Your father lived in Kent, spent twenty summers in his stone house near Sarlat, and died last winter leaving an English will that names you as executor. The house in the Dordogne is still in his name, the French bank account is frozen, and the notaire in Périgueux is asking for papers you have never heard of: an acte de notoriété, an attestation immobilière, a sworn translation of the grant of probate with an apostille. Meanwhile your sister, who lives in Lyon, wonders whether the English will can really leave her share of the French house to your father’s second wife. This guide answers both questions in order: first, how to get the English paperwork recognised in France so the estate can move, and second, who inherits what and which death taxes apply when a British person dies owning French property after Brexit. It explains every French legal term the first time it is used, gives the exact statutory texts and court decisions you can rely on, and shows what to do when a bank, a notaire or a co-heir blocks the file.

A preliminary point shapes everything that follows. Since 1 January 2021 the United Kingdom is a third State vis-à-vis the European Union. The European Succession Regulation of 4 July 2012 still matters enormously, because it applies universally: it designates the applicable succession law even when that law is the law of a non-member State, and it allowed your parent to choose English law in the will. But the practical instruments of the Regulation, above all the European Certificate of Succession, are no longer available for English grants of probate, and English executors must go through the classic French route: the notaire, the registration of the foreign will, and proof of heirship document by document. Readers who are still at the will-drafting stage should start with our guide on choosing English law for a French house and protecting children under the forced-heirship rules; this article takes over where that one stops, on the day the death occurs.

I. Getting the English paperwork recognised in France: probate, will registration and the notaire

A. Do you need an English grant of probate to deal with a French house, and what the notaire actually asks for

In England and Wales, the grant of representation, usually called the grant of probate when there is a will, is the court order that authorises the executor to collect the assets, pay the debts and distribute the estate. The application is made to the Probate Registry, as explained on the official gov.uk probate pages, and banks and the Land Registry will generally not release substantial assets without it. The first surprise for British families is that this grant has no automatic effect in France. There is no exequatur procedure for foreign grants of probate, and the French notaire, the public officer who alone can transfer French land on death, forms his own view of who the heirs are on the basis of the documents you bring him. An English grant is therefore useful evidence, and in practice every notaire dealing with a British estate will ask for it, but it is the starting point of the French file, not the end of it.

The notaire, a French public officer appointed by the Minister of Justice who holds a monopoly on conveyancing and on settling successions involving land, will typically ask for the following: the death certificate with a sworn translation; the English will with a sworn translation; the grant of probate bearing an apostille under the Hague Convention, which authenticates the English court seal for use abroad; the birth and marriage certificates of the heirs; the title deeds of the French house; and details of French bank accounts. The sworn translation must be done by a traducteur assermenté, a translator sworn before a French court of appeal, because an ordinary translation has no evidential value before a French officer. Families who arrive with a full apostilled and translated bundle regularly save three to six months; families who arrive with only the English papers lose that time while the notaire waits.

On the basis of these documents the notaire draws up two key instruments. The first is the acte de notoriété, the deed by which the notaire records who the heirs are and in what shares, after verifying the devolution under the applicable law. The official notaires de France portal describes this as the first of the four steps of settling an inheritance, followed by the full inventory and valuation of the estate, the filing of the tax return and the partition between heirs, as set out on the notaires.fr probate page. The second instrument, specific to land, is the attestation immobilière, the deed published at the land registry, the service de la publicité foncière, which transfers legal title of the French house from the deceased to the heirs. Until that publication, the heirs cannot sell or mortgage the house, however clear the English will may be. Where there is no land and the estate is small, the heirs can sometimes prove their status with a simple attestation signed by all of them, described on service-public.fr, but with a French house in the estate the notaire is in practice unavoidable, and the general roadmap is summarised on service-public.fr.

Two timing rules frame this phase. First, no heir can be forced to decide before four months have passed since the death: “L’héritier ne peut être contraint à opter avant l’expiration d’un délai de quatre mois à compter de l’ouverture de la succession”, in the words of article 771 of the Civil Code. Each heir then has three options: accept outright, accept up to the net assets, the acceptation à concurrence de l’actif net, which caps liability for the deceased’s debts, or renounce. Second, renunciation is never presumed: “La renonciation à une succession ne se présume pas”, states article 804 of the Civil Code, and to be effective against third parties it must be sent to or filed with the court of the place where the succession opened, or made before a notaire who forwards it to that court within a month. An heir who simply does nothing for years remains an heir, with all that implies for taxes and creditors, which is why the notaire presses every heir to opt expressly. Where the succession opened in Paris, for example because the deceased was domiciled there or owned property handled by a Paris practice, the renunciation goes to the tribunal judiciaire de Paris, and Paris and Île-de-France notaires routinely coordinate these filings with the greffe.

B. Registering the English will in France and unblocking a stalled file

The single most overlooked formality is the registration of the foreign will. French law is blunt: “Les testaments faits en pays étranger ne pourront être exécutés sur les biens situés en France qu’après avoir été enregistrés au bureau du domicile du testateur, s’il en a conservé un, sinon au bureau de son dernier domicile connu en France ; et, dans le cas où le testament contiendrait des dispositions d’immeubles qui y seraient situés, il devra être, en outre, enregistré au bureau de la situation de ces immeubles, sans qu’il puisse être exigé un double droit.” That is article 1000 of the Civil Code, mirrored for tax purposes by article 655 of the General Tax Code. In practice the notaire handles the registration and the fixed duty is collected by the tax administration. An English will that has not been registered cannot be acted upon against French assets, and banks are entitled to insist on it before releasing funds.

The Cour de cassation confirmed how seriously France takes this requirement in a decision of 13 April 2022, Civ. 1, no. 20-23.530. A widower holding a European Certificate of Succession issued in Germany asked BNP Paribas to release the funds of the estate; the bank refused until the German will was registered with the French tax administration. The Court upheld the bank: “le certificat successoral européen avait une efficacité probatoire mais ne constituait pas un titre exécutoire, de sorte que, s’il attestait de la qualité et des droits d’héritier, il n’épuisait pas nécessairement les formalités à mettre en oeuvre pour obtenir l’exécution de ces droits.” It added that “les dispositions des articles 1000 du code civil et 655 du code général des impôts prévoyant l’enregistrement des testaments faits en pays étrangers, constituaient une formalité fiscale dès lors que celle-ci relevait de l’administration fiscale et donnait lieu au paiement d’un droit fixe de 125 euros.” If even a European Certificate, which has direct effect across the Union, does not dispense with registration, an English will from a third State certainly does not. The lesson for British executors is practical: instruct the notaire to register the will at the outset, keep the receipt, and send a copy to every bank holding French funds, because each institution will ask for it separately.

Delay has a second legal dimension when the English will names someone outside the family, typically a second spouse or a charity, as universal legatee. Under French law the reserved heirs, the héritiers réservataires, are seised of the estate by operation of law on death, and the universal legatee must ask them for delivery of the bequest: “Lorsqu’au décès du testateur il y a des héritiers auxquels une quotité de ses biens est réservée par la loi, ces héritiers sont saisis de plein droit, par sa mort, de tous les biens de la succession ; et le légataire universel est tenu de leur demander la délivrance des biens compris dans le testament.” That is article 1004 of the Civil Code. The Cour de cassation added a sharp limitation on 30 September 2020, Civ. 1, no. 19-11.543: “à défaut de délivrance volontaire, le légataire universel est tenu de demander en justice la délivrance des biens compris dans le testament aux héritiers réservataires”, and, crucially, “L’action en nullité du testament engagée par un héritier réservataire, qui n’empêche pas le légataire universel d’exercer l’action en délivrance de son legs au sens du second de ces textes, n’en suspend pas la prescription.” In plain terms, the clock for claiming delivery runs from the death, and a family dispute about the validity of the will does not stop it. A legatee who waits for the family quarrel to settle before asking for delivery can find the claim time-barred, while the reserved heirs who refuse delivery without going to court expose themselves to an action for forced delivery with interest. Executors should therefore calendar the delivery request from day one, even while negotiations continue.

When the file genuinely stalls, the remedies depend on who is blocking. If the notaire will not advance the file, a formal letter setting a timetable is the first step; persistent inertia can be referred to the mediator of the notariat, the Médiateur du notariat, and ultimately to the chamber of notaries or the courts. If a French bank freezes funds despite a complete file, a complaint to the bank’s mediator followed by an action before the tribunal judiciaire for release of funds, with a claim for interest for late payment, usually concentrates minds, and the 2022 decision above shows judges examine carefully whether the bank’s demands were lawful. If a co-heir refuses to sign the deeds or to opt, any interested party can, after the four-month period of article 771, serve a formal summons to opt, a sommation de prendre parti, by bailiff’s writ, and then ask the court to authorise the sale of the house at auction, the licitation, or to appoint a provisional administrator. Readers facing exactly that sibling stand-off will find the full mechanics in our guide on forcing the sale or keeping the home when British co-heirs disagree over a French house.

II. Who inherits and what tax is due: English freedom, French forced heirship and the death-tax treaty

A. How English testamentary freedom meets the French réserve héréditaire

English law gives an adult almost complete freedom to leave property to whomsoever they wish; disappointed children must apply to the court under the Inheritance Act 1975 and show the will fails to make reasonable provision for them. French law starts from the opposite premise. In the absence of a surviving spouse entitled to inherit, the statute calls relatives in strict orders: “En l’absence de conjoint successible, les parents sont appelés à succéder ainsi qu’il suit : 1° Les enfants et leurs descendants ; 2° Les père et mère ; les frères et soeurs et les descendants de ces derniers ; 3° Les ascendants autres que les père et mère ; 4° Les collatéraux autres que les frères et soeurs et les descendants de ces derniers”, and “Chacune de ces quatre catégories constitue un ordre d’héritiers qui exclut les suivants”, per article 734 of the Civil Code. More importantly, children are reserved heirs: gifts and legacies “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”, in the words of article 913 of the Civil Code. With one child, half the estate is untouchable; with two, two thirds; with three or more, three quarters. A surviving spouse is not a reserved heir when there are children, but takes either the whole estate in usufruct or a quarter in full ownership where all the children are common to the couple: “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”, per article 757 of the Civil Code. Usufruct, the usufruit, is the lifelong right to use the house and take its income; the children hold the bare ownership, the nue-propriété, and recover full ownership when the usufruct ends.

Which system governs a British death with French property depends on the European Succession Regulation, whose default rule in article 21 points to the law of the country of habitual residence at death, while article 22 allows any person to choose the law of their nationality instead, the professio juris. Because the Regulation applies universally, a British national habitually resident in France can validly choose English law, and French courts must apply it, subject to French overriding mandatory rules and public policy. That choice is examined in detail in our guide to choosing English law for a French house. But since the Act of 24 August 2021, article 913 contains a sting in its final paragraph for families who rely on English freedom to disinherit: where the deceased or at least one of the children is, at the death, a national of a European Union member State or habitually resident there, and the applicable foreign law provides no reserved-share mechanism protecting children, then “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.”, in the final paragraph of article 913 of the Civil Code. In practice, a British father who leaves his Dordogne house entirely to his second wife under English law may find his daughter from a first marriage, if she is French-resident or an Irish as well as British national, taking a compensatory levy directly on the French house to restore her French reserved share. The levy only bites on assets situated in France at the death, it is capped at the French reserved rights, and it requires the foreign law to offer no equivalent protective mechanism, which English law, with its discretionary family provision, arguably does not. Any British will that disinherits or short-changes a child with a French or EU connection must therefore be reviewed against this paragraph before the testator dies, because after death it is the disinherited child who holds the initiative.

A final warning for blended families concerns concealment. Where a sibling hides a bank account, diverts rental income from the French house, or conceals the existence of another heir, French law treats that as recel successoral, succession concealment. The current text provides that “l’héritier qui a recelé des biens ou des droits d’une succession ou dissimulé l’existence d’un cohéritier est réputé accepter purement et simplement la succession, nonobstant toute renonciation ou acceptation à concurrence de l’actif net, sans pouvoir prétendre à aucune part dans les biens ou les droits détournés ou recelés”, per article 778 of the Civil Code: the concealing heir is deemed to accept outright, loses all share in the concealed assets, and remains liable for damages. But the Cour de cassation polices the procedure strictly. On 2 September 2020, Civ. 1, no. 19-15.955, it quashed an appeal ruling that had punished concealment outside any partition proceedings, holding that “Les demandes en rapport d’une donation déguisée dont aurait bénéficié un héritier et en application de la sanction du recel successoral ne peuvent être formées qu’à l’occasion d’une instance en partage successoral.” A British heir who discovers that a brother collected the French rents for two years should therefore frame the claim for return of the disguised gift and for the concealment penalty inside an action for judicial partition, the partage judiciaire, before the tribunal judiciaire, rather than as a free-standing damages claim that the courts will declare inadmissible.

B. French succession tax on the house, the 1963 treaty with Britain and challenging the bill

French inheritance tax, the droits de mutation à titre gratuit, catches the French house even when both the deceased and the heirs live in England. The territorial rule in article 750 ter of the General Tax Code provides that where the deceased was not fiscally domiciled in France, the tax still applies to “Les biens meubles et immeubles, que ces derniers soient possédés directement ou indirectement, situés en France”. A Dordogne house owned directly, or indirectly through a British company or a French property company, the société civile immobilière, therefore falls within the French charge on the UK-resident parent’s death. Only the Franco-British succession convention of 21 June 1963, approved by the Act of 17 June 1964, softens the outcome: each State taxes the immovable property situated on its territory, and the State of the heir’s or the deceased’s domicile grants relief against double taxation under the treaty’s allocation rules, with the full text published by the French tax administration on impots.gouv.fr. In practice the French notaire files the French return and pays the French tax on the house, while the English personal representatives account for UK inheritance tax on the worldwide estate and claim treaty relief for the French tax attributable to the French property, so the two files must be coordinated rather than run in silos.

The French calculation runs in three steps. First, the taxable share of each heir is valued at the open-market value on the day of death, debts of the deceased being deductible with supporting evidence. Second, each heir deducts a personal allowance, the abattement: “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”, per article 779 of the General Tax Code. A surviving spouse or civil partner is fully exempt in direct line succession. Siblings, nephews and unrelated beneficiaries face far smaller allowances and steeper rates, which is why the identity of each beneficiary changes the bill dramatically. Third, the progressive scale in article 777 of the General Tax Code applies, running in direct line from 5 per cent on the first slice to 45 per cent above 1,805,677 euros. A worked example makes this concrete: two children inheriting a Dordogne house worth 600,000 euros take 300,000 euros each, deduct 100,000 euros each, and pay the scale on 200,000 euros, roughly 38,000 euros each before any treaty credit on the English side. The same house passing to a nephew, whose allowance is under 8,000 euros with rates starting at 35 per cent, would cost several times more, which is why English wills leaving French houses to non-relatives need a tax review while the testator is alive.

Deadlines are strict and commonly missed by families grieving in another country. The return must be filed within six months of the death where the deceased died in metropolitan France, and within twelve months in all other cases: “Les délais pour l’enregistrement des déclarations que les héritiers, donataires ou légataires ont à souscrire des biens à eux échus ou transmis par décès sont : 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”, per article 641 of the General Tax Code. For a parent who died in Kent, the heirs therefore have twelve months, but interest for late payment and penalties run automatically after that, and the notaire cannot publish the attestation immobilière until the tax position is secured or guaranteed. Executors should press the French notaire for a draft valuation and return within the first six months even when the English probate is still pending, because the two timetables run independently.

When the assessment looks wrong, French law offers a graduated ladder of challenge. The first step is always back to the notaire’s draft return: valuation errors on rural French houses are frequent, the décote for occupied property subject to a surviving spouse’s usufruct is often omitted, and deductible liabilities such as the deceased’s final medical bills or outstanding French property taxes are left out. The second step is a written claim to the tax office, the réclamation contentieuse, which suspends enforced collection if filed with the proper guarantees. The third step is the administrative court, the tribunal administratif, which hears disputes on the charge, the valuation and treaty relief. Common winning points in British files include the usufruct discount on the spouse’s share, the correct application of the 1963 treaty’s situs rule where the house was held through a company, and the deductibility of English funeral and administration expenses attributable to the French assets. Each of these points turns on documents, so heirs should keep every valuation, receipt and exchange of correspondence from the first week.

Conclusion

A British death with a French house produces two files that must advance together: in England, probate and the worldwide estate; in France, the notaire’s settlement, the will registration, the heirship deeds and the succession tax return. The English grant opens doors but transfers nothing in France by itself; the foreign will must be registered before it can operate on French assets, and even a European Certificate is only evidence rather than an enforceable title, as the Cour de cassation confirmed in 2022. Delivery of any legacy to an outsider must be requested promptly because the limitation period runs from the death regardless of family disputes. On substance, English testamentary freedom applies only within the limits the family accepts: children connected with France or the Union can levy a compensatory charge on the French property to restore their reserved share, and concealment between siblings is punished but only inside partition proceedings. On tax, the French house is always within the French charge, the 1963 treaty allocates rather than exempts, allowances and rates depend entirely on kinship, and the twelve-month filing deadline for a death in England arrives faster than grieving families expect. An executor who apostilles and translates early, registers the will immediately, calendars delivery and the tax return, and frames every sibling claim inside a partition action will usually bring the estate home within a year; one who waits for the English probate to finish before starting the French file will spend that year explaining the delay.