No court can order a notaire to draft a tontine against his professional judgment, and refusals usually rest on a genuine doubt about the gamble, for example a wide age gap or visibly unequal funding. The practical answer is to consult another notaire with the full file, adjust the structure so the gamble is real, for instance by equalising contributions and shares, and to get the reasoning for any refusal in writing so the replacement notaire can address it. Never press a drafter to insert a clause he considers artificial: a tontine signed despite a documented warning becomes the first exhibit in the children’s later attack. Second, the children from the first marriage sue after the death, demanding money or the sale of the house. Their action goes to the judicial court, the tribunal judiciaire, of the place where the property sits or where the succession opened, and general civil claims are subject to the five-year limitation in Article 2224 of the Civil Code: “Les actions personnelles ou mobilières se prescrivent par cinq ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant de l’exercer.” The survivor’s defence follows the Grenoble template: produce the authentic deed, prove equal funding and a genuine uncertainty at signing, and ask the court to declare that the house never entered the estate so that no forced-share reduction can attach to it. An English will choosing English law should be exhibited too, so the judge sees the whole testamentary picture rather than an isolated French deed. If the children allege a disguised gift, the fight turns on bank records and medical evidence about health at signing, which is why preserving those documents from day one decides cases a decade later.
Third, the tax office sends an excessive assessment on the accreted share. French tax litigation is a staircase whose first step is compulsory: you must complain to the administration before any judge will hear you. Article R*190-1 of the Tax Procedure Book states: “Le contribuable qui désire contester tout ou partie d’un impôt qui le concerne doit d’abord adresser une réclamation au service territorial, selon le cas, de la direction générale des finances publiques ou de la direction générale des douanes et droits indirects dont dépend le lieu de l’imposition.” Send the réclamation through the secure messaging of your personal account on impots.gouv.fr and, for safety on significant amounts, by recorded delivery as well, identifying the assessment by year, reference and amount, and asking expressly for dégrèvement, meaning cancellation, or restitution, meaning repayment. The deadline is strict: Article R*196-1 of the Tax Procedure Book requires that “les réclamations relatives aux impôts autres que les impôts directs locaux et les taxes annexes à ces impôts, doivent être présentées à l’administration au plus tard le 31 décembre de la deuxième année suivant celle” of collection, payment or the event justifying the claim. Diary that 31 December date before anything else, because a brilliant argument filed one day late is worthless. If the administration rejects the claim expressly or by silence, the appeal lies to the administrative court, the tribunal administratif, for the property’s location; readers in Paris and the Île-de-France region should check which tribunal covers their arrondissement or department, since filing in the wrong court loses months. Attach the deed, the valuation evidence, the proof of the marriage for the spouse exemption, and the rejection, and plead the exemption and the correct base in that order.
A final organisational point prevents most disputes from ever starting. Tell the family early, in plain terms, what the deed does. A short letter from the notaire explaining to all adult children that the house will pass to the survivor by contract, that this is lawful, and that the rest of the estate remains fully subject to their forced shares, defuses the shock that produces litigation. Keep one folder with the deed, the loan offers in both names, the transfer slips proving equal funding, the valuations, and the English wills, and tell the survivor where it is. Review the structure when life changes: a move back to England, a separation, or a decision to sell and buy elsewhere can all require unwinding or restating the clause, and an outdated tontine between ex-spouses is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Handled this way, the tontine does exactly what second-marriage couples buy it for: the survivor keeps the roof, the children keep their rights over everything else, and the tax bill is the lawful minimum rather than a painful surprise.
Conclusion
A French house bought in tontine by a remarried British couple is the strongest shield the survivor can hold against the forced sale of the home: the survivor is deemed to have owned the whole property since the purchase, no joint ownership arises with the stepchildren, and the children’s forced shares attach to the rest of the estate rather than to the roof over the survivor’s head. The shield holds where the gamble was genuine, the funding equal, and the deed regular, as the Grenoble courts confirmed when they dismissed a first-marriage son’s attack on exactly such an arrangement. Tax follows its own logic, deeming the accreted share transferred and then, for a married survivor, exempting it, so the file must prove the marriage, the value and the base with the same care as the civil position. Claims arrive from three directions, a cautious notaire, determined children, or an aggressive assessment, and each has its own judge and its own deadline, from the five-year civil limitation to the 31 December tax claim cut-off. Prepare the deed properly, preserve the funding evidence, inform the family, and challenge excessive demands through the correct staircase, and the tontine delivers the promise made at the signing table: the survivor stays home.
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