You own the stone house in the Dordogne, or the flat near the coast that your family has used every summer for a decade. Since Brexit you travel on your British passport, you count your weeks carefully, and you assumed that owning a home in France gave you some extra margin. Then comes the shock: a border officer at the Eurotunnel tells you that you have exhausted your days, or a letter from the préfet — the State representative in your département — states that you have overstayed and must leave France. Owners in this position ask two questions in quick succession: have my days really been counted correctly, and what can I still challenge? The answer matters because an overstay can lead to a refusal of entry at the border, or inside France to an obligation to leave French territory, known as an OQTF (obligation de quitter le territoire français), possibly with a ban on returning.

British second-home owners are in a particular trap. You have strong ties to France and a place to stay, which makes long visits tempting, yet since 1 January 2021 you are a third-country national subject to the Schengen short-stay clock: no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. Ownership of a French property changes nothing in that arithmetic. Border records, passport stamps and, since October 2025, the electronic Entry/Exit System (EES) mean the count is increasingly automatic. The good news is that the count is technical and therefore checkable, and that every refusal or removal decision must have a legal basis you can test before a judge.

This guide follows the order in which the problem presents itself. Part I explains how France counts your 90 days, how to verify the count yourself, and which entry conditions officers check alongside your days. Part II explains what happens when you are told you have overstayed: refusal of entry at the border and the holding zone, the OQTF inside France with its 30-day departure period, and how to challenge each decision and come back lawfully, including through a long-stay visa. Each step gives you the exact statutory wording and what the courts have made of it.

I. Are you already over your 90 days in any 180: how France counts short stays

A. The rolling 90/180-day count, passport stamps, EES records and who is exempt

The rule itself is short. The French administration sets the ceiling as 90 days of short stay within any 180-day period, for travellers who need a visa and for those who are exempt alike (service-public.fr short-stay calculator page). In other words, short stays cannot exceed 90 days within any 180-day period, whether or not you need a visa. The British government gives its own nationals the same ceiling for the whole Schengen area and adds the warning that catches out most second-home owners: the 180-day window keeps rolling, with no reset (gov.uk travelling to the EU and Schengen area).

Rolling means there is no calendar reset on 1 January or on the anniversary of your first trip. Every single day you spend in the Schengen area is tested against the 180 days immediately before it. The European Commission explains the method you must use: count back 180 days from each day of presence and keep the total at or under 90 (European Commission short-stay calculator). Take a concrete example. You spent 1 March to 29 April in your French house — 60 days — then returned from 1 to 30 June — 30 more days. On 30 June you look back 180 days to early January and find 90 days of presence: you are exactly at the ceiling. Arrive again on 1 July and you are over, even though July belongs to a new month and a new trip. Days spent in any Schengen country count towards the same pot: a week skiing in Italy or visiting friends in Spain consumes the days you wanted for France. The British guidance confirms the arithmetic: add up the days already spent using the entry and exit stamps in your passport for each day of presence.

For years that count relied on ink stamps, with all their gaps and errors: missed stamps, illegible dates, transit stamps that looked like entries. That era is ending. In plain terms, since 12 October 2025 the electronic Entry/Exit System has been rolled out progressively over six months at airports, stations and ports, recording personal data as well as the entries, exits and refusals of entry of third-country travellers coming to France for under three months (service-public.fr EES page). For a British owner, this means the 90-day count is increasingly computed from a central electronic record rather than argued from stamps. Keep your own log anyway — travel bookings, boarding passes, bank statements showing where you were — because electronic records can also contain mistakes, and the burden of proving an error will fall on you.

Two categories of British residents sit outside this clock entirely. The Commission states that holders of an EU residence permit or long-stay visa sit outside the 90/180-day rule, since those documents authorise stays beyond 90 days (European Commission short-stay calculator). If you hold a French carte de séjour (residence permit), including a Withdrawal Agreement card, you travel under that permit, not under the short-stay allowance. The French administration confirms the practical side at the border: holders of a titre de séjour (residence document) or a long-stay visa valid for one year or more cross on presentation of a valid passport together with that permit. The consequence is important for owners planning a permanent move: the durable solution to the 90-day squeeze is not cleverer counting but a change of status, normally a long-stay visa followed by a carte de séjour, as explained in our companion guide to which long-stay visa to choose, how OFII validation works and how to challenge a refusal. Time spent in France under a long-stay visa or permit does not consume short-stay days, and short-stay days spent before the permit was issued do not retroactively taint it.

So the first task when anyone tells you that you have overstayed is to redo the count yourself, day by day, over the rolling 180-day window, pooling every Schengen country. Common errors work in both directions: officers sometimes count the day of entry and the day of exit wrongly, treat a transit through a Schengen airport as a full stay day when you never passed border control, or rely on a missing exit stamp to assume you never left. If your own reconstruction, backed by documents, shows 90 days or fewer, you do not have an overstay at all — you have an administrative error to correct, and everything in Part II follows from that starting point.

B. The other entry conditions checked at the French border besides your days

Days are only one of the gates. French law funnels every third-country arrival through the same statutory entrance. Article L. 311-1 of the CESEDA — the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile, the code governing entry, stay and asylum — provides: “Pour entrer en France, tout étranger doit être muni : 1° Sauf s’il est exempté de cette obligation, des visas exigés par les conventions internationales et par l’article 6, paragraphe 1, points a et b, du règlement (UE) 2016/399 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 9 mars 2016 concernant un code de l’Union relatif au régime de franchissement des frontières par les personnes (code frontières Schengen) ; 2° Sous réserve des conventions internationales, et de l’article 6, paragraphe 1, point c, du code frontières Schengen, du justificatif d’hébergement prévu à l’article L. 313-1 , s’il est requis, et des autres documents prévus par décret en Conseil d’Etat relatifs à l’objet et aux conditions de son séjour et à ses moyens d’existence, à la prise en charge par un opérateur d’assurance agréé des dépenses médicales et hospitalières, y compris d’aide sociale, résultant de soins qu’il pourrait engager en France, ainsi qu’aux garanties de son rapatriement ; 3° Des documents nécessaires à l’exercice d’une activité professionnelle s’il se propose d’en exercer une.” Every foreigner must therefore hold the required documents on means of subsistence, medical cover and return guarantees, plus any work papers if relevant.

The administration translates those abstract conditions into a concrete checklist for short stays. Your passport (or other travel document) must have been issued less than ten years ago and remain valid at least three months beyond your planned departure date. You must hold medical and hospital insurance, including social assistance cover, for treatment you might receive in France, with minimum cover of 30,000 euros. And you must not be a threat to public order, internal security, public health or the international relations of a Schengen state (service-public.fr Schengen entry conditions). A British owner who sails through the day-count can still be refused for an expired passport, missing insurance or an alert in the Schengen Information System.

Owners staying with family or visiting their own circle should know one specifically French paper. Article L. 313-1 of the CESEDA provides: “Tout étranger qui déclare vouloir séjourner en France pour une durée n’excédant pas trois mois dans le cadre d’une visite familiale ou privée doit présenter un justificatif d’hébergement qui prend la forme d’une attestation d’accueil, signée par la personne qui se propose d’assurer le logement de l’étranger, ou son représentant légal.” Anyone declaring a stay of up to three months for a family or private visit must produce an attestation d’accueil — a hosting certificate signed by the person accommodating them and validated by the local authority. If you stay in your own second home you prove accommodation by your title deeds and recent taxe foncière bill instead, but if your adult children or friends join you as your guests, the attestation d’accueil is the document officers expect.

Where a short stay requires a visa at all, Article L. 312-1 of the CESEDA sets the frame: “Tout étranger souhaitant entrer en France en vue d’y séjourner pour une durée n’excédant pas trois mois doit solliciter auprès des autorités diplomatiques et consulaires françaises un visa de court séjour, dans les conditions prévues à l’article 6 du règlement 2016/399 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 9 mars 2016. Les demandes de visa de court séjour sont déposées et instruites dans les conditions prévues par les chapitres II et III du titre III du règlement n° 810/2009 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 13 juillet 2009 établissant un code communautaire des visas.” Visa applications are therefore examined under the EU Visa Code, and a refusal must state its reasons — a point that matters because refusals based on a supposed migratory risk are reviewed strictly by the courts, as Part II shows.

Failure at any of these gates leads to the same instrument: a refusal of entry. Article L. 332-1 of the CESEDA provides: “L’étranger qui ne satisfait pas aux conditions d’admission prévues au titre I peut faire l’objet d’une décision de refus d’entrée, sans préjudice des dispositions particulières relatives au droit d’asile et à la protection internationale ou à la délivrance de visas de long séjour.” Anyone who does not meet the admission conditions may be refused entry. And Article L. 333-1 adds the sentence owners find hardest to hear: “La décision de refus d’entrée sur le territoire français dont l’étranger fait l’objet peut être exécutée d’office par l’autorité administrative.” A refusal of entry can be enforced immediately by the administration. That immediacy is exactly why the challenge routes in Part II are urgent procedures measured in hours and days, not weeks.

II. Told you overstayed: refusal of entry, OQTF and how to challenge and come back lawfully

A. Refused entry at the border or held in the waiting zone: your rights and how to challenge

A refusal of entry usually happens in front of you: at Calais, at the Eurotunnel terminal, or at a French airport, the officer examines your passport, checks the days and the supporting documents, and hands you a written decision stating the reason — most often that the 90 days in 180 have been exhausted, sometimes a missing document or an alert. Read that paper before anything else. It states the exact ground, the facts relied on, and the remedies with their time limits. Your response in the first hours should be threefold: keep the decision and photograph every stamp in your passport; write down your own day-by-day count for the rolling 180-day window with the bookings and statements that prove it; and ask whether the ground is a pure counting question or something else, such as insurance, passport validity or an alert, because each ground is challenged differently.

Counting disputes are the most winnable. Officers work under time pressure and EES records are new; both produce mistakes. Rebuild the count strictly using the count-back method — 180 days back from each day of presence, 90 days maximum — and isolate each disputed day. A missing exit stamp is the classic case: the system assumes you stayed when you had in fact left through a border point that did not stamp. Boarding passes, airline records, UK entry records, toll receipts and card statements can prove the exit. Days spent in France under a carte de séjour or long-stay visa must be stripped out of the short-stay count. Transit days where you never passed through Schengen border control need checking individually. If your reconstruction shows 89 or 90 days, present it at once with the documents: some refusals are corrected on the spot when the arithmetic is demonstrated, and if not, your papers become the core of the court challenge.

Non-counting grounds need different evidence. An insurance refusal is answered by producing a compliant policy covering at least 30,000 euros. A passport-validity refusal turns on the issue date and the expiry date against your planned departure. An alert in the Schengen Information System requires asking which authority entered it and on what basis, because an alert can be out of date or concern a different person. A refusal based on a supposed threat to public order must rest on your personal conduct, not on a general assumption about overstayers. In each case, owning a French home helps only at the margins: it explains your travel pattern and proves accommodation, but it is not a right to enter and it never extends the 90 days.

When refusal is accompanied by holding you at the airport or port, you enter a special regime: the zone d’attente (waiting zone). This is not police custody and not detention; it is a holding area at the point of arrival for travellers who have not been authorised to enter. Placement there is strictly time-limited and supervised by a judge. Article L. 342-1 of the CESEDA provides: “Le maintien en zone d’attente au-delà de quatre-vingt-seize heures à compter de la décision de placement initiale peut être autorisé, par le magistrat du siège du tribunal judiciaire statuant sur l’exercice effectif des droits reconnus à l’étranger, pour une durée qui ne peut être supérieure à huit jours.” Beyond 96 hours from initial placement, only a sitting judge of the judicial court — the tribunal judiciaire, the ordinary court — can extend the holding, and only for up to eight days, while verifying that your rights are effective. You have, from the start, the right to notify a person of your choice, to contact a lawyer, to request an interpreter, and to see a doctor; insist on each of them and make sure every request and every notification is recorded.

The courts control this regime closely. In a leading decision on holding zones, the Conseil d’État, 7 May 2019, No 429939 — the Conseil d’État being France’s supreme administrative court — recalled the emergency route open to anyone whose fundamental freedom is at stake: “Saisi d’une demande en ce sens justifiée par l’urgence, le juge des référés peut ordonner toutes mesures nécessaires à la sauvegarde d’une liberté fondamentale à laquelle une personne morale de droit public ou un organisme de droit privé chargé de la gestion d’un service public aurait porté, dans l’exercice d’un de ses pouvoirs, une atteinte grave et manifestement illégale. Le juge des référés se prononce dans un délai de quarante-huit heures”. Seised in urgent circumstances, the emergency judge can order any measure needed to safeguard a fundamental freedom seriously and manifestly unlawfully infringed by a public body, and must rule within 48 hours. That référé-liberté (emergency freedom application) is the sharpest tool against an unlawful holding or a refusal executed in conditions that breach your rights, but it requires a lawyer within hours.

Alongside emergency applications, the refusal itself can be challenged before the tribunal administratif (the administrative court) by an action for annulment, if necessary with an application to suspend it. Courts examine refusals strictly: the facts must be accurate, the legal ground must match the facts, and the reasoning must be consistent. A useful illustration of that strictness, in the neighbouring field of short-stay visas, is the Conseil d’État, 15 May 2025, No 495547, where the judges quashed a lower ruling for misreading the file: “En estimant qu’il avait demandé un visa de retour en France, le tribunal administratif de Nantes a entaché son jugement de dénaturation des faits de l’espèce.” By treating the application as something it was not, the court had distorted the facts of the case. The lesson for owners is direct: if a refusal says you spent 95 days but your stamped and documented record shows 88, that is not a difference of appreciation — it is a factual error a judge can sanction. File quickly, because a refusal executed at the border is useful to challenge only while return travel, bookings and the next planned stay make the case live.

B. OQTF after overstaying inside France: the 30 days, the court challenge, the return ban and the lawful way back

Inside France, an overstay detected after entry — during an identity check, at the préfecture when you apply for a permit, or when you try to regularise — leads to a different instrument: the OQTF. The statute lists overstaying as a standalone ground. Article L. 611-1 of the CESEDA provides that the administration may require a foreigner to leave France where: “2° L’étranger, entré sur le territoire français sous couvert d’un visa désormais expiré ou, n’étant pas soumis à l’obligation du visa, entré en France plus de trois mois auparavant, s’est maintenu sur le territoire français sans être titulaire d’un titre de séjour ou, le cas échéant, sans demander le renouvellement du titre de séjour temporaire ou pluriannuel qui lui a été délivré”. A person who entered on a now-expired visa, or who entered without a visa requirement more than three months ago, and has remained without a residence permit squarely meets this ground. A British owner who has simply stayed on in the second home past day 90 without any permit is the textbook case.

The courts have applied this overstay logic for years. Under the wording previously in force, the Conseil d’État quoted the ground as follows: “Si l’étranger s’est maintenu sur le territoire français au-delà de la durée de validité de son visa ou, s’il n’est pas soumis à l’obligation du visa, à l’expiration d’un délai de trois mois à compter de son entrée sur le territoire sans être titulaire d’un premier titre de séjour régulièrement délivré” — see the Conseil d’État, opinion of 6 November 2019, No 431585. Remaining beyond the visa’s validity, or beyond three months from entry for those exempt from visas, without holding a duly issued first residence permit: that is the overstay in its legal definition. More recently, the Conseil d’État restated the neighbouring grounds in their current numbering — refusal or withdrawal of a permit — in these terms: “3° L’étranger s’est vu refuser la délivrance d’un titre de séjour, le renouvellement du titre de séjour, du document provisoire délivré à l’occasion d’une demande de titre de séjour ou de l’autorisation provisoire de séjour qui lui avait été délivré ou s’est vu retirer un de ces documents” — see the Conseil d’État, opinion of 21 February 2023, No 468799. Owners should read their OQTF to identify exactly which numbered ground the préfet used, because the ground determines both the argument and, in some configurations, the court procedure.

In the standard case the OQTF gives you a 30-day voluntary departure period. Article L. 612-1 of the CESEDA provides: “L’étranger faisant l’objet d’une décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français dispose d’un délai de départ volontaire de trente jours à compter de la notification de cette décision.” You have thirty days from notification to organise departure, and the administration may exceptionally extend the period for reasons specific to your case. The administration describes the obligation plainly: the decision requires you to leave France by your own means within 30 days, and by the end of that period you must have left by your own means (service-public.fr OQTF page). During the period the préfet can require you to report to the préfecture or police, you must keep the administration informed of your departure steps, and your passport or travel document can be taken from you in exchange for a receipt serving as proof of identity.

Do not treat those 30 days as a grace period for thinking. They are the window for both leaving and challenging. Article L. 614-1 of the CESEDA provides: “La décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français ainsi que la décision relative au séjour, la décision relative au délai de départ volontaire et l’interdiction de retour sur le territoire français qui l’accompagnent, le cas échéant, peuvent être contestées devant le tribunal administratif selon la procédure prévue à l’article L. 911-1.” The removal decision, the residence decision, the voluntary-departure decision and any accompanying ban on returning can be challenged before the administrative court. In the general case — no house arrest, no detention — the administration states the deadlines clearly: you have one month to bring the challenge, and the administrative court has six months to rule (service-public.fr OQTF page). A gracious appeal to the préfet or to the interior minister does not extend that one-month limit, so file the court action first and treat any parallel request to the préfet as secondary.

Your grounds against an overstay-based OQTF typically combine four lines. First, attack the count: if the rolling 180-day reconstruction shows 90 days or fewer, the factual premise collapses, and the decision falls. Second, attack the procedure: defective notification, missing mention of remedies and deadlines, failure to hear you where a hearing was due, or a file the administration cannot produce. Third, attack proportionality and personal circumstances: length of ties to France, ownership of the home, family life, health treatment under way, and steps already taken such as a booked departure or a pending long-stay visa application. Fourth, attack any accompanying interdiction de retour (re-entry ban): the préfet notifies, at the end of the process, “une interdiction de retour en France (IRTF)” — a ban on returning to France — and that ban must be justified separately, with its own duration and reasoning, which gives you a distinct target. Ask the court, where appropriate, to annul the ban even if departure itself is no longer avoidable, because the ban is what blocks your next lawful trip to your own house.

Then plan the lawful return, because winning or losing the OQTF does not answer how you live in your French house afterwards. A British owner who wants more than 90 days in 180 needs a long-stay footing. Article L. 312-2 of the CESEDA provides: “Tout étranger souhaitant entrer en France en vue d’y séjourner pour une durée supérieure à trois mois doit solliciter auprès des autorités diplomatiques et consulaires françaises un visa de long séjour dont la durée de validité ne peut être supérieure à un an. Ce visa peut autoriser un séjour de plus de trois mois à caractère familial, en qualité de visiteur, d’étudiant, de stagiaire ou au titre d’une activité professionnelle, et plus généralement tout type de séjour d’une durée supérieure à trois mois conférant à son titulaire les droits attachés à une carte de séjour temporaire ou à la carte de séjour pluriannuelle prévue aux articles L. 421-9, L. 421-11 et L. 421-13-1 à L. 421-24.” Anyone wanting to stay more than three months must apply to the French consular authorities for a long-stay visa, valid up to one year, covering family, visitor, student, trainee, professional or any other stay conferring temporary or multi-year permit rights. For retired owners the visiteur (visitor) route with proof of means, health cover and accommodation is usually the vehicle; for others it may be family or professional. Our detailed guide to long-stay visas, OFII validation and challenging refusals walks through the choice, and if that visa is refused, the courts review the reasons strictly, as the 2025 visa decision cited above demonstrates. One caution: a re-entry ban in force blocks the return even with a fresh visa until it is lifted or annulled, so sequence the challenge to the ban before booking the ferry.

Conclusion

An overstay allegation against a British second-home owner is a technical dispute before it is anything else. Count your days yourself using the rolling method — 180 days back from each day of presence, 90 days maximum, every Schengen country pooled — and check whether a permit or long-stay visa takes you out of the clock. Check the other entry conditions with the same rigour: passport dates, insurance floor, documents for the stay. If you are refused at the border, keep the written decision, prove each disputed day, assert your rights in the waiting zone, and move fast. If you receive an OQTF inside France, use the 30 days to prepare both departure and the court challenge within one month, attack the count, the procedure and any re-entry ban separately, and rebuild on a long-stay footing. One final watchpoint: reforms implementing the EU migration and asylum pact adopted through June and August 2026 expressly touch, among other fields, the time limits for challenging certain removal decisions (service-public.fr OQTF page, 2026 reform notice). Always read the remedies and deadlines printed on your own decision, because they reflect the law as it stands on the day you were served.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer from the firm, to review your day count, your refusal or OQTF papers and your options for returning lawfully. Call 06 46 60 58 22 or write via our contact page with your dates of stay and a copy of the decision you received.