Your tenant in Lyon, Toulouse or a village in the Dordogne has stopped paying the rent. The first month you treat it as an oversight. The second month the excuses begin. By the third month you are a British owner living in France or managing from the United Kingdom, watching arrears accumulate in euros while your mortgage, your French property tax and your insurance continue to leave your account every month. The question that follows is always the same: how do I get my flat back, how do I recover what I am owed, and how long will a French court take to help me?

This guide answers that question from the landlord’s side, in English, for the British position after Brexit. French eviction law protects the tenant heavily, and every shortcut attempted by an impatient owner — changing the locks, cutting off utilities, sending a stern letter from London giving seven days to leave — fails and can turn against you. The lawful path runs through four stages: a formal payment order served by a French enforcement officer, a court summons with the State notified, a judgment that terminates the lease and orders eviction, and an enforcement phase with fixed waiting periods and a winter truce. At each stage the tenant can ask the judge for time, and the judge will often grant it. A British landlord who understands the timetable, serves the right documents in the right order and challenges delay where challenge is possible recovers possession months earlier and preserves the arrears claim. The tax treatment of rents you declare or recover is covered in our companion guide on letting a French house, registration and tax after Brexit; this article deals with the procedure, the deadlines and the remedies when the rent stops coming in. Brexit itself changed nothing in this procedure — a British landlord uses exactly the same courts and the same documents as a French one — but distance, language and the habit of English remedies make British owners the most exposed to the classic mistakes this guide helps you avoid.

I. My Tenant Has Stopped Paying: What Must a British Landlord Serve First?

A. The Six-Week Commandement de Payer and the Clause Resolutoire: Getting the First Document Right

The starting point is the tenant’s basic duty. Article 1728 of the Civil Code, the Code civil, states that “Le preneur est tenu de deux obligations principales : 1° D’user de la chose louée raisonnablement, et suivant la destination qui lui a été donnée par le bail, ou suivant celle présumée d’après les circonstances, à défaut de convention ; 2° De payer le prix du bail aux termes convenus.” The tenant, the preneur, has two principal obligations: to use the property reasonably and to pay the rent on the agreed dates. Unpaid rent is therefore a breach of the contract itself, not a mere administrative inconvenience, and the whole enforcement machinery builds on that breach. Keep in mind the mirror obligation on your side: Article 1719 of the same Code requires the landlord, the bailleur, “De délivrer au preneur la chose louée et, s’il s’agit de son habitation principale, un logement décent.” If the dwelling is indecent or you have failed to maintain it, the tenant may raise that failure against you, as the two 2026 rulings discussed below confirm. Before suing for arrears, put your own file in order: valid lease, rent receipts or bank statements showing the gap, proof of charges, and evidence that the property meets the decency standard.

Every residential lease in France — bail d’habitation, the lease of a dwelling used as a home — contains an automatic termination clause by operation of law. Article 24 of the Act of 6 July 1989, the statute known as the loi du 6 juillet 1989 that governs relations between landlords and tenants of residential premises, provides that “Tout contrat de bail d’habitation contient une clause prévoyant la résiliation de plein droit du contrat de location pour défaut de paiement du loyer ou des charges aux termes convenus ou pour non-versement du dépôt de garantie.” This clause, the clause résolutoire, allows the lease to end automatically when rent, charges or the security deposit go unpaid. But it never operates on its own: the same Article 24 continues, “Cette clause ne produit effet que six semaines après un commandement de payer demeuré infructueux.” The clause takes effect only six weeks after a payment order that has remained unpaid. The general law of contract says the same thing in its own words: Article 1225 of the Civil Code states that “La clause résolutoire précise les engagements dont l’inexécution entraînera la résolution du contrat.” It then adds the condition that “La résolution est subordonnée à une mise en demeure infructueuse, s’il n’a pas été convenu que celle-ci résulterait du seul fait de l’inexécution.” And, decisively for the drafter of the payment order: “La mise en demeure ne produit effet que si elle mentionne expressément la clause résolutoire.” A demand that does not expressly refer to the termination clause produces no effect.

In practice this means the first document is everything. The commandement de payer, the formal order to pay, must be drawn up and served by a commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly called the huissier de justice, who serves it on the tenant and then on the guarantor, the caution, if the lease has one. The official Service Public guidance for unpaid rent confirms the method: the landlord instructs a commissaire de justice to deliver the commandement to the tenant and then to the caution, because the guarantor’s written undertaking is the second source of payment when the tenant defaults. The order must state, on pain of nullity — à peine de nullité — “La mention que le locataire dispose d’un délai de six semaines pour payer sa dette”: that the tenant has six weeks to pay. It must reproduce the termination clause, warn that the lease will end automatically if the arrears are not cleared within those six weeks, and state the exact sums claimed, broken down between rent, charges and any costs. A letter from you, however firmly worded, an email from your English-speaking agent, or a payment order served from the United Kingdom has no legal value at this stage. Only the commissaire de justice can start the six-week clock, and any error in the mandatory mentions — wrong amount, missing six-week warning, no reference to the clause — allows the tenant to have the order annulled and forces you to start again. Have a French lawyer review the draft before service: six weeks lost to a void order is the most common and most avoidable delay in the whole procedure.

Two practical points matter particularly for British owners. First, serve early. The six-week period runs from service, and everything downstream — summons, hearing, judgment, enforcement delays — queues behind it. Waiting four months in the hope that the tenant pays, then discovering that the clock only starts when the commissaire de justice knocks, is how an autumn problem becomes a case still pending the following summer. Second, if you manage from the United Kingdom, give your commissaire de justice and your lawyer a French address for service and a reachable contact: documents will be served, hearings will be scheduled and the tenant’s applications for time will arrive at short notice. Distance is not an excuse the court accepts for missing a deadline. And if you also let property in the United Kingdom, do not confuse the two systems: the mirror-image British scheme for overseas landlords, the Non-Resident Landlords Scheme described in the official GOV.UK guidance on what the Non-resident Landlords Scheme is, concerns deduction of United Kingdom tax from United Kingdom rents. It has no bearing on a French lease, a French commandement or a French court.

B. Two Months, One Year, Two Years: the Delays a French Judge Can Grant the Tenant

The six weeks expire and the tenant has neither paid nor left. The lease is theoretically terminated, but no French landlord recovers the flat on that basis alone: you must go to court and have the termination recorded — constat de la résiliation — and the eviction ordered. This is where British owners discover the second feature of French law, the judge’s power to grant time. Even when the debt is undisputed, the court can suspend the termination clause and spread the arrears, and it does so routinely where the tenant shows willingness to pay. Your case must therefore be built from the summons onwards to survive those applications, not merely to prove the debt.

The general mechanism sits in Article 1343-5 of the Civil Code: “Le juge peut, compte tenu de la situation du débiteur et en considération des besoins du créancier, reporter ou échelonner, dans la limite de deux années, le paiement des sommes dues.” The judge may, considering the debtor’s situation and the creditor’s needs, defer or spread payment over up to two years. The same article adds a protection tenants invoke systematically: “La décision du juge suspend les procédures d’exécution qui auraient été engagées par le créancier.” The decision suspends any enforcement proceedings the creditor has started. In the lease context this means a tenant who obtains payment delays also freezes the effects of the termination clause for the duration of the schedule — provided the tenant actually pays each instalment. Miss one instalment and the clause revives, but the landlord must return to the judge to have that failure recorded. Never treat a payment schedule as the end of the case: diary every due date, keep the bank statements, and instruct your lawyer the moment an instalment is missed.

A second family of delays concerns departure itself. Articles L. 412-3 and L. 412-4 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings, the Code des procédures civiles d’exécution, allow the judge to grant the evicted occupant renewable time to leave where rehousing cannot happen in normal conditions. Article L. 412-4 frames the range strictly: “La durée des délais prévus à l’article L. 412-3 ne peut, en aucun cas, être inférieure à un mois ni supérieure à un an.” No less than one month, no more than one year, fixed after weighing the good or bad faith of the occupant, the respective situations of owner and occupier — age, health, family and financial circumstances — the steps the occupant has taken to find new housing, and the right to decent independent housing. A tenant who has paid nothing and done nothing gets the minimum; an elderly tenant in poor health who has applied for social housing and paid part of the arrears can get close to the maximum. Your written submissions should therefore address each criterion expressly: the tenant’s age and resources as shown by the file, the absence of rehousing applications, your own situation as a landlord who needs the property or its income. Judges decide these delays on the papers before them, and the landlord who says nothing about them receives the tenant’s version unanswered.

Two recent rulings of the Third Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, the Cour de cassation, France’s highest court for civil matters, show how strictly the Court polices this stage — and both deserve attention even though each concerned a commercial or professional lease rather than a home, because the principles they state apply to the commandement mechanism generally while the residential timetable remains the six-week rule of Article 24. On 5 March 2026, in case number 24-15.820, the Court restated the foundations in these terms: “la condition résolutoire est toujours sous-entendue dans les contrats synallagmatiques, pour le cas où l’une des deux parties ne satisfera point à son engagement.” It then held that “Lorsque, assigné par le bailleur en constatation de l’acquisition d’une clause résolutoire en raison du non-paiement de loyers dans le mois ayant suivi la délivrance d’un commandement de payer, le locataire invoque une exception d’inexécution, le juge doit en vérifier le bien-fondé, peu important que le locataire n’ait pas demandé en justice des délais de paiement dans le mois de la délivrance du commandement.” Where the tenant argues that non-payment was a lawful refusal because the landlord failed first — the exception d’inexécution, the defence of non-performance — the judge must examine that defence on its merits, even if the tenant never applied for payment delays within the commandement period. The lesson for a British landlord is direct: if the tenant complains of disrepair, damp, a broken boiler or an indecent dwelling, the court will investigate whether your own breach justified the withholding of rent, and the investigation happens even when the tenant’s paperwork is imperfect. Maintain the property, answer complaints in writing, and keep invoices for every repair: the file that proves a decent, maintained dwelling neutralises the most powerful tenant defence before it is raised.

On 12 February 2026, in case number 24-16.691, the same Chamber added the requirement of good faith. It recalled that “Selon ce texte, les contrats doivent être exécutés de bonne foi.” — the text being Article 1104 of the Civil Code, which provides that “Les contrats doivent être négociés, formés et exécutés de bonne foi.” and that “Cette disposition est d’ordre public.” Applying that rule, the Court held that “En se déterminant ainsi, sans rechercher, comme il le lui était demandé, si la clause résolutoire avait été mise en oeuvre de bonne foi par les bailleurs, la cour d’appel n’a pas donné de base légale à sa décision.” A court that records termination without asking whether the landlord used the termination clause in good faith gives no legal basis for its decision. In that case the landlords had refused to cash cheques sent each month and then relied on non-payment — conduct the tenant asked the court to examine. For a British owner the warning is practical: never refuse a partial payment to manufacture a cleaner termination, never serve a commandement for sums you know are disputed without breaking them down honestly, and never pursue termination while ignoring a tenant’s genuine attempt to pay. Act in demonstrable good faith at every step, because the Court of Cassation now requires judges to check it.

One procedural safeguard shapes the summons itself. Before the hearing, the assignation — the assignation, the writ summoning the tenant to court — must be notified by the commissaire de justice to the State representative in the département, the préfet, at least six weeks before the hearing, so that the competent housing-support body can prepare a social and financial assessment, the diagnostic social et financier, hearing both landlord and tenant and sending it to the judge. The tenant is informed of the right to ask the judge for payment delays. This assessment is not a formality: it feeds directly into the judge’s decision on the two-year schedule and the one-year departure delay. Cooperate with it, submit your observations in writing, and correct any factual error about the arrears before the hearing. Landlords who ignore the assessment let the tenant’s hardship narrative stand alone; landlords who engage with it give the judge the creditor’s needs that Article 1343-5 requires to be weighed.

II. From the Court Order to the Front Door: How Eviction Is Enforced and Challenged

A. No Eviction Without a Court Order: the Commandement de Quitter and the Two-Month Wait

Assume the hearing has taken place before the local judicial court — the tribunal judiciaire, and in housing matters typically its protected-persons judge, the juge des contentieux de la protection — and the judgment records termination, orders eviction and condemns the tenant to pay the arrears plus a monthly occupation payment, the indemnité d’occupation, until the flat is actually freed. Many British owners expect that judgment to end the matter. It does not. French law forbids self-help eviction absolutely: Article L. 411-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings provides that “Sauf disposition spéciale, l’expulsion d’un immeuble ou d’un lieu habité ne peut être poursuivie qu’en vertu d’une décision de justice ou d’un procès-verbal de conciliation exécutoire et après signification d’un commandement d’avoir à libérer les locaux.” No eviction except under a court decision or an enforceable conciliation record, and after service of an order to vacate. Changing the locks, removing the front door, cutting electricity or water, or moving the tenant’s belongings onto the pavement is a criminally punishable forced entry — voie de fait — that exposes the landlord to damages and prosecution while leaving the tenant’s right to the flat intact. Whatever the arrears, never touch the flat: enforce the judgment through the commissaire de justice or not at all.

The enforcement phase begins with the commandement de quitter les lieux, the order to vacate served by the commissaire de justice after the judgment. Article L. 412-1 of the same Code then imposes a fixed breathing space: “Si l’expulsion porte sur un lieu habité par la personne expulsée ou par tout occupant de son chef, elle ne peut avoir lieu qu’à l’expiration d’un délai de deux mois qui suit le commandement, sans préjudice des dispositions des articles L. 412-3 à L. 412-7 .” Two clear months from the order to vacate before any physical eviction, on top of any departure delay the judgment itself granted under Article L. 412-3. The same article allows the judge to reduce or remove the two months in narrow cases — proceedings where rehousing failed because of the tenant, or manifest bad faith — but the starting position is always the full period, and the landlord’s application for a reduction must be reasoned and evidenced. Use those two months actively rather than passively: instruct the commissaire de justice to attempt enforcement discussions, pursue the arrears through attachment of bank accounts or earnings where the tenant is solvent, and prepare the file for the next stage, because the tenant will use the same period to apply for further time, for social housing, or for the winter protection described below.

The judgment itself is your enforcement title for everything, not only for possession. It fixes the arrears due at the hearing date, sets the monthly occupation payment — usually equal to the former rent plus charges — until actual departure, rules on costs and the procedural indemnity under Article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and, where the tenant raised a defence, explains why it failed. Check each head when you receive it: a missing occupation payment leaves months of unlawful occupation uncompensated; an unindexed sum loses value; an omitted costs order is money abandoned. If the tenant appeals, enforcement of the eviction is generally not suspended in these matters unless the court orders otherwise, but the arrears provisions may require fresh steps — take advice immediately on what remains enforceable during the appeal. And keep paying your own obligations in the meantime: French judges notice the landlord who claims hardship while leaving the building’s charges unpaid or the property uninsured, and the tenant’s lawyer will say so.

B. Winter Truce, Force Publique and Recovery: What the British Landlord Can Still Challenge

The two months expire, the tenant is still there, and the calendar shows October. France then imposes its best-known tenant protection, the winter truce — the trêve hivernale. Article L. 412-6 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings states that “Nonobstant toute décision d’expulsion passée en force de chose jugée et malgré l’expiration des délais accordés en vertu de l’article L. 412-3, il est sursis à toute mesure d’expulsion non exécutée à la date du 1er novembre de chaque année jusqu’au 31 mars de l’année suivante, à moins que le relogement des intéressés soit assuré dans des conditions suffisantes respectant l’unité et les besoins de la famille.” Despite a final eviction order and despite the expiry of every delay granted, all unexecuted evictions are suspended from 1 November to 31 March unless the occupants are rehoused in conditions that preserve the unity and needs of the family. There is no application to make and no discretion to exercise: the truce applies by operation of law, and a commissaire de justice who attempted a winter eviction would act unlawfully. British owners who bought a letting investment for yield find this the hardest rule to accept, but planning around it is part of the investment: a judgment obtained in September will normally be enforced in April, and the arrears claim continues to run in the meantime through the occupation payment. The narrow statutory exceptions — squatters who entered by force or fraud, or a court order lifting the protection — almost never concern a former tenant holding over after a lease, so budget for the truce rather than fighting it.

After the truce, physical eviction needs the State. The commissaire de justice cannot force entry alone: where the tenant resists, the officer requests the assistance of the police — the concours de la force publique — from the préfet, in Paris the préfet de police acting with the capital’s housing services. The préfet may grant or defer that assistance, and a refusal or prolonged silence engages the liability of the State, which then owes the landlord compensation for the delay. This is the landlord’s principal challenge route at the enforcement stage: if months pass without police assistance, your lawyer claims State compensation for the lost occupation payments while pressing the préfecture for a date. The procedure is slow and paper-heavy, which is why the judgment’s occupation payment matters so much — it quantifies, month by month, the loss the State will eventually have to cover. Keep the flat insured, keep the charges paid, and keep every letter to and from the préfecture: the compensation file is built from proof of diligence, not from expressions of exasperation.

Meanwhile the money claim follows its own track, and here the British landlord has more leverage than many realise. The judgment is an enforcement title against the tenant’s French assets: attachment of bank balances, attachment of earnings through the employer, and registration of a judicial mortgage where the tenant owns property. Where the lease had a solvent guarantor, sue on the guarantee promptly rather than waiting for the eviction to conclude — the caution’s undertaking covers rent, charges and often the occupation payment, subject to the formalities of the guarantee deed. Where the tenant has left France for the United Kingdom taking the debt along, recovery becomes cross-border enforcement of a civil judgment, which is slower and costlier; weigh the amount against the cost before instructing, but do not let limitation extinguish the claim while you hesitate. And throughout, challenge what can usefully be challenged: oppose the tenant’s applications for further departure delays with evidence of bad faith and of your own need; appeal a payment schedule whose instalments the tenant plainly cannot meet where the appeal has a real prospect on the assessment of resources; and ask the enforcement judge — the juge de l’exécution — to reduce the two-month period where the statute allows it, for example where rehousing failed through the tenant’s own refusal. What you cannot challenge is the architecture itself: the six weeks, the two months, the one-year departure ceiling and the winter truce apply to every landlord in France, British or French, resident or non-resident. The owners who recover fastest are not those who fight the framework but those who move through it without a single void document or missed deadline.

Conclusion

A tenant who stops paying does not end the lease by that fact alone, and a landlord who wants the flat back must earn each stage in order. Serve a valid six-week commandement de payer through a commissaire de justice, with the termination clause reproduced and the six-week warning stated on pain of nullity. Summon the tenant before the judicial court with the préfet notified six weeks ahead, engage with the social and financial assessment, and present a file that answers every criterion for payment delays and departure delays in advance. Enforce the judgment through the commandement de quitter, respect the two-month wait and the winter truce from November to March, and pursue the arrears and the occupation payment against the tenant and any guarantor while the State’s decision on police assistance is pending. The two 2026 rulings of the Court of Cassation frame the whole exercise: the judge must examine a tenant’s defence of non-performance even when the tenant’s paperwork is imperfect, and must check that the landlord used the termination clause in good faith. A British landlord who maintains a decent dwelling, claims only what is truly due, refuses no genuine payment and serves every document correctly passes both tests — and then the machinery, slow as it is, works. Start early, serve correctly, and let the procedure do what self-help never can.

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