You moved to France after Brexit, bought or kept a house in the Dordogne, Normandy or the Luberon, and back in England you signed a will leaving everything to your spouse, cutting out a child, or splitting the house in shares English law allows without a second thought. In France, that will meets a legal wall your English solicitor never had to consider: children have a locked-in share of your estate that no will can take away, the tax office treats your French house as taxable in France whatever your passport says, and the local notary will refuse to transfer the property until every heir, every valuation and every declaration is in order. This guide explains, in plain English with the exact French legal texts, which law governs your succession now that you live in France, how to choose English law in your will and what that choice can and cannot do, how the French forced share and the 2021 compensatory levy protect your children, how French succession tax hits the French house, what makes a will formally valid in France, and how to challenge a refusal or an excessive claim step by step.
I. Which Law Governs Your Succession and Whether Your English Will Works in France
A. How Habitual Residence Points to French Law and How a Choice of English Law in Your Will Redirects It
The starting point surprises most British families: since you live in France, French law normally governs your whole succession, including your English bank accounts and your French house together. That single-estate rule comes from the European Succession Regulation, the EU instrument of 4 July 2012 on jurisdiction, applicable law and recognition in succession matters, which France applies to everyone who dies habitually resident on French soil, British nationals included, even though the United Kingdom never signed up to it. The Regulation is directly effective in France for deaths on or after 17 August 2015, and its default connecting factor is habitual residence at death, meaning the country where you actually centre your daily life, not the passport you hold or the domicile stamp in an English solicitor’s file. A retired couple living year-round in the Lot, registered with the French health system, paying French income tax and sending no child to an English school is habitually resident in France in every practical sense, so the French notary opens the file under French law and the English will is read through French eyes. The official text of the Regulation is published on Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 of 4 July 2012, and you should keep its Articles 21 and 22 open while reading what follows, because everything about choosing English law hangs on them.
Article 22 of that Regulation hands you the escape route, and it is tailor-made for British nationals: you may choose the law of your nationality to govern your entire succession. Habitual residence still decides the default, but an express declaration in your will displaces it, so a British citizen habitually resident in France can validly submit the whole estate to English law. Three conditions make the choice effective, and each of them is a trap for the unwary. First, the choice must appear expressly in a disposition of property upon death or be clearly demonstrated by its terms, so a vague sentence about wishing English principles to apply is not enough. Second, it must designate the law of a nationality you hold when you sign or when you die, which for most readers simply means the law of England and Wales stated by name, not British law in general, because Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own succession rules. Third, the clause must survive you in a will that is itself formally valid, which is why the formalities examined in Part II matter as much as the clause. In practice, ask your draftsman to insert a dedicated article providing that English law governs the succession as a whole, to name the law of England and Wales expressly, and to repeat the choice identically in any later codicil, because an inconsistent later will can impliedly revoke the earlier choice and throw the estate back to French law without anyone noticing until the notary reads both documents side by side.
Choosing English law does not mean the French courts lose interest, and a 2022 ruling of the Court of Cassation with Franco-British facts proves the point. In that case a Frenchman had left France in 1981 at fifty-nine, worked in the property sector in London, retired there, married an English wife in 1996 and lived with her uninterruptedly until returning to France in August 2012 at nearly ninety, where he died; his children argued over whether his habitual residence at death was French or English. The First Civil Chamber held, visa Article 10(1)(a) of the Regulation: “lorsque la résidence habituelle du défunt au moment du décès n’est pas située dans un État membre, les juridictions de l’État membre dans lequel sont situés des biens successoraux sont néanmoins compétentes pour statuer sur l’ensemble de la succession dans la mesure où le défunt possédait la nationalité de cet État membre au moment du décès” — where the habitual residence at death is outside any Member State, the courts of the Member State where estate assets lie remain competent for the whole succession where the deceased held that State’s nationality at death. Read the full reasoning in Court of Cassation, First Civil Chamber, 21 September 2022, No 19-15.438. The same ruling records that the Court of Justice had already decided on 7 April 2022 that “une juridiction d’un État membre doit relever d’office sa compétence au titre de la règle de compétence subsidiaire prévue à cette disposition lorsque, ayant été saisie sur le fondement de la règle de compétence générale établie à l’article 4 de ce règlement, elle constate qu’elle n’est pas compétente au titre de cette dernière disposition” — a court seised under the general residence rule must raise of its own motion its subsidiary jurisdiction when it finds the general rule does not give it competence. For your family the lesson is concrete: if you die habitually resident in France, the French courts and the French notary handle the whole succession, and if you die back in England owning the French house, the French courts can still claim the whole file wherever French assets and the right nationality coincide, so neither an English grant of probate alone nor silence in France will close the French side.
Your English-language will itself is not the problem many fear: France accepts a will written in a foreign language, and an English text signed in London can operate in Bergerac provided its form is right. French practice recognises three forms, and the one most British testators use is the holographic will, the testament olographe, meaning a will you write entirely by hand yourself. The public guidance for individuals explains that a holographic will must be wholly handwritten, never typed even in part, precisely dated with day, month and year, and signed, and that it may be drawn up in a foreign language, with a notary’s advice recommended to avoid ambiguity. See the official step-by-step page service-public.fr, drawing up a will, and the general British guidance on gov.uk, making a will for the English side of your planning. The statute behind the guidance is short and strict. Article 970 of the Civil Code states: “Le testament olographe ne sera point valable s’il n’est écrit en entier, daté et signé de la main du testateur” — a holographic will is valid only if written wholly, dated and signed by the testator’s own hand. Concretely, write the entire English text by hand, date it 14 March 2026 rather than March 2026, sign at the very end as the case law below requires, and deposit it with your French notary for entry in the central wills register, the fichier central des dispositions de dernières volontés, meaning the national file where notaries record wills, so the document surfaces when the succession opens instead of gathering dust in an English drawer nobody in France knows about. Where two wills coexist, an English will for English assets and a French-registered will for French assets, give each an express territorial scope and coordinated revocation language, because a later English will revoking all prior wills in standard English boilerplate can accidentally revoke the French will too.
B. How the French Forced Share Limits Your Will and How the 2021 Compensatory Levy Protects Children Where Foreign Law Gives Them Nothing
Here is the rule that overturns English expectations: your children own part of your estate before you even write the will. French law reserves to certain heirs, called héritiers réservataires, meaning reserved heirs, a minimum share that no gift and no will can remove, and only the surplus, called the quotité disponible, meaning the share you may allocate as you wish, can go to your spouse, a charity, a friend or one favoured child. Article 912 of the Civil Code defines the mechanism: “La réserve héréditaire est la part des biens et droits successoraux dont la loi assure la dévolution libre de charges à certains héritiers dits réservataires, s’ils sont appelés à la succession et s’ils l’acceptent.” — the reserved share is the portion of the estate the law guarantees, clear of charges, to the reserved heirs where they take up the succession. The shares are arithmetic, not discretionary. Article 913 of the Civil Code caps what you may give away: “Les libéralités, soit par actes entre vifs, soit par testament, ne pourront excéder la moitié des biens du disposant, s’il ne laisse à son décès qu’un enfant” — gifts and legacies may not exceed half the estate with one child, one-third with two children, and one-quarter with three or more. With two children, each child is guaranteed one-third and you dispose of one-third as you wish; with three children, each is guaranteed one-quarter and you dispose of the last quarter. An English will leaving the French house entirely to the surviving spouse, disinheriting the children of a first marriage, or dividing unequally beyond the disposable share will be cut back in France to the extent of the excess, whatever English law chosen under Article 22 might otherwise permit, because the applicable law’s own limits still frame what the disposable share can absorb.
Since 1 November 2021 a second shield protects children where the applicable foreign law offers them no reserved share at all, and it matters directly to British families who chose English law. Where the deceased or at least one child is, at death, a national of an EU Member State or habitually resident there, and the applicable foreign law provides no reserved-share mechanism protecting children, each child may take compensatory value from assets situated in France at death so as to recover the French reserved rights, capped at those rights. Article 913 of the Civil Code, final paragraph provides: “chaque enfant ou ses héritiers ou ses ayants cause peuvent effectuer un prélèvement compensatoire sur les biens existants situés en France au jour du décès, de façon à être rétablis dans les droits réservataires que leur octroie la loi française, dans la limite de ceux-ci” — each child, heir or successor may make a compensatory levy on assets existing in France at death so as to be restored to the reserved rights French law grants, within their limit. Because you live in France, the residence condition is normally satisfied even though Britain left the Union, so a child left with nothing under an English-law will can still levy the French house up to the French reserved amount. Note the boundary carefully: the levy bites only on assets situated in France at death and only restores the French reserved share, it does not rewrite the whole English-law succession, and it requires the foreign applicable law to lack any child-protecting reserve device, so document the English-law position with counsel’s advice before relying on it or resisting it.
When the reserved share is invaded, the remedy is the action for reduction, the action en réduction, meaning the court claim by which a reserved heir cuts excessive gifts and legacies back to the disposable share. Standing is narrow and that narrowness protects careful planning. Article 921 of the Civil Code limits the claim: “La réduction des dispositions entre vifs ne pourra être demandée que par ceux au profit desquels la loi fait la réserve, par leurs héritiers ou ayants cause” — reduction of lifetime gifts may be demanded only by those for whom the law creates the reserve, their heirs or successors, never by other legatees or the deceased’s creditors, and the claim prescribes five years from the opening of the succession. The computation builds a fictional mass of everything owned at death plus everything given away in life. Article 922 of the Civil Code directs: “La réduction se détermine en formant une masse de tous les biens existant au décès du donateur ou testateur.” — reduction is calculated by forming a mass of all assets existing at the donor’s or testator’s death, with lifetime gifts fictitiously reunited to it at their condition when given and their value at death. Lifetime gifts of money therefore count, and where the money bought an asset, the asset’s value at death can replace the nominal sum. The Court of Cassation enforced exactly that in a 2019 succession where a 1982 gift of 350,000 francs used the same day to buy the bare ownership of a house had to be reunited at the property’s death-date value in its acquisition condition, not at the nominal francs: “les biens dont il a été disposé par donation entre vifs sont fictivement réunis à cette masse, d’après leur état à l’époque de la donation et leur valeur à l’ouverture de la succession” — lifetime gifts are fictitiously reunited to the mass at their condition when given and their value when the succession opens. See Court of Cassation, First Civil Chamber, 17 October 2019, No 18-22.810. For British parents who helped one child onto the English property ladder years ago and now favour another in the French will, this ruling is a warning: the old sterling gift, converted, traced into bricks and revalued at death, can explode the mass and trigger a reduction nobody budgeted for.
Translate these rules into three household situations before anyone signs. First, the classic couple’s will leaving everything to the survivor: with children, the survivor keeps at most the disposable share plus their own rights, and each child can claim the balance, so protect the survivor instead with a usufruct gift, the libéralité de l’usufruit, meaning a lifetime interest in the house with the children holding the bare ownership, or with the surviving spouse’s statutory option over the estate, taken within the disposable share. Second, the second marriage with children on both sides: equal division among all your children satisfies every reserve at once, while favouring the new spouse beyond the disposable share invites a reduction action from the children of the first marriage within five years. Third, the child you genuinely wish to exclude: France does not permit disinheritance of a child, so pursue lawful substitutes inside the disposable share, life assurance payable to a named beneficiary outside the estate, or an English-law structure for non-French assets, and never rely on a forfeiture clause an English draftsman inserts without checking its French effect. Map the mass on paper now, listing the French house at current value, English accounts, and every lifetime gift with its date and paper trail; the family that computes the reserve before death signs a will that survives, while the family that discovers the arithmetic at the notary’s office pays for a reduction action.
II. What France Taxes When You Die, Which Papers the Notaire Demands, and How to Challenge a Refusal
A. How French Succession Tax Catches the French House, What the Spouse and Children Pay, and When the Return Falls Due
French succession tax follows the house, not the passport. Where the deceased was French tax resident, France taxes worldwide movable and immovable assets; where the deceased lived in England, France still taxes assets situated in France, including a house held directly or through a company, and even assets held through a foreign trust. Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code casts the net in three strokes, taxing French and foreign assets alike “lorsque le donateur ou le défunt a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 B” — where the donor or the deceased was French tax resident within the meaning of Article 4 B — and taxing French-situated assets even where the deceased lived abroad. Tax residence itself turns on everyday facts. Article 4 B of the General Tax Code treats as French tax resident “Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal” — persons whose household or principal place of stay is in France — alongside those working principally in France. A British retiree living ten months a year in the Charente is French tax resident, so the Dordogne house, the London flat and the English investment bonds all enter the French return, with any British inheritance-tax position handled separately through proof of foreign tax paid. Where the fact pattern also involves a UK trust holding French assets, the dedicated trust machinery examined in our guide to UK trusts held by British residents in France applies on top of these succession rules.
The rates then depend entirely on kinship, and the allowances soften only the first slice. Each child benefits from a 100,000 euro allowance on their share. Article 779 of the General Tax Code grants: “il est effectué un abattement de 100 000 € sur la part de chacun des ascendants et sur la part de chacun des enfants vivants ou représentés par suite de prédécès ou de renonciation” — an allowance of 100,000 euros on the share of each parent and each living or represented child. Above the allowance, the direct-line scale of Article 777 of the General Tax Code climbs from 5 per cent to 45 per cent on the largest shares, while shares passing to siblings, nephews or strangers face scales rising to 45, 55 and 60 per cent with far smaller allowances. Against that ladder, the surviving spouse and the civil-partnership partner hold a remarkable shelter: Article 796-0 bis of the General Tax Code states “Sont exonérés de droits de mutation par décès le conjoint survivant et le partenaire lié au défunt par un pacte civil de solidarité.” — the surviving spouse and the partner bound by a civil solidarity pact are exempt from death duties. For British couples this exemption is often the single most valuable line in the Code, worth more than any clever clause, but it exempts from tax without exempting from the children’s reserved shares, so a spouse who inherits the whole house tax-exempt can still face the children’s reduction action for the reserve. Unmarried partners without a civil partnership, the pacte civil de solidarité, meaning the registered civil partnership, fall outside the exemption and face the 60 per cent stranger rate, which is why registering the partnership before death, not after, belongs on every cohabiting couple’s checklist.
The return itself runs on a short clock that Brexit did not extend. The succession return, the déclaration de succession, meaning the inventory, valuation and computation filed with the tax office, must be lodged within six months of death where the deceased died in metropolitan France and within twelve months in all other cases. Article 641 of the General Tax Code fixes the periods: “De six mois, à compter du jour du décès, lorsque celui dont on recueille la succession est décédé en France métropolitaine; D’une année, dans tous les autres cas.” — six months from death where the deceased died in metropolitan France, one year in all other cases. In practice the French notary prepares the return alongside the title work, values the house at its market value on the death date with a proper agency valuation kept in the file, lists English assets with probate values and exchange evidence, deducts only deductible liabilities, and files with payment or a reasoned request for instalments. Miss the deadline and late interest accrues month by month with penalties, so diary the six-month date at the funeral, not at the first notary appointment, and where an English grant of probate delays valuation of English assets, file on the French assets in time with a documented reservation for the English complement rather than filing nothing at all. Keep every HMRC receipt and every grant document, because any relief for British tax paid stands or falls on proof of tax effectively paid abroad, never on tax theoretically due.
Work the numbers on a typical file before the meeting so the notary’s computation holds no surprise. Take a Dordogne house worth 420,000 euros, English accounts of 180,000 euros, no lifetime gifts, two children, surviving spouse, deceased French resident: the mass is 600,000 euros, each child’s reserve is one-third or 200,000 euros, the disposable third is 200,000 euros. If the will leaves the spouse 200,000 euros and each child 200,000 euros, no reduction lies; for tax, the spouse pays nothing on their share under the exemption, each child deducts 100,000 euros and pays the direct-line scale on 100,000 euros, roughly a five-figure sum each depending on the slice arithmetic. Change one fact and the outcome moves: a third child shrinks each reserve to one-quarter and enlarges the gift history; an unmarried partner taxed at 60 per cent transforms the same house into a six-figure bill; a 1990s gift of 50,000 pounds traced into an English flat revalued at death inflates the mass and can push shares into higher slices. Bring to the appointment the will with its English-law clause, the marriage certificate with apostille and certified translation, birth certificates, the house title, the last three valuations, bank statements at death date, and the list of every lifetime gift with its deed, because the notary who sees complete papers settles the file in months while the notary who discovers assets piecemeal reopens the return with penalties.
B. How to Make the Will Formally Unbreakable in France and How to Challenge a Rejection, a Rival Will or a Wrong Tax Bill
Most will contests are won or lost on formalities, and the Court of Cassation polices them without mercy. The signature must close the document: anything written below the signature is not part of the will. On 26 March 2025 the First Civil Chamber quashed an appeal ruling that had validated a holographic will in full even though a legacy for one beneficiary sat below the signature and date, restating: “Pour être la marque de l’approbation personnelle et définitive du contenu de l’acte, la signature doit nécessairement être apposée à sa suite.” — to mark personal and definitive approval of the contents, the signature must necessarily be placed after them. Read Court of Cassation, First Civil Chamber, 26 March 2025, No 23-14.430. The same ruling quashed the appeal court’s handwriting check because it had compared a mere copy: “la vérification d’écriture doit être effectuée au vu de l’original de l’écrit contesté.” — handwriting verification must be performed on sight of the original of the disputed document. Five drafting rules follow. Write every word by hand with no typed passage. Date with day, month and year, since an undated holographic will can be annulled. Sign once, legibly, after the last line, with nothing dispositive below. Initial or date any interlineation the same day rather than squeezing new legacies into margins. And keep the original where the French notary or a named English solicitor can produce it, because a photocopy invites exactly the verification dispute the 2025 ruling punishes.
Where the estate justifies the cost, upgrade from the handwritten will to the notarial will, the testament authentique, meaning the will dictated to and recorded by a notary. Article 971 of the Civil Code frames it: “Le testament par acte public est reçu par deux notaires ou par un notaire assisté de deux témoins.” — the public will is received by two notaries or one notary assisted by two witnesses. The notarial will costs a regulated fee, needs no handwriting or dating formalities from you, is stored and registered automatically, and resists challenges to authenticity far better than a manuscript found in a drawer. It also solves the language problem elegantly: where you do not speak French and the notary does not understand English, an interpreter assists, and the deed records that the testator’s wishes were expressed and read back, closing the ambiguity disputes that haunt English-only manuscripts read by French heirs. A middle path exists for the testator who wants secrecy with security, the mystic will sealed in an envelope before a notary, but its complex procedure makes it rare, so choose in practice between the careful holographic will for simple estates and the notarial will for blended families, large estates and any file where a challenge is foreseeable.
Understand who takes possession and through which door, because heirs blocked at this stage mistake procedure for substance. Where no reserved heir exists, the universal legatee is seised by death itself. Article 1006 of the Civil Code provides: “Lorsqu’au décès du testateur il n’y aura pas d’héritiers auxquels une quotité de ses biens soit réservée par la loi, le légataire universel sera saisi de plein droit par la mort du testateur, sans être tenu de demander la délivrance.” — with no reserved heirs, the universal legatee is seised as of right by the testator’s death, without having to seek delivery. Where reserved heirs exist, as in most British files with children, the legatee must instead obtain delivery from them or a court order for possession, the envoi en possession, meaning the judicial order putting the legatee into possession, and the notary will not transfer the house until that order or the heirs’ consent appears. A surviving spouse named universal legatee alongside two children therefore administers nothing until the children deliver or the court orders, which is why the first letter after death should propose documented delivery rather than assert ownership. Parallel English probate does not replace this step: the English grant proves title to English assets and, with apostille and sworn translation, evidences the English position to the French notary, but the French house moves only through the French notarial deed, the attestation immobilière, meaning the published deed recording the transfer of the property to the heirs.
When the file blocks, challenge in the French order with papers first and judges last. If the notary questions the English-law clause, supply the will’s express designation, a short English counsel’s note confirming the testator’s nationality and the clause’s sense, and the EUR-Lex text of Articles 21 and 22, and ask for written reasons for any refusal to apply the chosen law, since a reasoned refusal is the gateway to any court remedy. If a sibling produces a rival manuscript, demand the original, seek a handwriting expert examination rather than accepting a comparison of copies, and plead the 2025 signature and original-document rulings line by line. If a child is disinherited in substance, compute the mass under Article 922 with the 2019 revaluation ruling, quantify the shortfall against the Article 913 quotas, and file the reduction action within the five-year period against the excessive legatees, attaching valuations at death date and the gift deeds. If the tax bill misstates kinship, forgets the 100,000 euro allowance, taxes the spouse, or values the house above market, file a written claim to the tax office setting out each error article by article with the supporting deeds and valuations, then take an express or silent rejection to the civil court, the tribunal judiciaire, meaning the court hearing succession tax disputes. Throughout, keep the conciliatory track alive: heirs who sign a documented family settlement, the protocole transactionnel, meaning the written compromise ending the dispute, before the court date save years of procedure, and offices that receive complete early papers concede partial relief far more readily than offices forced to decide on fragments.
Conclusion
Your English will can govern your French house after Brexit, but only if you build for the French forum from the first line. Die habitually resident in France and French law applies to the whole estate unless your will expressly chooses the law of England and Wales; that choice works, yet it neither closes the French courts nor removes the children’s locked-in shares, and since 2021 the compensatory levy lets a child left with nothing under foreign law recover the French reserve from assets in France. Tax follows the same territorial logic: French residence pulls worldwide assets into the French return, the French house is taxable in France in every case, each child deducts 100,000 euros before the scale climbs to 45 per cent, and the surviving spouse and registered partner inherit exempt while unmarried partners face the stranger rate, all within six months of a French death and twelve of an English one. Form decides whether any of this planning survives contact with the court: handwrite, date precisely, sign last with nothing below, keep the original producible, and prefer the notarial will where the family or the fortune is complicated. Prepare the mass computation now, register the will where the French notary will find it, assemble the civil-status papers with apostilles and translations, and challenge refusals and wrong assessments in writing, article by article, within the limitation periods. Handled that way, the English will and the French house stop fighting each other and do what both were meant to do: carry your family, in order, from one generation to the next.
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