You married in middle life, moved to France, and raised your spouse’s children as your own. They call your house home, you paid for their schooling, and in every way that matters they are your children. Then a notaire (the French public officer who settles successions and conveyancing) tells you the sentence no blended family expects: in the eyes of French succession law, your stepchildren are legal strangers. If you die without organising anything, they receive nothing automatically. If you leave them something, the tax office takes 60 percent of it after a scrap of an allowance. And anything you give them too generously can be clawed back by your own biological children through a court action for réduction (reduction of excessive gifts). This is the triple shock British step-parents discover in France after Brexit, usually at the worst possible moment.
This guide is written entirely in English, for British readers, with every French legal term explained the first time it appears. It answers the three questions every British step-parent in France asks: what do my stepchildren get if I do nothing, what tax will they pay on what I leave them, and how can I provide for them without setting my own children against them. Part I explains why French law treats stepchildren as strangers, the 60 percent tax wall, and the locked share of your own children. Part II sets out the practical tools that work: the will drafted within French limits, the English-law choice and its French safety net, the adoption simple (simple adoption) that turns a stepchild into a child for tax purposes, and assurance-vie (life assurance) used properly. The law is stated as it stands on 26 September 2026, drawn from the statute book on Légifrance, three recent decisions of the Cour de cassation (France’s supreme court for civil matters), the official service-public.fr information service, and United Kingdom guidance. Our companion guides explain how a British will works on a French house and how a second marriage interacts with children of a first marriage; this article is the one centred on the stepchild.
I. Your stepchildren inherit nothing automatically, pay 60 percent on what they receive, and your own children keep a locked share
A. No blood, no adoption, no rights: the 60 percent tax wall around stepchildren
Start with the civil position, because everything else follows from it. French intestacy, the legal order of heirs that applies when there is no will, knows only relatives by blood and relatives by adoption. A stepchild, the child of your spouse from an earlier relationship whom you never adopted, is neither. If you die intestate in France, your estate passes to your own children, your spouse, your parents and siblings according to the statutory order, and your stepchildren take nothing. Affection counts for nothing, years under the same roof count for nothing, and school fees paid count for nothing. The only way a stepchild receives anything from you is a voluntary transfer: a gift during your lifetime (donation) or a bequest in your will (testament, which article 895 of the Civil Code defines in these terms: “Le testament est un acte par lequel le testateur dispose, pour le temps où il n’existera plus, de tout ou partie de ses biens ou de ses droits et qu’il peut révoquer”). So the first task is always to make a will. The second is to understand what the tax office then does to it.
For droits de mutation (transfer duties on gifts and inheritances), French tax law places a stepchild who has not been adopted in the worst possible box: a person with no recognised family link to the deceased. Article 777 of the General Tax Code sets the tariff, and its third table is brutally short: “Entre parents au-delà du 4e degré et entre personnes non-parentes 60”. Sixty percent, flat, on the net share. Compare that with your own children, who each enjoy an allowance (abattement) of 100,000 euros under article 779 of the same code (“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”) and then a progressive scale running from 5 to 45 percent. Your stepchild, by contrast, deducts almost nothing before the 60 percent rate bites. On death, article 788, IV of the code grants only this: “A défaut d’autre abattement, à l’exception de celui mentionné au III, un abattement de 1 594 € est opéré sur chaque part successorale.” One thousand five hundred and ninety-four euros on each inherited share, then 60 percent on the rest. A bequest of 100,000 euros to a stepchild therefore produces roughly 59,000 euros of duty. The official service-public.fr guidance confirms the same treatment in plain language: a person treated as a stranger for tax purposes pays succession duty at 60 percent. And because the French house itself is caught whatever your residence, article 750 ter of the code provides that where the deceased was not domiciled in France for tax purposes, “Les biens meubles et immeubles, que ces derniers soient possédés directement ou indirectement, situés en France” remain subject to French transfer duties. A British step-parent who kept United Kingdom tax residence still leaves a French house inside the French 60 percent net. The mirror guide on deaths owning French houses and the 1963 treaty explains how the two countries share the bill; the stepchild point is that the French slice is taxed at the stranger rate.
A rumour must be discarded before you plan anything. Several widely shared marketing pages claim that the finance act for 2026 created a new allowance of 15,932 euros for stepchildren, supposedly in a new article 788 III bis of the tax code. We checked both official sources on 26 September 2026. The consolidated article 788 on Légifrance, in force on that date, contains no III bis and still ends with the 1,594 euro allowance quoted above. The promulgated text of finance act number 2026-103 of 19 February 2026, read in full on Légifrance, contains no provision for stepchildren and no amendment to article 788 for their benefit. What happened is identifiable: an amendment raising the allowance was adopted at first reading in the autumn of 2025 and widely reported, but it did not survive into the promulgated statute. Do not organise your succession around a newspaper allowance. Ask your notaire to read the article in force on the day, and budget on 1,594 euros and 60 percent unless and until the statute book itself changes. Anyone who tells you otherwise should be asked to show you the article number in the consolidated code.
The English contrast sharpens the planning point. For the United Kingdom residence nil-rate band, the official gov.uk guidance states that a direct descendant includes “a child who is, or was at any time, their step-child”, adding that “A person’s step-child is only someone whose parent is, or was, the spouse or civil partner of that person.” London treats the stepchild as family for the extra housing allowance; Paris taxes the same child as a stranger at 60 percent. If your family straddles both countries, each side of the Channel must be planned under its own logic, and the French side is the expensive one.
B. Your own children’s locked share: the réserve, gifts made by préciput, and who proves what
The second wall protects your own children, and it limits how much you can divert to stepchildren. French law reserves a fraction of every estate for the children, the réserve héréditaire (reserved share). Article 912 of the Civil Code defines it as “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.” Article 913 then fixes the arithmetic, still in force: “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 ; le tiers, s’il laisse deux enfants ; le quart, s’il en laisse trois ou un plus grand nombre.” With one child you can give away only half your estate outside that child; with two children only one third; with three or more only one quarter. The balance, the quotité disponible (disposable share), is the only envelope from which stepchildren, a second spouse beyond his or her own rights, friends and charities can be served. Stepchildren have no reserved share of their own and no seat at the table unless you put them there by will or gift inside that envelope.
Gifts that overshoot the envelope do not stand. A gift made par préciput (by preference, outside the equal sharing, with exemption from return to the estate) or with dispense de rapport (exemption from bringing the gift back into account at partition) can only be kept up to the disposable share; the surplus is cut back by the action in réduction. The Cour de cassation restated the rule on 5 December 2018 in appeal number 17-27.982: “les dons faits par préciput ou avec dispense de rapport ne peuvent être retenus par l’héritier venant à partage que jusqu’à concurrence de la quotité disponible ; que l’excédent est sujet à réduction.” For British blended families the practical reading is direct. Suppose you gave your stepchild 200,000 euros while your two own children later claim their reserved two thirds of a 300,000 euro estate. Your children can sue to reduce the stepchild’s gift to what fits inside your one-third disposable share, and the stepchild repays the excess in value. Lifetime generosity without arithmetic is a promise the courts can unwind after your death.
Litigation over who received what turns on proof, and a very recent decision helps the careful file. On 10 June 2026 the First Civil Chamber held in appeal number 24-10.363, visaed on articles 894 and 1353 of the Civil Code, that “Il résulte de la combinaison de ces textes que c’est à celui qui invoque l’existence d’une donation d’en rapporter la preuve.” The child who alleges a disguised gift to a sibling or step-sibling, in order to have it brought back into the reserved-share calculation, must prove the payment actually funded the acquisition. Accusations are not evidence. Keep bank statements showing the true source of every family transfer, keep the deeds showing who paid what, and keep valuations dated at the time. The family that documents its money wins the partition; the family that relied on memory litigates for years.
Your spouse has a parallel protection worth knowing, because it shapes what is left for stepchildren. Where you leave children, article 1094-1 of the Civil Code lets you benefit your husband or wife with one quarter in full ownership plus three quarters in usufruit (a life interest: the right to use the property and take its income without owning the capital), or with the whole estate in usufruit: “Pour le cas où l’époux laisserait des enfants ou descendants, issus ou non du mariage, il pourra disposer en faveur de l’autre époux, soit de la propriété de ce dont il pourrait disposer en faveur d’un étranger, soit d’un quart de ses biens en propriété et des trois autres quarts en usufruit, soit encore de la totalité de ses biens en usufruit seulement.” The same article adds a flexible tool: “Sauf stipulation contraire du disposant, le conjoint survivant peut cantonner son émolument sur une partie des biens dont il a été disposé en sa faveur.” Cantonnement lets the surviving spouse take less than the maximum, leaving assets to pass directly to the children, and that limitation is not treated as a gift to them. In a blended family this is routinely used the other way round from what newcomers expect: the surviving parent limits his or her take so that value flows down to the children, including stepchildren you have named in your will, without an extra layer of duty.
II. The tools that genuinely provide for stepchildren: will, adoption, gifts and life assurance used inside the rules
A. Put it in writing, choose your law with open eyes, or adopt: three routes to a real share
The will comes first because without one the stepchild gets nothing. Make an English will or a French will that expressly names each stepchild and states what each receives, within the disposable share measured against your whole worldwide estate. British testators often add a choice of English law under the European Succession Regulation, trusting London’s testamentary liberty to bypass the French reserved share. Since Brexit that choice still operates in France, but it no longer operates alone. Article 913 now ends with a French safety net for children, verified above on Légifrance: where the deceased or at least one child was, at death, a national of a European Union Member State or habitually resident there, and the applicable foreign law offers the children no reserved-share protection, each child may levy a prélèvement compensatoire (compensatory levy) on assets situated in France so as to recover the reserved rights French law grants. For a British family settled in France, the children habitually resident here can therefore reach into the French house to restore their reserve even against an English-law will. An English will is still useful, for the appointment of executors, for the United Kingdom assets, and for clarity, but it cannot be used to empty the French estate of the children’s reserve. Our detailed guide to British wills and French houses walks through the drafting; the stepchild lesson is to failure-proof the will by keeping every gift to stepchildren inside the disposable share from the start.
The strongest civil and fiscal tool is the adoption simple of your spouse’s child. Article 360 of the Civil Code states its elegant mechanism: “L’adoption simple confère à l’adopté une filiation qui s’ajoute à sa filiation d’origine selon les modalités prévues au présent chapitre.” The adopted stepchild keeps all rights in the birth family and gains a second filiation with you. That second filiation transforms the tax position. Article 786 of the tax code starts from refusal, “Pour la perception des droits de mutation à titre gratuit, il n’est pas tenu compte du lien de parenté résultant de l’adoption simple”, then carves out the exact situation of blended families in its first exception: “1° D’enfants issus d’un premier mariage du conjoint de l’adoptant”. A stepchild from your spouse’s earlier relationship whom you adopt simply is taxed as your child: 100,000 euros allowance and the progressive 5 to 45 percent scale instead of 1,594 euros and 60 percent. On a 200,000 euro share the difference is measured in tens of thousands of euros. Simple adoption requires consent, including the child’s where the child is old enough, and the agreement of the other birth parent in most cases; it is granted by the tribunal judiciaire (the ordinary civil court) and it is the one procedure where taking advice early repays its cost many times over. Where adoption is impossible, because the other parent refuses or the child declines, fall back on calibrated gifts inside the disposable share, documented and valued at the time so they survive the reduction arithmetic described in Part I.
Lifetime gifts deserve the same arithmetic as wills. A donation before a French notaire to a stepchild is charged at the same 60 percent tariff, and the 1,594 euro allowance in article 788 is worded for shares passing on death, so the deed must state the allowance position precisely and your notaire should confirm it in writing before signature. Gifts also interact with the reserve through rapport (bringing back into account): gifts to your own children are presumed advances on their shares unless made expressly by preference, while gifts to stepchildren, who are not heirs, are imputed on the disposable share. Time your gifts so that each stays inside the envelope, keep the valuations, and remember the declaration deadlines after death: article 641 of the tax code requires the succession return within “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 where the deceased died in metropolitan France, twelve months in all other cases, which covers the British step-parent who retired back to Kent. Interest and penalties for late filing fall on the heirs, including stepchildren who thought the family had finished grieving before the paperwork began.
B. Fund stepchildren with assurance-vie, then survive the challenges your own children can bring
Assurance-vie is the instrument British families in France reach for first, and for stepchildren it has a genuine advantage: the capital paid to a named beneficiary sits outside the succession. Article L132-13 of the Insurance Code provides that “Le capital ou la rente payables au décès du contractant à un bénéficiaire déterminé ne sont soumis ni aux règles du rapport à succession, ni à celles de la réduction pour atteinte à la réserve des héritiers du contractant.” Name each stepchild as beneficiary for a defined percentage, keep the clause updated after each birth, marriage and divorce, and the money passes directly. The tax treatment then depends on the vehicle’s own levy rather than the 60 percent succession tariff. Article 990 I of the tax code, for sums outside article 757 B, grants each beneficiary a fixed allowance and then taxes the rest: “puis d’un abattement fixe de 152 500 €. Le prélèvement s’élève à 20 % pour la fraction de la part taxable de chaque bénéficiaire inférieure ou égale à 700 000 €, et à 31,25 % pour la fraction de la part taxable de chaque bénéficiaire excédant cette limite.” Compare 152,500 euros per beneficiary at 20 percent with 1,594 euros at 60 percent, and the attraction for stepchildren is obvious. Premiums paid after age seventy fall under a different, less generous article, so fund the contracts early and steadily rather than in one late panic payment.
The same article that protects the beneficiary contains the weapon your own children can use against the arrangement. The exemption from return and reduction stops where premiums were manifestement exagérées (manifestly excessive) in light of your means: “Ces règles ne s’appliquent pas non plus aux sommes versées par le contractant à titre de primes, à moins que celles-ci n’aient été manifestement exagérées eu égard à ses facultés.” On 19 December 2024 the Second Civil Chamber, in appeal number 23-19.110, fixed the test courts must apply: “les primes versées par le souscripteur d’un contrat d’assurance sur la vie ne sont rapportables à la succession que si elles présentent un caractère manifestement exagéré eu égard aux facultés du souscripteur, un tel caractère s’appréciant au moment du versement, au regard de l’âge, des situations patrimoniale et familiale du souscripteur ainsi que de l’utilité du contrat pour celui-ci.” The assessment is made at the date of each payment, looking at your age, your wealth, your family situation and whether the contract made sense for you then. A court may not simply reason backwards from the fact that the reserve was harmed. The file that survives is therefore the file that explains itself at the time: moderate premiums relative to income and capital, spread over years, consistent with retirement provision, with the stepchild as one beneficiary among a balanced clause rather than the sudden destination of nearly the whole patrimony months before death. Conversely, the own child who challenges must do more than show disappointment; the challenge must demonstrate excess measured at payment date against means, age and usefulness. Both sides should read that decision before writing letters they cannot sustain.
When conflict breaks out, the challenge tracks are orderly. Your own children attack excessive gifts through the action in reduction before the tribunal judiciaire, within the limitation periods that run from the opening of the succession, and they carry the burden of proving disguised donations where they allege them, as the June 2026 decision recalled. Stepchildren defend by showing the gift fits inside the disposable share, valued correctly, or that the assurance-vie premiums were proportionate when paid. Tax assessments are challenged first by written claim to the tax office (réclamation) and then before the administrative court (tribunal administratif) within the statutory time limits; a 60 percent assessment computed on a wrong base, a refused allowance, or a misapplied treaty credit are all standard grounds. Do not let frustration become procedure: missed deadlines kill good cases faster than bad law. And do not reorganise ownership after a diagnosis in ways that look like fraud on the children’s rights; judges presented with deathbed gifts to stepchildren funded from nearly the entire estate apply the reduction rules without sentiment, exactly as the December 2018 decision requires.
Conclusion
A stepchild in France inherits nothing by default, pays 60 percent on what you give after an allowance of 1,594 euros, and receives only what fits inside the disposable share left over after your own children’s reserved portions. No 2026 reform has changed those three propositions in the statute book as it stands today. Within those limits, much can still be done: a will that names each stepchild and respects the reserve arithmetic, an English-law choice understood with its French compensatory levy, a simple adoption that turns the tax stranger into a child at 100,000 euros allowance, lifetime gifts kept inside the envelope with values proved at the time, and life assurance with named stepchild beneficiaries funded by premiums that remain proportionate to your means. The blended family that plans early, documents every transfer, and has the notaire check each article in its current version gives its stepchildren something no affection alone can confer: a share that survives both the tax office and the courtroom. Start with the will, cost the adoption, fund the assurance-vie steadily, and keep every valuation, because the file you build in life is the case your stepchildren inherit at death.