Your French tenant has stopped paying the rent. The first month you tell yourself it is an oversight. The second month the excuses start. By the third month the tenant has stopped answering your messages altogether, and you are sitting in London, Kent or Edinburgh wondering how a landlord who lives in another country is supposed to force payment, recover the arrears and, if it comes to it, get the flat back. French law gives you powerful tools, but they work only in a strict order, and the order matters more than the force behind it. Serve the wrong document, miss a compulsory notice, or try to change the locks yourself, and you hand the tenant the very defence that delays everything by a year.
This guide walks you through the lawful sequence from the first missed payment to the tenant’s departure and the recovery of what you are owed. It is written for a British owner letting a flat or house in France after Brexit: every French term is explained the first time it appears, every deadline is given with its legal source, and every stage includes what you can do from the United Kingdom without flying over. The companion guide to letting your French second home, its tax and registration rules covers the set-up of the tenancy; this article covers what happens when the rent stops.
I. Force the lease to end lawfully: the commandement de payer and the two-month clock
Everything starts with a single formal document. In France you cannot simply declare the tenancy over because the rent is unpaid, and you certainly cannot cut off utilities, seize belongings or change the locks: self-help eviction is a criminal offence. The lawful route runs through the termination clause of the lease, called the clause résolutoire (the forfeiture or termination clause), and that clause wakes up only after a document called the commandement de payer (a formal demand for payment served by a commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly known as the huissier de justice or bailiff) has remained unpaid for two full months.
A. How to serve a commandement de payer that a court will accept
The tenant’s basic duty is stated bluntly in the Civil Code. Article 1728 of the Civil Code provides that “2° De payer le prix du bail aux termes convenus.” In plain English, the tenant must pay the rent on the agreed dates, and persistent failure to do so is a breach that can end the lease. The counterpart text is article 1741 of the Civil Code: “Le contrat de louage se résout par la perte de la chose louée, et par le défaut respectif du bailleur et du preneur de remplir leurs engagements.” A lease ends, in other words, when either side fails to honour its undertakings, and non-payment of rent is the textbook example on the tenant’s side.
Where the lease contains a clause résolutoire, the general law of such clauses applies alongside the special tenancy statute. Article 1225 of the Civil Code states that “La clause résolutoire précise les engagements dont l’inexécution entraînera la résolution du contrat.” Your lease should therefore name non-payment of rent and charges among the breaches that trigger the clause; most standard French leases do. The same article adds a trap for the unwary: “La mise en demeure ne produit effet que si elle mentionne expressément la clause résolutoire.” The formal demand produces effect only if it expressly mentions the termination clause. A simple reminder letter, however firmly worded, does not start any clock. And article 1224 of the Civil Code confirms the three routes to termination: “La résolution résulte soit de l’application d’une clause résolutoire soit, en cas d’inexécution suffisamment grave, d’une notification du créancier au débiteur ou d’une décision de justice.”
For residential tenancies, the tenancy statute of 6 July 1989 adds compulsory content to the commandement de payer, on pain of nullity. The Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil, commercial and criminal matters) reproduced the controlling passage of article 24 of that statute in its judgment of 6 June 2019, appeal No. 18-17.587: “Toute 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 ne produit effet que deux mois après un commandement de payer demeuré infructueux.” A clause providing for automatic termination for non-payment of rent or charges, or for non-payment of the deposit, takes effect only two months after a demand for payment that has gone unsatisfied. The demand itself must reproduce, again on pain of nullity, the text of that article and the tenant’s right to apply to the fonds de solidarité pour le logement (the housing solidarity fund, known as the FSL, which can grant emergency help with arrears), with the address where the fund can be contacted. If a guarantor (caution) guaranteed the lease, the demand must be served on the guarantor within fifteen days of service on the tenant, failing which the guarantor cannot be held to penalties or interest. These are not formalities a landlord can reconstruct afterwards: a commandement missing any of them is void, the two-month clock never started, and months of procedure collapse.
Practical organisation from Britain is straightforward if you set it up early. Instruct a commissaire de justice practising where the property sits; the national directory lets you find one by town, and most now take instructions by email with the lease, the rent ledger (décompte) and proof of the missed payments attached. Give the officer the guarantor’s address at the same time so the fifteen-day notification is not forgotten. Keep paying your own obligations in the meantime, especially building charges and insurance: a landlord visibly in breach invites the tenant to raise a counterclaim for unfit housing that complicates the arrears case. And from the first missed payment, keep a clean ledger showing each due date, each sum received and each reminder sent; the court will work from that document, and the official guidance on unpaid rent and the landlord’s remedies treats the written record as the backbone of the file.
B. What the two months change, and how the court case begins
The two-month period is a last chance written into the statute, not a courtesy. If the tenant pays everything owed within two months of the commandement de payer, including the cost of the document itself, the termination clause is neutralised and the lease continues. Partial payment that still leaves a balance does not stop the clock: only full payment of the sums targeted by the demand defeats it. That is why the ledger matters so much. Tenants sometimes pay one month out of three hoping to show good faith; good faith helps later with payment schedules, but it does not erase the effect of an unsatisfied demand once the two months expire.
When the two months expire unpaid, the lease is treated as terminated by operation of the clause, but you still need a judge to declare it and to order the consequences. You apply to the juge des contentieux de la protection (the protection litigation judge, the specialist judge of the tribunal judiciaire, the ordinary civil court, who hears residential tenancy disputes). The summons (assignation) must be notified to the préfet (the State’s representative in the département, the local administrative area) at least six weeks before the hearing, so that the State’s services can prepare the social diagnosis of the tenant’s household and propose rehousing or support. Miss that notification and the case is delayed. The tenant must also have been offered the standard information about support schemes, and where the tenant receives housing benefit (aide personnalisée au logement, known as APL), additional prior steps with the departmental commission can be required before the summons is even admissible.
On that last point the Cour de cassation is uncompromising. In its judgment of 18 June 2014, appeal No. 13-15.049, it held that “toute assignation tendant à la résiliation du bail doit être notifiée au préalable à la commission, peu important qu’elle ait été antérieurement saisie dans le cadre d’une précédente procédure”, adding that the appeal court had breached the governing text by ruling otherwise. Every summons seeking termination of the lease must first be notified to the commission, however often the commission was contacted during an earlier round of proceedings. Landlords who reuse an old notification from a previous dispute, assuming it is still live, see their new summons declared inadmissible and start again. Check with your lawyer whether the tenant’s benefit status triggers this requirement before the summons goes out, not after it comes back.
At the hearing the judge does three things: confirm whether the lease is terminated, decide what the tenant owes, and decide when and how the tenant must leave. Termination is usually declared where the demand was valid and the arrears were still unpaid when the two months expired. But the judge has a broad power to soften the financial blow for a tenant who is struggling yet acting in good faith. Article 1343-5 of the Civil Code provides that “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 defer or spread payment of the sums owed over up to two years, weighing the debtor’s situation against the creditor’s needs. Where such a schedule is granted and the tenant complies with it, the effects of the termination clause are suspended for its duration: the tenant stays, pays the current rent plus the scheduled instalments, and the lease survives. For a British landlord this is often the best realistic outcome, because a tenant paying under a court-ordered schedule is worth more than an empty flat with an unrecoverable judgment debt. A tenant who ignores the schedule, however, revives the clause, and the eviction resumes.
II. Get the flat back and the money paid: the order, the winter truce and enforcement
A court order declaring the lease terminated does not move anyone out by itself. French enforcement law separates the judgment from the physical eviction by several further steps, each with its own waiting period, and one of them is the famous winter truce. Understanding this chain before you start lets you plan realistically: from the first missed rent to the tenant’s actual departure, twelve to eighteen months is normal where the tenant resists, and budgeting for that period is part of the decision to let in France at all.
A. What the judge orders: termination, arrears, deadlines to leave
The judgment typically contains four elements. First, it declares the lease terminated as of the expiry of the two-month period following the commandement de payer. Second, it orders the tenant to pay the arrears, usually with interest, plus an indemnité d’occupation (an occupation payment, normally equal to the rent plus charges) for every month the tenant remains after termination, until the flat is actually vacated. Third, it orders eviction if the tenant has not left by a stated date. Fourth, it rules on deadlines: the judge may grant the tenant time to leave even where the lease is terminated.
Two different kinds of extra time exist and are often confused. The first is the grace period for payment under article 1343-5, described above, which suspends the termination clause while the schedule runs. The second is a delay before the physical eviction, governed by enforcement law. Article L412-3 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures states that “Le juge peut accorder des délais renouvelables aux occupants de lieux habités ou de locaux à usage professionnel, dont l’expulsion a été ordonnée judiciairement, chaque fois que le relogement des intéressés ne peut avoir lieu dans des conditions normales.” The judge may grant renewable delays to occupants of homes whose eviction has been judicially ordered, whenever they cannot be rehoused in normal conditions. These delays can run from three months to three years depending on the family’s situation, health, age and efforts to find new housing. A British landlord should read this as a warning against counting on a fixed departure date: where the tenant is elderly, ill, has young children in school nearby, or demonstrates genuine but fruitless house-hunting, the court routinely grants a year or more.
The judgment also fixes who pays the costs. The losing tenant is normally ordered to pay the arrears, the occupation payment, the cost of the commandement and the summons, and a contribution to your legal costs under article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure. In practice the tenant who could not pay the rent often cannot pay these either, which is why the enforcement stage, and the guarantees you took at the start, matter as much as the judgment. If you hold a garantie des loyers impayés (unpaid-rent guarantee insurance, known as GLI) or the tenant’s obligations were backed by Visale (the public guarantee scheme for younger or newly hired tenants), notify the guarantor or insurer as soon as the first payment is missed, because late notification can reduce or void the cover. If a private individual stood as caution, pursue them in the same proceedings: the fifteen-day notification of the demand preserves your claim for penalties and interest against them, and the summons should name them as co-defendants for the arrears.
B. Enforcing the order: leaving order, winter truce and recovering the debt
Once the judgment is final or enforceable, the commissaire de justice serves a commandement de quitter les lieux (an order to vacate the premises). This step is compulsory: article L411-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures 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.” Apart from special cases, eviction from a building or a dwelling can be pursued only on the basis of a court decision or an enforceable conciliation record, and after service of an order to vacate. No court decision plus no order to vacate means no eviction, however clear the arrears.
The order to vacate opens a further two-month waiting period. Article L412-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures provides that after service of the order, eviction from a home occupied by the person under eviction “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”. It cannot take place until two months after the order have expired. The judge may reduce or remove this period in defined cases, but the starting assumption for your planning is two more months after the order to vacate.
Then comes the trêve hivernale (the winter truce). Article L412-6 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures states that “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.” Every unexecuted eviction measure is suspended from 1 November each year until 31 March of the following year, unless the occupants are rehoused in conditions that respect the unity and needs of the family. If your two-month period expires on 15 October, the bailiff waits until 1 April. If it expires on 15 November, the same. Only narrow exceptions lift the truce, and an ordinary rent-arrears case is not one of them. The official guidance on eviction procedure and the winter truce confirms the calendar and the limited exceptions. Work the truce into your cash-flow forecast from the start: it is not a surprise the system springs on you, it is a published rule you price in.
When the road is finally clear, the commissaire de justice carries out the eviction, if necessary with the assistance of the police, whose support is requested through the préfet, and draws up an inventory of any furniture left behind. Your role as a non-resident landlord is to be reachable and represented: give your officer and your lawyer a standing authority to act, a set of keys held by a local contact or agent, and instructions on what to do with the property the day it is recovered, because an empty flat in winter deteriorates fast and attracts squatters.
Recovering the money is a separate enforcement track that runs in parallel and often outlasts the eviction. With the judgment, the commissaire de justice can seize bank accounts (saisie-attribution, a seizure order served on the tenant’s bank), attach earnings (saisie des rémunérations, an attachment of wages through the court), or seize and sell valuables. Each measure costs money upfront, so ask your officer for a recovery assessment before launching them: a tenant in genuine poverty with no attachable income yields a beautifully drafted unenforceable judgment, and good money follows bad. Where the tenant works, wage attachment is usually the most productive route; where the tenant banks online, account seizure can surprise funds the tenant assumed were out of reach. Time limits apply to enforcement, so do not let the judgment sleep in a drawer once the flat is recovered.
Three practical lessons from the case law close the loop. First, never recycle old paperwork: as the 2014 Cour de cassation ruling quoted above shows, each new termination case needs fresh notifications, and courts punish shortcuts with inadmissibility. Second, serve everyone who owes you money from the very first demand, tenant and guarantor alike, because adding the guarantor late means losing interest and penalties against them. Third, treat the payment schedule as a commercial outcome, not a defeat: a court-ordered plan that the tenant honours beats an eviction into the winter truce followed by an unrecoverable debt. The landlords who do best in these cases are not the angriest but the most procedural: valid demand, complete ledger, timely summons, all parties joined, realistic schedule or clean eviction, and parallel enforcement of the money judgment.
Conclusion
A tenant who stops paying does not leave you powerless, but French law makes you earn the outcome step by step. The tenant’s duty to pay on time, the termination clause that sleeps until a valid demand has gone unpaid for two months, the summons notified to the State weeks before the hearing, the judge’s power to spread the debt over two years or to delay departure where rehousing is impossible, the compulsory order to vacate with its two further months, and the winter truce from November to March: each stage protects someone, and together they form a chain that holds only if every link was forged correctly. For a British landlord managing from across the Channel, the winning organisation is a local enforcement officer instructed at the first missed payment, a rent ledger kept like a bank statement, a lawyer who joins every debtor to the case, and a calendar that prices in the winter rather than discovering it. Start the procedure early, serve every notice on every debtor, and choose at each fork between the schedule that pays and the eviction that frees the flat. Do that, and the system that looks tenant-friendly from London turns out to be landlord-effective for those who follow it to the letter.