Your mother has died in France, leaving the stone house in the Dordogne to you and your two siblings in equal shares. You live in Lyon, your sister lives in Manchester, and your brother never left the village and still lives in the house, rent-free, exactly as before. The French notaire — the public officer who settles every French succession — writes to all three of you that the house now belongs to you together, in indivision, the French form of joint ownership between co-heirs. Your sister wants her third in cash and wants it now. Your brother says he will never leave. You are somewhere in between, and you are beginning to suspect that the €40,000 your mother gave your brother ten years ago to re-roof his barn has never been mentioned to the notaire. Every British family with a French house reaches this moment sooner or later, and the questions arrive in a flood: can one sibling block everything, who pays for living in the house meanwhile, how do you buy the others out, and what happens to the sibling who hides money from the succession?

French law answers those questions in a fixed order, and this article follows it. First, nobody can be forced to stay in joint ownership forever, but while the house is undivided every sibling has rights that the others must respect. Secondly, the exit takes one of three roads — an organised agreement to stay together for a while, a buyout of the others, or a court-ordered division ending, if necessary, in an auction sale — and the price of that exit is policed by two old and sharp instruments: the rapport, the bringing back into the pot of lifetime gifts, and the recel successoral, the concealment penalty that strips a cheating heir of any share in what was hidden. Read the first part to learn how to get out, and the second to make sure the sharing is honest.

I. Can my brother and sister keep me locked in joint ownership of our parents’ French house

A. While the house is undivided, who decides what, and who pays for living in it

From the day of death until the day of division, the house belongs to all the heirs together. That is the indivision successorale, the post-death joint ownership, and its founding rule is also its safety valve: Article 815 of the Civil Code provides that “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.” No one can be forced to remain in joint ownership, and division can always be demanded, unless a court or an agreement has suspended it. Your sister in Manchester cannot be told to wait indefinitely, your brother cannot veto the principle of a division, and you cannot be held hostage by either of them. The only lawful brakes are a judge-ordered suspension or a joint agreement to stay together, and both are temporary by design.

Day-to-day decisions meanwhile follow majority rules, not unanimity. Article 815-3 of the Civil Code allows co-owners holding at least two thirds of the undivided rights to decide together, starting with this: “Le ou les indivisaires titulaires d’au moins deux tiers des droits indivis peuvent, à cette majorité : 1° Effectuer les actes d’administration relatifs aux biens indivis”. Routine management — insuring the house, commissioning urgent roof repairs, renewing a garden maintenance contract — can therefore be imposed by the siblings holding two thirds, without the third being able to block it. The heaviest acts are different: selling or mortgaging the house itself still requires everybody’s agreement, which is exactly why one determined sibling can paralyse a sale while being unable to paralyse maintenance. Practical advice follows directly: you and your sister, holding two thirds between you, can keep the house insured and weatherproof over your brother’s objections, but you cannot sell it over his signature.

The sibling who lives in the house enjoys no free ride. Article 815-9 of the Civil Code states the price of exclusive occupation in one sentence: “L’indivisaire qui use ou jouit privativement de la chose indivise est, sauf convention contraire, redevable d’une indemnité.” The co-heir who uses or enjoys the undivided property privately owes the others an occupation payment, unless you have agreed otherwise. Your brother, living alone in the Dordogne house since your mother’s death, owes you and your sister an indemnité d’occupation from the moment his occupation became exclusive, set by reference to the rental value of the house. The notaire can record an agreed figure in the succession papers, and the judge fixes it if you disagree. Two warnings matter here. First, the indemnity runs whether or not the occupier maintains the house beautifully; upkeep is a separate account. Second, the occupier who pays for genuine improvements or for necessary preservation works is not simply losing that money: Article 815-13 of the Civil Code requires that “Lorsqu’un indivisaire a amélioré à ses frais l’état d’un bien indivis, il doit lui en être tenu compte selon l’équité, eu égard à ce dont la valeur du bien se trouve augmentée au temps du partage ou de l’aliénation.” Money your brother provably spent improving the house must be credited back to him, measured by the added value at division or sale — which is why every invoice, photograph and bank transfer should be kept from the first month.

Siblings who get on well enough can organise the waiting period instead of enduring it. The convention d’indivision, the joint-ownership agreement signed before the notaire, lets you fix who lives where, who pays what, and for how long nobody may demand division. Article 1873-3 of the Civil Code sets the outer frame: “La convention peut être conclue pour une durée déterminée qui ne saurait être supérieure à cinq ans.” A fixed-term agreement cannot exceed five years, though it can be expressly renewed, and division can only be forced early for good cause. An open-ended agreement allows any sibling to demand division at any time, provided it is not done in bad faith or at an inappropriate moment. For a British family this agreement is often the wisest first signature: give your brother two years to arrange a buyout or a departure, fix his monthly occupation payment in writing, record who pays the taxe foncière, the French property tax, and the insurance, and convert a family quarrel into an administered timetable. The English-language official guide to succession joint ownership between heirs describes the same mechanisms from the administration’s side and confirms the structure, but it does not tell you how to negotiate the figures — that is what the rest of this article does.

B. How to force the way out: friendly division, court division and the auction sale nobody wants

When no agreement holds, any heir can demand the partage, the division, and the notaire prepares it first by consent. The friendly division values the house, deducts the debts, forms equal lots and attributes them, with balancing cash payments — soultes — where a lot exceeds a share. Consent is the snag: one signature missing and the notaire cannot close the file. That is the point at which the sibling in Manchester instructs a French lawyer and the matter moves from the notaire’s office to the tribunal judiciaire, the local civil court, which can order every step the family could not agree.

The court has a middle tool that families underuse. Article 824 of the Civil Code provides: “Si des indivisaires entendent demeurer dans l’indivision, le tribunal peut, à la demande de l’un ou de plusieurs d’entre eux, en fonction des intérêts en présence et sans préjudice de l’application des articles 831 à 832-3, attribuer sa part à celui qui a demandé le partage.” Where some co-heirs wish to stay together, the court may, weighing the interests at stake, allocate his or her share to the one who demanded division. In plain terms, if you and your brother want to keep the house together and your sister wants out, the judge can carve out your sister’s third, value it, and leave the two of you co-owning the rest — with a balancing payment if the undivided funds fall short. This solves the most common British configuration cleanly: the France-based siblings keep the house, the United Kingdom-based sibling takes cash, and nobody is forced to sell to a stranger.

Where nobody can buy anybody out, the court ends the matter by sale, and if necessary by licitation, the court-ordered auction of the undivided property. Two recent appeal decisions show exactly how judges reason, and both deserve attention because they are the template your own case will follow. On 25 April 2025 the Bourges Court of Appeal, First Civil Chamber, appeal number 24/00355, overturned a trial judge who had refused an auction in the hope that the family would agree during the division operations. It noted that one sister had offered to buy the other’s share without ever receiving an answer, that the other opposed the auction while pleading improvement claims, and that the parties plainly would not reconcile: “les parties ne sont pas disposées à se rapprocher, qu’il est douteux qu’un accord intervienne ‘au cours des opérations de liquidation partage'”. It concluded with the sentence every blocking sibling should read twice: “seule la licitation permettra de faire avancer les opérations de liquidation de l’indivision” — only the auction will move the liquidation forward — and ordered the auction of the house before the Nevers court on an opening price of €100,000. The lesson is blunt: stonewalling does not preserve the house, it sells it at auction, with fees and a price no one controls.

The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the same endpoint from the other direction on 9 July 2025, Pole 3 Chamber 1, appeal number 23/02907. Two brothers who had lived in the family home sought a preferential buyout and asked the court to throw out their co-heir’s auction claim; they failed on the buyout, as the next section explains, and the court recorded that they would also fail on blocking the sale: they were dismissed of that demand too, “le jugement étant confirmé du chef de la licitation judiciaire du bien indivis” — the judgment being confirmed on the court-ordered auction of the undivided property. Between Bourges and Paris the message is consistent: the judge prefers agreement, accepts a funded buyout, and otherwise sells. A sibling who wants the house must therefore arrive with financing, not with feelings.

Division has a tax price that should be negotiated before positions harden. Article 746 of the General Tax Code provides: “Les partages de biens meubles et immeubles entre copropriétaires, cohéritiers et coassociés, à quelque titre que ce soit, pourvu qu’il en soit justifié, sont assujettis à un droit d’enregistrement ou à une taxe de publicité foncière de 2,50 %.” Divisions of movable and immovable property between co-owners and co-heirs attract a registration duty or land-publicity tax of 2.50 per cent. On a €300,000 Dordogne house that is €7,500 of duty on the division itself, before notaire’s fees and any balancing-payment financing costs — a figure that often converts a marginal auction into a sensible buyout once all three siblings see it in writing. Ask the notaire for a full costed comparison of division-by-agreement, buyout and auction before anyone issues proceedings; it is the cheapest document in the whole file.

II. How to keep the house yourself and stop a sibling from taking more than a fair share

A. Buy out your brother and sister through preferential attribution of the home you live in

French law gives a head start to the heir who genuinely lives in the house. The attribution préférentielle, the preferential attribution, lets a co-heir demand that the house be allocated to him or her in the division, against a balancing payment to the others. Article 831-2 of the Civil Code opens the door wide: “Le conjoint survivant ou tout héritier copropriétaire peut également demander l’attribution préférentielle : 1° De la propriété ou du droit au bail du local qui lui sert effectivement d’habitation, s’il y avait sa résidence à l’époque du décès, et du mobilier le garnissant, ainsi que du véhicule du défunt dès lors que ce véhicule lui est nécessaire pour les besoins de la vie courante”. The surviving spouse or any co-owner heir may claim preferential attribution of the ownership or tenancy of the dwelling that genuinely serves as his or her home, if he or she was resident there at the time of death, with its furnishings. Your brother, resident in the house at your mother’s death and still living there, is the textbook candidate; you, living in Lyon, are not, for this house — though you could be for a different dwelling you genuinely occupy.

Candidacy is not victory, and the distinction the courts draw decides most cases. Article 831-3 of the Civil Code reserves the automatic right to one person only: “L’attribution préférentielle visée au 1° de l’article 831-2 est de droit pour le conjoint survivant.” The preferential attribution over the dwelling is a matter of right for the surviving spouse. For a sibling heir it is never automatic. The Paris Court of Appeal stated the rule on 9 July 2025, Pole 3 Chamber 1, appeal number 23/02907, in terms to memorise: “il résulte de l’article 831-2 du code civil que le conjoint survivant ou tout héritier copropriétaire peut également demander l’attribution préférentielle de la propriété ou du droit au bail du local qui lui sert effectivement d’habitation, s’il y avait sa résidence à l’époque du décès, et du mobilier le garnissant”, then the decisive contrast, “si l’attribution préférentielle est de droit pour le conjoint survivant, celle-ci est soumise, dans les autres cas, à l’appréciation du juge au regard des éléments du dossier” — where it is a right for the surviving spouse, in all other cases it lies in the judge’s assessment on the evidence. Your brother must therefore prove continuous, genuine residence and persuade the judge that allocating him the house serves the family’s interests better than selling it.

The Paris brothers lost on exactly that evidence in appeal number 23/02907, and their failure is your checklist. They claimed a decade of life in the house with their father plus stable occupation since his death, yet they filed no updated valuation to support the buyout figure, clinging to a contested €400,000 estimate. The court found that gap fatal: without current evidence of value, the balancing payment cannot be financed or even computed, and the whole buyout project collapses — “ce point pose une difficulté majeure de nature à mettre en échec le projet d’attribution préférentielle”. Any British sibling seeking the house should therefore arrive with three documents, not one: proof of genuine residence at death and since, a recent independent valuation within months of the hearing, and a bank’s written agreement in principle for the balancing payment. Commission the valuation jointly through the notaire where possible, because a single expert agreed by all sides costs a third of three competing experts and carries triple the weight. And remember the mirror risk demonstrated by Bourges: arrive without funding and the court will not keep the file open out of sympathy — it will order the auction.

B. Lifetime gifts must be brought back and hidden assets are punished: equal shares means honest shares

Equal division starts from an honest pot, and French law rebuilds that pot in two stages. The first is the rapport, the bringing back into account of lifetime gifts. Article 843 of the Civil Code states: “Tout héritier, même ayant accepté à concurrence de l’actif, venant à une succession, doit rapporter à ses cohéritiers tout ce qu’il a reçu du défunt, par donations entre vifs, directement ou indirectement ; il ne peut retenir les dons à lui faits par le défunt, à moins qu’ils ne lui aient été faits expressément hors part successorale.” Every heir coming to a succession must bring back to the co-heirs everything received from the deceased by lifetime gift, directly or indirectly, and may keep such gifts only if they were expressly made outside the hereditary share. The €40,000 re-roofing gift to your brother is therefore presumed to be an advance on his inheritance: it is notionally added back to the estate, each share is computed on the enlarged total, and your brother takes less from the house proceeds to compensate. Only a gift expressly documented as hors part successorale — outside the share, against the freely disposable portion — escapes, and the burden of proving that label lies on the sibling who received the money.

Valuation fights are settled by a rule that surprises British readers used to historic cost. Article 860 of the Civil Code provides: “Le rapport est dû de la valeur du bien donné à l’époque du partage, d’après son état à l’époque de la donation.” What is brought back is the value of the gifted asset at the time of division, judged in the condition it was in at the time of the gift. If your mother gave your brother a derelict barn worth €40,000 a decade ago and his own labour plus French planning permission made it worth €150,000, the account is taken at division-day value for a barn in its gifted condition — neither freezing the figure at the old price nor crediting the estate with his improvements, which are handled separately under the improvement rules. Where the gifted asset was sold before division, the law tracks the value at sale, or the replacement asset’s value at division if the proceeds were reinvested. Tell the notaire about every lifetime transfer early, on both sides of the Channel: a Manchester bank transfer that funded the re-roofing is as reportable as a French cheque, and discovering it late converts a valuation debate into a concealment case.

Concealment is where the law shows its teeth. The recel successoral, the fraudulent concealment of succession assets, punishes the heir who diverts or hides estate property — or hides the existence of a co-heir — to break the equality of division. Article 778 of the Civil Code pronounces the penalty without nuance: “l’héritier qui a recelé des biens ou des droits d’une succession ou dissimulé l’existence d’un cohéritier est réputé accepter purement et simplement la succession, nonobstant toute renonciation ou acceptation à concurrence de l’actif net, sans pouvoir prétendre à aucune part dans les biens ou les droits détournés ou recelés.” The concealing heir is deemed to accept the succession purely and simply — losing the shelter of limited acceptance that normally caps an heir’s liability at the estate’s net assets — and takes no share at all in the diverted or concealed property. The same article adds a financial sting that runs from day one: “L’héritier receleur est tenu de rendre tous les fruits et revenus produits par les biens recelés dont il a eu la jouissance depuis l’ouverture de la succession.” Every rent, crop and interest euro produced by the hidden asset since the death must be handed back.

The Cour de cassation, the supreme court for civil matters, has fenced this weapon with two conditions that every accusing sibling must understand before crying fraud. First, dishonest intent is indispensable. On 22 June 2016, First Civil Chamber, appeal number 15-15.880, the Court quashed a Basse-Terre appeal ruling of 12 January 2015 that had found concealment “même en l’absence d’intention frauduleuse” — even without fraudulent intent — holding that “l’intention frauduleuse est un élément constitutif du recel successoral”, that fraudulent intent is a constituent element of succession concealment, and that the appeal court had violated Article 778 by doing without it. A brother who genuinely forgot an old transfer, or who misunderstood a complex cross-border account, is careless, not a concealer; the penalty requires proof that he meant to skew the division. Read the full ruling on the Cour de cassation website under appeal number 15-15.880.

Secondly, the accuser proves everything, both the material act and the dishonest mind — and concealment presupposes a division to unbalance. On 9 September 2015, First Civil Chamber, appeal number 14-18.906, published in the Court’s Bulletin, the Court rejected a daughter’s concealment claim against her father’s widow with reasoning British families should study. The widow had opted for the usufruit, the life interest, over the whole estate, while the daughter held only the nue-propriété, the bare ownership: their rights were not of the same nature, there was no joint ownership between them and hence no division to disturb. The Court approved exactly that analysis: where rights differ in nature so that “il n’y avait pas lieu à partage entre les héritiers en l’absence d’indivision”, there is no division between the heirs for want of joint ownership, “la dissimulation des fonds alléguée ne pouvait être qualifiée de recel successoral” — the alleged concealment of funds could not be classed as succession concealment — and the claim failed. The working definition the courts apply is correspondingly strict: concealment means diverting estate effects in order to break the equality of the division, and its proof, in both the material and the intentional element, lies on the sibling who alleges it. See the Cour de cassation ruling under appeal number 14-18.906. For your family, the practical moral is twofold: disclose everything to the notaire yourself, including the awkward Manchester transfer, because voluntary disclosure destroys any later claim of intent; and if you accuse, arrive with bank records, not suspicions, because bare assertions lose and cost you the proceedings.

These honesty rules complete the picture drawn in our companion guides: what happens when a Briton dies in France without a will and the intestacy rules designate the heirs, which option an heir has between acceptance, limited acceptance and disclaimer when the estate carries debts, and the forced-heirship background that frames every British will covering French assets. Division is the act that follows designation: first the law says who inherits, then this article’s machinery says how the house is shared, bought out or sold.

Conclusion

A French house shared between British siblings follows a path the law has already paved. Joint ownership begins at death and no sibling can be locked into it: division can always be demanded, routine management needs only two thirds, and exclusive occupation is paid for by the month. The exit runs from agreement to court order: organise a fixed-term joint-ownership agreement of up to five years, carve out the departing sibling’s share where the rest wish to stay together, or accept the judge’s auction where no one can pay — remembering that stonewalling ends at the auction house, not at the negotiating table. The price is then policed to the euro: genuine residents may claim the preferential attribution of the home, proven with current valuation and financing, while lifetime gifts are brought back at division-day value and concealed assets trigger deemed full acceptance, exclusion from the hidden property and restitution of every euro of income since death. Disclose early to the notaire, cost every option including the 2.50 per cent division duty before litigating, and put the Manchester transfer in the file yourself — the sibling who volunteers the awkward document never pays the concealer’s penalty.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer from the firm. We can review your share of the French house, your buyout or sale options and any unfair division with you. Call Maître Reda Kohen at +33 6 46 60 58 22. Contact the firm.