Your husband or wife has died, and the French house you shared, in the Dordogne, the Languedoc or a Paris flat, is now at the centre of a succession. The children, yours together or from an earlier marriage, are asking what happens next. Can you go on living in the home. Do you own it, or do you only hold a right over it. Can the children force a sale, force you out, or force you to accept money instead. This guide answers those questions from the French statutes and court decisions in force on 2 October 2026, as they apply to a British surviving spouse after Brexit. It is written for a British reader, and every French term is explained the first time it appears. French succession law gives the surviving spouse strong protection, including a free first year in the home and, on strict conditions, a lifelong right to live there, plus a legal choice between full usufruit, the right to use the property and take its income, and a quarter share in full ownership. Each of those rights has a deadline, a proof requirement and a tax consequence attached, and the two Court of Cassation decisions examined below show how families win or lose on exactly those points. This article does not replace advice on your own file, and only the court hearing a case decides that case.
One preliminary point shapes everything that follows. Since Brexit, British nationals are third-country nationals in France, and the European Succession Regulation continues to govern which national law applies to the estate, with a choice of law clause in a will analysed in our companion guide on choosing English law for a French house and keeping children protected. Where French law governs the succession, the surviving spouse provisions of the Civil Code described here apply regardless of nationality, and they sit alongside the inheritance tax position examined in our guide to the 1963 Franco-British inheritance tax treaty. The paragraphs below take the story in order: first what the spouse inherits and how to remain in the home, then how usufruit can be converted into money, how it is valued and taxed, and how to challenge a blockage, with Paris and Ile-de-France practical points at the end.
I. My Husband Died With a House in France: What the Surviving Spouse Inherits and How to Stay in the Home
A. Full Usufruit or a Quarter in Ownership: the Legal Choice of the Surviving Spouse
The starting point is the legal option given to the surviving spouse where the deceased leaves children. Usufruit is the right to use property belonging to someone else and to receive its income, for example to live in the house or to let it and keep the rent; nue-propriete, bare ownership, is what the children hold underneath, becoming full ownership when the usufruit ends. Article 757 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 757) provides: “Si l’époux prédécédé laisse des enfants ou descendants, le conjoint survivant recueille, à son choix, l’usufruit de la totalité des biens existants ou la propriété du quart des biens lorsque tous les enfants sont issus des deux époux et la propriété du quart en présence d’un ou plusieurs enfants qui ne sont pas issus des deux époux.” Where the deceased leaves children, the surviving spouse takes, at his or her choice, the usufruit of all the existing property or ownership of a quarter where all the children are the couple’s joint children, and ownership of a quarter where one or more children are not the couple’s joint children. Read carefully, the choice between full usufruit and a quarter in ownership exists only where every child is the child of both spouses; in a blended family, where at least one child comes from another relationship, the statute gives the spouse the quarter in ownership, without the usufruit option. This is the single most misunderstood sentence in Franco-British successions, because an English reader expects the spouse to choose freely in every case. Check first which children exist, then read the option.
The statute also settles what happens when nobody chooses. Article 758-4 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 758-4) provides: “Le conjoint est réputé avoir opté pour l’usufruit s’il décède sans avoir pris parti.” A spouse who dies without having made the choice is deemed to have opted for usufruit. Estates therefore do not stay frozen: the file can be administered on the usufruit basis while the option is exercised, and the notaire, the public officer who settles French successions, will ask the spouse to record the choice in the succession papers. A spouse who wants the quarter in ownership should say so expressly and early, in writing to the notaire, because silence and delay consolidate the usufruit route.
A will or a gift between spouses can enlarge what the statute gives, within hard limits. Article 1094-1 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 1094-1) provides: “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.” Where the spouse leaves children, whether or not born of the marriage, he or she may give the other spouse either full ownership of the freely disposable share, or a quarter in ownership plus three quarters in usufruit, or the whole estate in usufruit only. The quotite disponible, the freely disposable share, is the fraction the deceased may give away freely, the rest being the children’s reserve hereditaire, the forced share the law keeps for them. A donation entre epoux, a gift between spouses often signed before a notaire during the marriage, typically offers these three formulae, and the surviving spouse then selects among them. Where such a gift exists, produce it to the notaire settling the estate before any option is recorded under Article 757, because the gift displaces the statutory choice.
Children are not left without shields against an excessive gift or an unrecorded usufruit. Article 1094-3 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 1094-3) provides: “Les enfants ou descendants pourront, nonobstant toute stipulation contraire du disposant, exiger, quant aux biens soumis à l’usufruit, qu’il soit dressé inventaire des meubles ainsi qu’état des immeubles, qu’il soit fait emploi des sommes et que les titres au porteur soient, au choix de l’usufruitier, convertis en titres nominatifs ou déposés chez un dépositaire agréé.” Children may, despite any contrary clause, require an inventory of the furniture, a schedule of condition of the properties, investment of cash sums, and conversion or deposit of bearer securities. In practice this means a British widow in the French house should expect, and should welcome, a formal inventory: furniture listed, the state of the house recorded, bank balances fixed at the death date. Refusing the inventory feeds suspicion and later claims for mismanagement, while a clean inventory protects the spouse against accusations when the usufruit ends. Where the deceased chose English law in a valid will, the interaction between that choice and the children’s reserve is worked through in the choice-of-law guide linked in the introduction; the inventory discipline described here applies in every case.
B. Staying in the Home: the Free First Year, Then the Lifelong Housing Right Claimed Within One Year
Whatever the spouse inherits, the law first secures occupation of the family home for twelve months, free of charge, and this protection cannot be removed by a will. Article 763 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 763) provides: “Si, à l’époque du décès, le conjoint successible occupe effectivement, à titre d’habitation principale, un logement appartenant aux époux ou dépendant totalement de la succession, il a de plein droit, pendant une année, la jouissance gratuite de ce logement, ainsi que du mobilier, compris dans la succession, qui le garnit.” Where the surviving spouse actually occupies, as a main home at the death date, accommodation belonging to the spouses or depending wholly on the estate, he or she has, as of right and for one year, free use of that accommodation and of the furniture in the estate that fills it. The same article adds two sentences practitioners cite in every dispute: “Les droits prévus au présent article sont réputés effets directs du mariage et non droits successoraux. Le présent article est d’ordre public.” These rights are deemed direct effects of the marriage and not succession rights, and the article is a matter of public policy. Three consequences follow. First, no will clause and no family agreement can strip the year away. Second, where the home was rented or partly owned by others, the article orders the estate to refund a year of rent or occupation indemnity as it falls due. Third, because the year is not a succession right, it does not depend on the Article 757 option and does not wait for the notaire to finish the file. A British spouse told to leave within weeks of the funeral should answer with Article 763 and stay.
After that year, a second and stronger right exists, but it must be claimed, and the claim has a one-year deadline that destroys careless files. Article 764 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 764) provides: “le conjoint successible qui occupait effectivement, à l’époque du décès, à titre d’habitation principale, un logement appartenant aux époux ou dépendant totalement de la succession, a sur ce logement, jusqu’à son décès, un droit d’habitation et un droit d’usage sur le mobilier, compris dans la succession, le garnissant” Unless the deceased expressed a contrary wish in the formal conditions of Article 971, the succession-entitled spouse who actually occupied, at the death date and as a main home, accommodation belonging to the spouses or depending wholly on the estate, holds over that accommodation, until his or her own death, a right of habitation, plus a right of use over the estate furniture in it. Droit d’habitation is a lifelong right to live in the dwelling; droit d’usage is the matching right to use its furniture. Note the entry conditions hidden in that sentence: actual occupation as the main home at the death date, and accommodation that belongs to the couple or depends wholly on the estate, so a holiday cottage visited two weeks a year, or a flat owned only in part with a third party, may fall outside the article. Note also the exit route for the deceased: a contrary wish expressed in the strict testamentary form of Article 971 removes the lifelong right, though the same article preserves the spouse’s usufruit rights under their own rules, and it never removes the free year of Article 763, which is public policy.
The same article organises practical details families often discover too late. An inventory of the furniture and a schedule of condition of the property can be required by the spouse, the heirs, or any one of them. Where the dwelling no longer suits the spouse’s needs, the spouse may let it for non-commercial and non-agricultural use to fund new accommodation, by exception to the usual limits on letting a habitation right. And Article 765 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 765) provides: “La valeur des droits d’habitation et d’usage s’impute sur la valeur des droits successoraux recueillis par le conjoint.” The value of the habitation and use rights counts against the value of the succession rights the spouse receives. Where those rights are worth less than the spouse’s succession share, the spouse takes the balance from the existing property; where they are worth more, the spouse does not refund the excess to the estate. The lifelong right is therefore not an extra layer stacked on top of usufruit or the quarter share; it is absorbed into the spouse’s total take, which matters when the notaire draws up the final partition, the partage, the deed dividing the estate.
The deadline is where British files most often fail, and two published decisions of the Court of Cassation, the supreme court for civil matters, frame the trap and the way out. Article 765-1 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 765-1) provides: “Le conjoint dispose d’un an à partir du décès pour manifester sa volonté de bénéficier de ces droits d’habitation et d’usage.” The spouse has one year from the death to declare the wish to benefit from these habitation and use rights. In its judgment of 2 March 2022, case 20-16.674, published in the Bulletin (Court of Cassation, First Civil Chamber, 2 March 2022, 20-16.674), the Court, ruling under Articles 764 and 765-1, held: “Selon ces textes, le conjoint survivant dispose d’un an à partir du décès pour manifester sa volonté de bénéficier de son droit viager au logement”. “Si cette manifestation de volonté peut être tacite, elle ne peut résulter du seul maintien dans les lieux”. The surviving spouse has one year from the death to declare the wish to benefit from the lifelong housing right; the declaration may be tacit, but it cannot consist only of staying on in the property. Simply remaining in the French house, paying the bills and receiving the post there, does not count as the claim. A spouse who does nothing visible for thirteen months can lose the lifelong right even while still living under its roof.
The companion decision shows what a sufficient tacit claim looks like. In its judgment of 13 February 2019, case 18-10.171, published in the Bulletin (Court of Cassation, First Civil Chamber, 13 February 2019, 18-10.171), the Court, ruling under the same two articles, held: “Attendu qu’il résulte de ces textes que le conjoint survivant dispose d’un an à partir du décès pour manifester sa volonté de bénéficier de son droit viager au logement ; que cette manifestation de volonté peut être tacite ;” The spouse has one year to declare the wish, and the declaration may be tacit. On the facts, the Court accepted as a tacit declaration within the year a spouse who had stayed in the property, stated in a writ served on the co-heir less than a year after the death the wish to keep the accommodation, and confirmed in a draft declaration of heirs drawn up before any opposition the wish to benefit from the lifelong right. The lesson for a British surviving spouse is concrete: within the first year, send the notaire a dated letter expressly claiming the Article 764 rights, keep proof of sending, repeat the claim in any writ or formal step against a co-heir, and have the claim recorded in the acte de notoriete, the notarial deed listing the heirs and their rights. Staying silent while staying put is the exact conduct the 2022 decision rejects.
II. Can the Children Force a Sale or Force Me Out: Conversion Into Money, Tax, and How to Challenge a Blockage
A. Turning Usufruit Into an Income or a Lump Sum: Conversion, Valuation and Tax
Children who hold bare ownership often want the file closed: they ask the surviving spouse to give up usufruit over the French house in exchange for money. French law allows this transformation, called conversion de l’usufruit, but surrounds it with consent rules and, for the family home, a veto for the spouse. Article 759 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 759) provides: “Tout usufruit appartenant au conjoint sur les biens du prédécédé, qu’il résulte de la loi, d’un testament ou d’une donation de biens à venir, donne ouverture à une faculté de conversion en rente viagère, à la demande de l’un des héritiers nus-propriétaires ou du conjoint successible lui-même.” Any usufruit of the spouse over the deceased’s property, whether from statute, will or gift, may be converted into a life annuity, at the request of any bare-owner heir or of the entitled spouse. A rente viagere is a periodic payment made for the rest of the recipient’s life. Either side can therefore propose the conversion: the children can offer the stepmother an annuity instead of the house, and the widow can herself ask for an annuity instead of managing a property she no longer wishes to keep. Where everyone agrees, Article 761 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 761) provides: “Par accord entre les héritiers et le conjoint, il peut être procédé à la conversion de l’usufruit du conjoint en un capital.” By agreement between the heirs and the spouse, the usufruit may be converted into a capital sum. Agreement gives full freedom on the figure; disagreement sends the file to the court.
Before the court, the home the spouse lives in enjoys special shelter. Article 760 of the Civil Code (official text of Article 760) provides: “A défaut d’accord entre les parties, la demande de conversion est soumise au juge. Elle peut être introduite jusqu’au partage définitif.” Failing agreement, the conversion claim goes to the court, and it may be brought until the final partition. The same article then sets the court’s task and the limit on its power: “S’il fait droit à la demande de conversion, le juge détermine le montant de la rente, les sûretés que devront fournir les cohéritiers débiteurs, ainsi que le type d’indexation propre à maintenir l’équivalence initiale de la rente à l’usufruit. Toutefois, le juge ne peut ordonner contre la volonté du conjoint la conversion de l’usufruit portant sur le logement qu’il occupe à titre de résidence principale, ainsi que sur le mobilier le garnissant.” Where the court grants conversion, it fixes the annuity amount, the security the debtor co-heirs must provide, and the indexation preserving the annuity’s initial equivalence with the usufruit; but it may never order, against the spouse’s will, conversion of usufruit over the dwelling occupied as the main residence, or over its furniture. Children can therefore force the conversion of usufruit over a letting flat, a portfolio or a second property, but they cannot force a widow out of the main home by converting her right into money. A British spouse pressured to surrender the house for an annuity should answer that Article 760 protects the main residence absolutely, and should never sign a conversion agreement under time pressure without the notaire costing both branches.
Valuation follows a statutory scale that both sides should apply before negotiating, because it also drives the tax computation. Article 669 of the General Tax Code (official text of Article 669) provides: “Pour la liquidation des droits d’enregistrement et de la taxe de publicité foncière, la valeur de la nue-propriété et de l’usufruit est déterminée par une quotité de la valeur de la propriété entière, conformément au barème ci-après”. For registration duties and land publicity tax, bare ownership and usufruit are valued as a fraction of full ownership under the scale that follows. The scale runs by the usufruitier’s age: under 21, usufruit counts as 90 per cent and bare ownership 10 per cent; under 31, 80 and 20; under 41, 70 and 30; under 51, 60 and 40; under 61, 50 and 50; under 71, 40 and 60; under 81, 30 and 70; under 91, 20 and 80; above 91, 10 and 90. Take a house worth 400,000 euros with a surviving spouse aged 68: usufruit is 40 per cent, or 160,000 euros, and the children’s bare ownership is 60 per cent, or 240,000 euros. The same article adds that usufruit granted for a fixed term is valued at 23 per cent of full ownership per ten-year period, without fractions and regardless of age. Parties remain free to agree a different figure for a buyout, and courts adjust with capitalisation factors, but any agreement far from the scale should be justified in writing, because the tax administration uses the scale as its benchmark and the notaire computes the duties from it.
On tax, the surviving spouse starts from a privileged position. The official service-public.fr page on inheritance tax exemptions, verified in its English version on 2 October 2026 (service-public.fr, cases of exemption from inheritance tax), lists among exempt recipients the surviving spouse, while children pay under the direct-line tariff. Article 777 of the General Tax Code (official text of Article 777) provides: “Les droits de mutation à titre gratuit sont fixés aux taux indiqués dans les tableaux ci-après, pour la part nette revenant à chaque ayant droit”. Transfer duties are set at the rates in the tables below, on the net share of each beneficiary. Each child is therefore taxed on the value of the bare ownership received, after personal allowances, at progressive direct-line rates, while the spouse’s share, whether usufruit, quarter ownership or lifelong housing right absorbed under Article 765, bears no inheritance tax at the French level. Two warnings qualify this comfort. First, exemption from tax is not exemption from declaration: the succession must still be declared and the deed of partition published at the land registry, with the taxe de publicite fonciere, the land publicity tax, on the transfer. Second, the cross-border picture, British domicile against French situs of the house, is governed by the 1963 treaty and by each State’s domestic rules, mapped in the treaty guide linked in the introduction; where the American-side comparison helps blended families think through usufruct choices, the mechanics of valuing and converting are common to every nationality holding French property.
B. Procedure, Blockages and Challenges: Notaire, Banks, Courts, and Paris Practical Points
In an orderly file, the notaire opens the succession within weeks: death certificates and family record book collected, acte de notoriete drawn up naming the heirs and recording the spouse’s option and Article 764 claim, inventory and property valuation ordered, bank balances frozen at the death date then partly released for urgent expenses, tax declaration prepared within six months of death, and partition proposed. British families should deliver three items fast: the death certificate with a sworn translation, the marriage certificate, and any English will with a translation, plus the gift between spouses if one was signed. Where the deceased also left accounts or property in England, the English grant of probate and the French file run in parallel, and the practical coordination, unblocking bank funds on each side of the Channel, is walked through in our guide to executors, probate and frozen French bank accounts. Delay at this stage usually comes from missing paper rather than hostile law, so diaries matter: instruct the translator in week one, answer the notaire’s questionnaire in full, and confirm in writing the Article 757 option and the Article 764 claim before the one-year housing deadline discussed in Part I.
Blockages take recognisable forms, and each has a procedural answer. Where a co-heir refuses the inventory or the schedule of condition, the spouse relies on Article 1094-3 quoted above and, failing agreement, asks the court to order the measure. Where children demand the sale of the main home, the spouse answers with the free year of Article 763 and the claimed lifelong right of Article 764, plus the Article 760 veto against forced conversion of the home usufruit. Where children offer an annuity or a lump sum for the usufruit, the spouse has the valuation scale of Article 669 and the court’s power under Article 760 to fix amount, security and indexation, and no signature should precede the notaire’s written costing of both branches. Where the notaire stalls or takes sides, the spouse may consult another notaire for a second file review, since heirs are free to change notaire before the partition is signed. Every step should be traceable: registered letters, dated emails, minutes of family meetings, because the spouse who later asks a court for conversion, for an inventory order, or for damages for obstruction wins on the paper trail.
The challenge ladder runs from formal demand to the supreme court. A written formal notice sets a final deadline and starts the clock for interest and costs. Failing settlement, the spouse or the heirs seise the tribunal judiciaire, the ordinary civil court, for conversion, inventory, partition, or recognition of the housing right; conversion claims remain admissible until the final partition. Its judgment can be appealed to the cour d’appel, and points of law go to the Court of Cassation, whose two housing-right decisions shape every negotiation. Time limits are short and sanctions heavy: the one-year housing claim examined above, six months to file the succession declaration with penalties and interest beyond, and limitation periods on claims between co-heirs that run from the partition. Limitation is never guessed from general reading; the applicable period is checked on the summons in hand.
For Paris and Ile-de-France households, three practical points sharpen the general scheme. First, jurisdiction and officers: successions with Paris property are commonly settled by a Paris notarial office with a land-registry publication at the Paris land publicity service, and disputes go to the Paris tribunal judiciaire, whose waiting times make early protective writs, such as the under-one-year housing claim in an assignation approved by the 2019 decision, more valuable, not less. Second, values: Paris prices magnify every percentage in the Article 669 scale and every square metre of the habitation right, so the costing gap between keeping the flat and accepting conversion is larger than in the provinces, and independent valuation evidence pays for itself. Third, occupation proof: where the couple split time between London and Paris, keep the evidence that the Paris flat was the actual main home at the death date, tax notices, utility bills, medical correspondence, transport passes, because Article 764 turns entirely on that fact and a second-home pattern defeats the lifelong right at the threshold. None of these points changes the statutes; each changes how the file is won.
Conclusion
A British surviving spouse with a French home holds a layered set of rights: a choice between full usufruit and a quarter in ownership where all the children are the couple’s joint children, a quarter in ownership where they are not, an untouchable free first year in the home, and a lifelong habitation and furniture-use right that must be expressly claimed within one year of the death, staying put alone being insufficient. Children can seek conversion of usufruit into an annuity or an agreed capital sum, valued against the statutory age scale, but they cannot force conversion of the main home against the spouse’s will, and the spouse pays no French inheritance tax on the share received while each child is taxed on the bare ownership. The decisive disciplines are paper and time: record the option, claim the housing right in writing within the year with proof of sending, accept the inventory, cost conversion against the scale before signing, and escalate blockages through formal notice to the civil court. Applied in that order, the texts examined here protect the surviving spouse’s roof without short-changing the children’s ultimate ownership, and that balance is exactly what the courts enforce.