Your French tenant owes you four months’ rent. You have instructed a commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer formerly known as the huissier de justice), the commandement de payer (the formal payment order) has been served, and you are counting down the six weeks that trigger the lease’s termination clause. Then a letter arrives from an institution you have never heard of: the tenant has filed a dossier de surendettement, an over-indebtedness file, with the commission at the Banque de France, and a notice declares the file admissible, or recevable. From London or Manchester, the questions pile up at once. Is my eviction case frozen? Is the rent debt wiped out? Has a commission I never appeared before just decided the fate of my flat in Paris or Bordeaux? The short answer is that receivability freezes enforcement against the debtor’s assets but does not automatically suspend an eviction order, does not erase the arrears by itself, and leaves the housing judge, not the commission, in charge of the lease. The longer answer is the subject of this guide, written as the law stood in September 2026: what the commission can impose on a landlord, what the judge must do with it, where the debt can still be recovered, and how a British owner acting from the United Kingdom challenges each step, from contesting the commission’s measures to appealing the judge’s payment schedule.

I. What your tenant’s over-indebtedness filing actually freezes, and what it does not

A. Receivability and the automatic stay: enforcement stops, eviction does not

The decisive moment in every surendettement (over-indebtedness) file is the commission’s decision that it is admissible. The Consumer Code provides that receivability of the application suspends and prohibits enforcement proceedings against the debtor’s property, as well as authorised wage assignments relating to the debts. In the statute’s architecture, that stay targets voies d’exécution, meaning enforcement measures: bank seizures, attachments of earnings, forced sales. For a landlord, the practical effect is immediate and concrete. A saisie-attribution (a third-party seizure served on the tenant’s bank) or a saisie des rémunérations (an attachment of the tenant’s wages) launched to capture the arrears must stop once receivability is declared. If your officer was about to seize, tell the officer the same day: pursuing a stayed enforcement measure exposes you to release claims and costs, and the tenant’s lawyer will not miss it.

But the stay has strict boundaries, and the most important one concerns the flat itself. The official guidance states the position without ambiguity: the over-indebtedness procedure does not automatically suspend the eviction decision, although suspension can be requested, with different routes for tenants and owners. In other words, an eviction judgment already obtained keeps its legal force; what changes is that the commission can ask the protection-litigation judge to suspend it provisionally once the file is admissible, and in urgent cases the request can come from the commission’s president, the tenant, or the landlord’s own opponent parties defined by the regulations. If suspension is granted, it lasts until a treatment measure is put in place, whether a negotiated recovery plan, imposed measures, or a personal-recovery judgment, and for no more than two years. The guidance adds that the judge’s suspension order in this context follows its own appeal rules, so diary the notification immediately and have it reviewed. For the British landlord, the lesson is sequencing: receivability paralyses your money recovery first and threatens your eviction timetable second, but neither effect is automatic or total, and each one has a forum where you can be heard.

Two connected points complete the picture at this stage. First, the pre-eviction procedure keeps running in parallel. The six-week payment order, the summons before the juge des contentieux de la protection (the specialist housing judge of the local tribunal judiciaire, the main court of first instance), and the judge’s own power to grant time all continue to operate, because the statute expressly organises their coordination with the commission rather than replacing them. The 1989 tenancy law requires the judge to invite both sides to disclose any over-indebtedness proceedings, and it makes the summons’ notification to the State’s representative a condition of admissibility, so a landlord who hides the commission file, or who sues without the prefectural notification, loses on procedure before substance is even discussed. Second, the debt itself is not reduced by a single euro at the receivability stage. The commission has decided only that the tenant’s situation deserves examination. The figures that will bind you come later, in the plan or the imposed measures, and that is where the next section goes.

From Britain, the reflexes at this stage are administrative, not argumentative. Send the commission’s letters to your lawyer or officer the day they arrive, confirm in writing that all enforcement is paused, keep demanding the current rent in the normal way, and reconcile the ledger so that pre-filing arrears and post-filing rent are shown separately. The distinction between old debt and new rent will matter enormously, because the judge’s willingness to grant any schedule turns on whether the tenant has resumed paying the current rent in full, a condition examined below. A landlord in Leeds is treated exactly like one in Lille; the only handicap of distance is delay, so remove delay from your side of the file.

B. The commission’s toolbox against your lease: agreed plans, imposed measures and personal recovery

Once the file is admissible, the commission tries conciliation first: it seeks a plan conventionnel de redressement, a negotiated recovery plan between the debtor and the creditors. The Consumer Code organises this as the preferred outcome, providing for the plan’s approval and its binding repayment terms. A landlord can be invited to agree reduced instalments, extended deadlines or partial write-downs within that plan. Nothing here should be signed from Britain without advice, because a plan you approve becomes the measure of what the judge will later impose. If conciliation fails or is not attempted, the commission can move to imposed measures. The statute provides that failing conciliation, the commission may, at the debtor’s request and after giving the parties the chance to submit observations, impose all or part of the statutory measures. Those measures can reschedule debts over many years, reduce interest, and in some configurations partially erase unsecured balances. As a creditor, you must be given the opportunity to submit observations before imposition. A commission that imposes measures on your rental debt without ever letting you comment has committed a procedural fault you can challenge, and the proof of whether you were invited is a document you must demand and keep.

The third level is personal recovery, the rétablissement personnel, which is the closest French equivalent to a fresh start. The statute provides for orientation toward this procedure where the debtor’s situation is irretrievably compromised, and it comes in two forms: without court liquidation of assets, or with liquidation. Where personal recovery without liquidation is pronounced, the remaining unsecured debts can be wiped out entirely, and rental arrears owed to a private landlord are in principle caught by that erasure. This is the outcome British landlords fear most, and it should be stated plainly: a tenant with no seizable assets and no repayment capacity can lawfully emerge owing you nothing on the arrears, while your eviction case continues separately for the flat. The consolation, such as it is, is that this outcome requires a judicial finding of an irretrievable situation, that current and future rent for as long as the tenant occupies are a different matter from erased past arrears, and that the occupation indemnity fixed by the housing judge keeps running until the keys return. None of this happens silently: each orientation, each judgment, each erasure is notified, and each one carries a time-limited challenge that a distant landlord must exercise through a local representative.

The hinge between the commission and the lease is Article 24 of the 1989 tenancy law, which tells the housing judge exactly what to do with each commission outcome. Where the commission has declared the file admissible, the judge grants payment delays running until the plan is approved, the imposed measures are ordered, a personal-recovery judgment is given, or the procedure closes. Where a recovery plan has been approved or measures imposed and notified to the landlord, the judge grants the delays and payment terms contained in that plan or those measures. Where the commission has temporarily suspended the rental debt, the judge extends that suspension with extra months for the tenant to reapply, keeping the debt unenforceable in the meantime, and where a party contests the imposed measures before the over-indebtedness judge, the judge grants delays until that contest is decided. These paragraphs reward close reading, because they show the system is not a wall but a timetable: every commission stage translates into a defined judicial waiting period, and at the end of each period, if no new schedule protects the tenant, the termination clause regains its full effect. The landlord who understands this table never asks the judge to ignore the commission, which always fails, and instead asks the judge to apply the correct paragraph tightly, which regularly succeeds.

Two supreme-court rulings illustrate the strictness with which judges examine tenant files, even outside over-indebtedness. In a published 2 October 2025 decision on the protection of elderly tenants against non-renewal, the Third Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation (France’s supreme civil court) held that the tenant’s annual resources to be counted are those declared to the tax authority before any allowance or deduction, endorsing gross rental income as the measure. A year earlier the same chamber held that the resources to be counted are those received during the twelve months preceding service of the notice. Transposed to your case, the message is that every figure the tenant puts before the commission or the judge, income, charges, other debts, repayment capacity, will be tested against tax notices and bank statements, and a landlord whose own ledger is exact is the credible party in that comparison. Reconcile yours now.

II. How a British landlord protects the arrears and the flat while the commission procedure runs

A. Declaring the debt, contesting the file and challenging imposed measures from Britain

The commission procedure is not a spectator sport for creditors, and the landlord who treats it as the tenant’s private affair loses by default. First, declare the debt. The commission works from creditors’ declarations: capital, interest, costs, and the supporting lease, ledger and judgment if you already hold one. An undeclared or under-documented claim risks being left out of the plan’s arithmetic, and a British landlord should assume no French institution knows the file unless a document proves it. Send the lease, the itemised arrears statement distinguishing rent, charges, penalties and interest, the payment order and any judgment, with a translation of nothing, since French bodies work in French, and keep proof of dispatch. Second, examine receivability itself. A tenant who is not genuinely over-indebted, who has organised insolvency, concealed assets or income, or whose resources plainly allow repayment, can be challenged, and creditors have standing to contest the commission’s orientation before the over-indebtedness judge within short deadlines. These challenges run in the tribunal judiciaire (the main court) of the debtor’s domicile, in writing, and from Britain they require a representative holding a mandate, not a relative with good intentions. Third, contest the measures. Where imposed measures reschedule or reduce your debt on terms you consider unworkable, the statute provides a judicial contestation route, and the tenancy judge meanwhile holds the case over until that contest is decided rather thanclosing your file. Challenge in writing, within the stated deadline, before the competent judge, with figures, not adjectives.

Before the housing judge, your posture should be disciplined and numerical. The judge may grant the tenant up to three years to pay, but only on two cumulative conditions set by the statute itself: the tenant must be in a position to clear the debt and must have resumed paying the full current rent before the hearing. The general civil law of grace periods points the same way, allowing the judge to defer or spread payment over up to two years considering the debtor’s situation and the creditor’s needs. In practice this means the hearing turns on bank statements, not speeches. If the tenant has not resumed full current payment, oppose any schedule and ask the court to record the failure, because the statute makes resumption the gateway to leniency. If the tenant has resumed payment and offers a credible plan, do not demand immediate eviction against the commission’s timetable; instead negotiate the schedule’s length, the monthly amount, the interest, and the express condition that any missed instalment revives the termination clause. Judges notice which side helps them build a workable order. A Paris Court of Appeal decision of 11 February 2025 shows the arithmetic of credibility: confirming termination of a lease breached since 2021, the court ordered the tenant to pay 21,515 euros in occupation indemnity accrued to February 2023 with statutory interest, refused any payment delay, and added costs, a dispositif published at CA Paris, Pôle 4 Chambre 4, 11 February 2025, no. 22/15896. The tenant there had sought twenty-four to thirty-six months and suspension of the termination clause; the court, faced with years of non-payment, gave nothing. Bring that kind of ledger, and the judge can do the same for you.

Enforcement timing around the judgment needs the same precision. The foundational rule is that apart from special provisions, eviction can only be pursued under a court decision, and only enforcement officers may carry it out. After judgment, the order to vacate triggers a further two-month period before any physical eviction of an inhabited place, during which the tenant may seek renewable judicial stays where rehousing is impossible, each stay running as renewable periods granted to occupiers whose ordered eviction cannot lead to normal rehousing within no less than one month and no more than one year at a time. Over all of this hangs the winter truce: despite any final eviction decision and despite expiry of granted delays, all eviction measures are stayed from 1 November to 31 March. None of these protections is granted for filing a commission file alone; each requires its own application, its own evidence and its own order. The commission’s suspension request, the tenant’s stay application and the truce operate on parallel tracks, and the landlord’s representative should oppose, appeal or delimit each one separately rather than treating the file as a single frozen block. For a flat in Paris or elsewhere in Île-de-France, every one of these steps is local, before the judge of the place where the flat sits and through the préfet of the département for police assistance, while you follow from Britain on scanned orders and dated emails.

B. Getting paid despite the plan: current rent, guarantor, deposit and seizure after the freeze

Money recovery during a commission procedure follows one organising distinction: the old arrears are inside the procedure, the current rent is the tenant’s ongoing duty. The clearest proof is the statute’s own gateway condition, already cited: multi-year judicial schedules are available only to a tenant who has resumed full payment of the current rent before the hearing. A tenant who pays nothing at all, before or after filing, is not a candidate for leniency but for termination confirmed and enforced, with the occupation indemnity accumulating month after month until the keys are returned. So the first instruction to your representative is to keep the current-rent demand alive and documented throughout the commission procedure, separately from the frozen arrears. Every receipt, every missed month and every partial payment should be logged, because the judge who later decides between a schedule and an eviction will read that log as the tenant’s good or bad faith in real time. Where the tenant pays the current rent but not the arrears, say so expressly and claim the schedule on your terms; where the tenant pays neither, say so expressly and ask for the clause to take its course once the applicable waiting period expires.

The second layer of recovery sits outside the tenant’s patrimony: the caution (the guarantor who signed a written guarantee to pay rent and charges if the tenant defaults) and any unpaid-rent insurance. The official landlord guidance itself starts the collection checklist with calling on the guarantor or the insurer, and the tenancy statute protects that route by requiring the payment order to be served on the guarantor within fifteen days of service on the tenant, failing which penalties and late interest cannot be claimed against the guarantor. The commission procedure concerns the debtor’s debts, not the guarantor’s independent undertaking, so pursue the guarantee in parallel from day one, notify the insurer within its contractual deadline, and never let the commission timetable make you miss the guarantee’s own time limits. The third layer is the dépôt de garantie (the security deposit lodged at the start of the tenancy), set against the balance at departure alongside the outgoing inventory findings. The fourth is seizure after the freeze: once the applicable suspension ends without a new protective measure, the enforcement officer can serve bank seizures or wage attachments on French accounts and employers under the usual exempt minima. These tools work for a creditor living abroad, since the officer enforces the French title and your British address is simply the address for payment. What never works is informal pressure, a UK collector pursuing a French resident on a French judgment, or threats linked to immigration status. Those create liability and collect nothing.

Every setback in this chain carries a defined challenge, and distance makes diary discipline the whole strategy. If the commission declares the file admissible on facts you dispute, contest orientation before the over-indebtedness judge within the deadline on the notification. If imposed measures gut your debt without your observations having been sought, challenge them and meanwhile ask the housing judge to hold the tenancy case over, which the statute expressly provides pending the contest’s outcome. If the housing judge grants a three-year schedule you can show is mathematically impossible on the tenant’s own budget, appeal within one month with a counter-schedule. If the préfet refuses police assistance for enforcement, claim State compensation for the delay rather than attempting entry yourself. And if a bill of your own arrives, the officer’s costs statement, a tax assessment on the rental income, or an inflated demand from the syndic (the managing agent of the co-owned building), verify it line by line: officers’ fees are regulated, a British resident landlord’s French rental income is declared with treaty credit as explained in our companion guides to declaring French rental income and claiming treaty relief and to letting a French second home furnished: tax, registration and fines, and co-ownership charges follow the building’s allocation rules. Challenge in writing, in time, before the competent forum, and keep the proof. A missed deadline from across the Channel is the most expensive line in the file.

Conclusion

A tenant’s over-indebtedness filing changes the landlord’s war without ending it. Receivability suspends enforcement against the debtor’s assets but leaves the eviction judgment’s force intact unless a judge suspends it, for at most two years, at the commission’s request. The commission can then propose a plan, impose rescheduling or partial erasure after hearing the parties, or steer toward personal recovery that can wipe out arrears owed to a landlord with no seizable assets. The housing judge translates each stage into defined waiting periods, grants multi-year schedules only to tenants who have resumed full current payment, and lets the termination clause regain full effect where no new protection applies. The British owner’s winning posture is therefore procedural, not emotional: declare the debt early, contest receivability or measures within their short deadlines, demand current rent separately and relentlessly, pursue the guarantor and the deposit on their own tracks, seize once the freeze lifts, and appeal every impossible schedule. Start the formal sequence at the second missed rent, never at the sixth, and run the commission file and the tenancy file as two fronts of one case.

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Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 (Maître Reda Kohen) or use the firm’s contact page to review a commission’s imposed measures, a three-year schedule granted to your tenant, or an eviction timetable for a flat in Paris or elsewhere in Île-de-France. The firm assists British landlords living in the United Kingdom who must defend a French rental file without travelling for every step.