Your Paris tenant has not paid rent for four months. Emails go unanswered, the property manager speaks of difficulties, and a well-meaning friend suggests simply changing the locks while the tenant is away. In France, that last suggestion is the fastest route from a rent dispute to a criminal courtroom. Evicting a non-paying tenant from a residential letting is a regulated, multi-stage procedure in which the landlord does almost everything through a court officer, the tenant can ask the judge for more time at almost any moment, and a single missed notification can annul months of effort. Foreign owners who accept this discipline recover their property and their arrears; those who improvise usually pay twice.

This guide walks a non-resident landlord through the complete procedure for unpaid rent in an ordinary residential lease: the formal demand and its two-month clock, the notifications that condition admissibility, the hearing and the judge’s power to grant time, and finally enforcement with its second waiting period and its winter freeze. The framework is the 1989 Tenancies Act for the lease phase and the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings for the eviction phase, read through the court decisions that actually apply them. The companion question of how a lease ends normally, and the special world of furnished tourist lettings, are separate subjects; what follows is the forced route, from the first missed payment to the day the flat comes back.

I. Before the Court: Turning Arrears Into a Court-Ready Case

A. The Formal Demand and the Two-Month Clock

Everything starts with a document served by a court officer, not with a letter from the landlord. The commandement de payer (formal demand for payment served by a judicial officer) is the act by which a commissaire de justice (judicial officer, formerly huissier de justice) orders the tenant to pay the arrears within two months and warns them that the lease’s termination clause will operate if they do not. Most residential leases contain a clause résolutoire (resolutory clause providing for automatic termination), and the statute gives that clause effect only after this demand has gone unanswered for six weeks. The rule, stated in Article 24 of the Act of 6 July 1989 on tenancy relations, is that the termination clause produces effect only six weeks after an unsuccessful formal demand, a period recently shortened from two months, so older guides citing two months are out of date. Three consequences follow that foreign landlords often miss. First, the six weeks run from service of the officer’s demand, not from the first missed rent, and no court application is admissible before they expire. Second, the demand must contain six mandatory statements, failing which it is void: the six-week period itself, the monthly rent and charges, a breakdown of the debt, a warning of court termination and eviction proceedings, the address of the departmental housing solidarity fund, and the tenant’s right to ask the court for grace periods at any time. A demand drafted from an internet template and posted by the landlord has no legal value at all. Third, where a guarantor secures the lease, the demand must be served on the caution (guarantor) within fifteen days of service on the tenant, failing which the guarantor cannot be held to penalties or late interest.

The demand must identify the debt precisely: each month of rent and charges claimed, with a breakdown the tenant can verify. Partial payments made after service reduce the balance but do not necessarily stop the clock, and landlords should instruct the officer to record every payment against the oldest arrears first. Where the tenant receives housing benefit, the officer’s demand also triggers the benefit machinery, and the landlord’s file should from day one distinguish the contractual debt from the portion covered by aide personnalisée au logement (personalised housing benefit). Keeping a clean ledger matters because the judge will examine it: a landlord who cannot show exactly what is owed, month by month, starts the hearing on the defensive. Practical discipline also means resisting informal arrangements that muddy the file. A tenant who promises to catch up over six months without any court-approved schedule leaves the landlord with neither payment nor procedure, while the arrears keep growing and the eventual grace-period analysis starts from a larger debt.

The tenant’s strongest shield at this stage is time granted by the judge, and the Cour de cassation has made that shield available almost without limit. The current statute itself orders the demand to tell the tenant of this right, and in a much-cited ruling decided under the former wording, the Third Civil Chamber held that “Qu’en statuant ainsi, alors qu’aucun délai n’est imposé au preneur pour saisir le juge d’une demande de délais de paiement et de suspension des effets de la clause résolutoire, la cour d’appel a violé le texte susvisé” (Cass. 3rd civ., 16 February 2011, No. 10-14.945). In plain terms, the tenant may ask the judge for payment delays and suspension of the termination clause at any point, including for the first time on appeal, and the judge may even grant such delays of their own motion where the tenant appears able to clear the debt. The current text confirms the principle for today’s cases, and the general regime for judicial grace periods, now found in 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 payments over up to two years, weighing the debtor’s situation against the creditor’s needs, and enforcement is suspended in the meantime with no late penalties accruing during the granted period.

For the foreign landlord, the lesson is to treat the two-month period as preparation time, not waiting time. Verify that the lease actually contains an enforceable termination clause. Confirm the exact arrears figure with the manager or bank statements. Check whether the tenant has applied to the over-indebtedness commission, since an commission de surendettement (over-indebtedness commission) procedure can freeze enforcement independently of the lease litigation. And instruct counsel early: counsel will verify the demand’s formal validity, calendar the expiry of the six weeks, and prepare the social and financial dossier the judge will want to see. Landlords who arrive at the hearing with a verified demand, a documented ledger, and a realistic position on payment schedules obtain orders; landlords who arrive with approximate figures invite delays.

B. The Notifications That Condition Admissibility

The two-month demand is necessary but not sufficient. French eviction law wraps the procedure in preventive notifications to public bodies, and forgetting one renders the court application inadmissible, meaning the case is thrown out before the merits are even examined. The central notification is to the State’s representative in the département. Under Article 24 of the 1989 Act, the court summons seeking confirmation of termination must be notified by the judicial officer to the préfet (State prefect, the government’s local representative) by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt at least six weeks before the hearing, so that social-support bodies can be mobilised for the household. The current text states that “A peine d’irrecevabilité de la demande, l’assignation aux fins de constat de la résiliation est notifiée à la diligence de le commissaire de justice au représentant de l’Etat dans le département au moins six semaines avant l’audience” (Article 24, III, of the Act of 6 July 1989). The Cour de cassation enforces this requirement strictly: in a 2022 ruling it quashed an appeal decision that had accepted a late notification on the ground that months remained before the eventual hearing, holding the lower court to the hearing date stated in the summons itself (Cass. 3rd civ., 9 February 2022, No. 20-16.769). Failure to notify the prefect in time makes the landlord’s claim inadmissible, and the defect cannot be cured during the proceedings: a notification sent late does not fix the case, and the landlord must start again.

That ruling carries a further warning for landlords who have litigated before. In that case the landlord argued that six months had passed between notification and the eventual hearing, which should have been enough for the authorities to act. The Court quashed the appeal decision for failing to check whether the summons had actually been issued for an earlier hearing date, in which case the notification would have missed the deadline. The reference date is the hearing for which the summons was issued, not the hearing at which the case is eventually heard after adjournments. Note that the 2022 decision quotes the former two-month period; the current six-week period applies to new cases, but the strictness lesson is unchanged. In practice, counsel must therefore align three dates with precision: the summons date, the prefect notification date at least two months before the scheduled hearing, and any adjourned hearing. A landlord living abroad should never assume this alignment happened; the acknowledgment of receipt from the prefecture belongs in the file, checked before the hearing, not after an inadmissibility ruling.

Alongside the prefect, the procedure involves the prevention bodies. The serving officer reports the demand to the local commission for coordinating eviction-prevention action, the CCAPEX (commission for coordinating action to prevent rental evictions), once arrears have run uninterrupted for two months or the debt reaches twice the monthly rent net of charges, for individual landlords and family property companies. The prefect then tasks the competent body with a social and financial assessment of the household before the summons deadline expires, and corporate landlords face an additional two-month referral period of their own before they may summon. Where the dwelling is under an agreement giving the tenant personalised housing benefit, an additional prior step applies: the court application must have been notified beforehand to the competent commission, and here too the Cour de cassation requires a fresh notification for each new application. 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” (Cass. 3rd civ., 18 June 2014, No. 13-15.049). Every summons seeking termination needs its own prior notification, even if the commission was already seized in an earlier round of the same dispute. A landlord who discontinued a first case and serves a second summons must repeat the notification from scratch.

The summons itself goes before the tribunal judiciaire (judicial court) of the property’s location and typically seeks three things: confirmation that the termination clause has operated, an order to vacate with eviction if necessary, and a money judgment for the arrears plus an indemnité d’occupation (occupation compensation payable after termination) running until actual departure. Foreign owners should give their lawyer a proper authority to act and a reliable address for service in France, because court papers, expert notices, and the officer’s acts will all be served domestically. Translation needs cut both ways: the landlord’s evidence in English should be translated for the file, and every French act received should be explained promptly, since the two-month and notification deadlines leave no room for a letter sitting unread in a mailbox abroad. Background on how French property relationships are structured and litigated is available on our Paris real estate law page.

II. From Judgment to Actual Departure: Delays and Shields

A. The Hearing and the Judge’s Power to Grant Time

At the hearing, the judge first checks the procedure before touching the merits: a valid termination clause, an unexpired and formally correct demand, timely prefect notification, and proper commission referrals. Only then does the court confirm that the clause has operated and order the tenant to pay and to leave. But confirmation is rarely the end of the story, because the judge holds two distinct powers to give the tenant more time, and tenants use them systematically. The first is the suspension of the termination clause combined with a payment schedule under Article 24 and Article 1343-5 of the Civil Code, available, as seen above, at any stage of the proceedings. Suspension now hinges on a concrete condition: the tenant must have resumed full payment of the current rent before the hearing date, and it ends at the first fresh missed payment, with the clause deemed never to have operated only if the court-ordered schedule is fully honoured. The second is a freestanding power to grant the occupants renewable delays before the eviction itself, even after termination is confirmed. Article L412-3 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings provides 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.” Where the occupants cannot find alternative housing in normal conditions, the judge may grant renewable stays of eviction, and the judge ordering the eviction may do so in the same decision.

These delays are not automatic and not unlimited. The judge weighs concrete evidence: the tenant’s income and job search, children in school, health problems, steps taken to find housing, and, on the landlord’s side, the scale of the arrears and the landlord’s own needs, for instance a foreign owner who must sell or reoccupy. Bad faith excludes the benefit: a tenant who can pay but refuses, who concealed income, or who sabotaged rehousing efforts will be denied delays, and the statute expressly preserves that exclusion. Landlords should therefore arrive with more than a debt figure. Proof that the tenant ignored social services, refused reasonable payment proposals, or sublet the flat while claiming poverty transforms the hearing, while a bare claim for immediate eviction against a struggling family with a credible repayment plan usually produces a schedule instead. The money judgment itself should be sought in full: arrears, contractual interest where the lease provides for it, the occupation compensation until departure, and the procedural costs. A judgment that omits the compensation leaves the landlord returning to court for the months the tenant stays on under judicial delays.

Two further features shape litigation strategy. First, an appeal does not automatically stop enforcement: first-instance eviction orders are generally enforceable despite appeal, so a tenant who wants to stay must actively seek a stay from the appellate court. Second, parallel debt proceedings can interfere. A tenant admitted to an over-indebtedness procedure may obtain suspension of enforcement measures from the relevant commission or judge, and a landlord who learns of such a filing should coordinate the lease case with it rather than discover the freeze from the judicial officer. For the non-resident owner, the practical conclusion is that the hearing is won in the file, months earlier: complete service papers, a verified ledger, evidence of the tenant’s conduct, and a reasoned position on what payment schedule, if any, the landlord can accept. Judges reward landlords who show they tried everything reasonable; they penalise files that look approximate or vindictive.

B. Enforcement: the Second Demand, the Winter Freeze, and the Public Force

A judgment confirming termination does not authorise the landlord to recover the flat personally. Enforcement belongs to the judicial officer and follows its own timetable, starting with a second formal act: the commandement de quitter les lieux (order to vacate served by the judicial officer). From that service, the eviction cannot physically occur for two months. Article L412-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings states that “elle ne peut avoir lieu qu’à l’expiration d’un délai de deux mois qui suit le commandement”, providing a minimum two-month period after the order to vacate before any forced removal from an occupied home. The judge may reduce or remove that period, notably where rehousing efforts failed because of the tenant or where bad faith is established, and it does not apply to occupants who forced their way in. But in the ordinary unpaid-rent case, the landlord must count two full months from service before the officer can proceed, and any attempt to shortcut that period, by changing locks, cutting utilities, or removing belongings, exposes the landlord to criminal prosecution: Article 226-4-2 of the Criminal Code punishes “forcer un tiers à quitter le lieu qu’il habite sans avoir obtenu le concours de l’Etat”, forcing out an occupant without State assistance, with three years’ imprisonment and a 30,000 euro fine. Self-help eviction is not a shortcut; it is a criminal offence.

Then comes the calendar constraint every foreign landlord must internalise: the winter truce. Article L412-6 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings provides 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.” No unexecuted eviction may proceed between 1 November and 31 March unless the occupants are rehoused in conditions preserving family unity and needs. The truce suspends physical removal, not the debt, and it does not apply to squatters who forced entry into someone’s home. Judges have chipped at its edges for other forcibly occupied premises, but the ordinary tenant in place, however large the arrears, benefits fully. A landlord who obtains a judgment in October will therefore generally wait until April for enforcement, and a realistic strategy prices that winter into every decision: settle in September if the terms are acceptable, because October’s victory may mean April’s recovery.

If the tenant still has not left once the two months expire outside the truce period, the officer requests the assistance of the public force from the prefect, and the State is obliged to lend its assistance to enforcement of court decisions. Article L153-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Proceedings states that “L’Etat est tenu de prêter son concours à l’exécution des jugements et des autres titres exécutoires. Le refus de l’Etat de prêter son concours ouvre droit à réparation.” The State must assist enforcement, and refusal gives a right to compensation, assessed by regulation. In practice the prefect has two months to answer the requisition; silence or refusal, often motivated by social considerations, does not end the matter but converts it into a damages claim against the State for the lost rent, assessed on the landlord’s actual loss. Non-resident owners should understand this mechanism coldly: in difficult Paris cases the State sometimes declines to send police for months or years, and the landlord’s recovery shifts from the tenant’s pocket to a State-liability file that must be built with the same rigour, documenting every month of lost occupation compensation. The tenant’s furniture left behind follows its own inventory and disposal procedure conducted by the officer, and the landlord must not dispose of it privately.

Three practical traps deserve emphasis for owners managing from abroad. First, distance magnifies every deadline: instruct a local lawyer and officer at the first missed payments, not at the sixth, because the procedure consumes the better part of a year even when everything goes right, and eighteen months with grace periods and a winter truce is common. Second, keep the property insured and the charges paid throughout: co-ownership charges continue to run against the owner, and an uninsured vacant-after-eviction flat is a separate risk. Third, treat the tax position as a signal, not advice: recovered arrears and occupation compensation are income items to declare under the applicable regime for non-residents, and a sale decided mid-procedure changes the capital-gains analysis entirely, so coordinate with tax counsel rather than improvising. Our Paris real estate law team handles these files from demand to enforcement, including the State-liability route when the public force is refused.

Conclusion

Evicting a non-paying tenant in France is a procedure of successive locks, each with its own key. The formal demand opens a six-week window during which the tenant may always seek a court-approved payment schedule. The summons must reach the prefect six weeks before the hearing and the competent commission beforehand, with each new application requiring fresh notifications that no earlier step can replace. At the hearing the judge may suspend termination, spread the debt over up to two years, or grant renewable stays where rehousing is impossible. After judgment, a second demand imposes another two months, the winter truce freezes removals from November to March, and only the State’s officers may carry out the eviction, with State compensation if the public force is refused. Foreign landlords who respect this sequence, document every step, and start early recover their property with an enforceable money judgment; those who skip a notification or force the door lose the case or face prosecution. When the first rent goes missing, the winning move is always the same: serve properly, notify everybody, and build the file a judge can trust.

Need a quick opinion on your case

If your French tenant has stopped paying and you are unsure where your file stands, a short review now can save months later. We offer a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer from the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write via our contact page for an initial assessment of your arrears, your deadlines, and your enforcement options in Paris and the Ile-de-France.