When a British husband, wife or civil partner dies in France, the surviving spouse inherits two administrative lives at once. On the French side there may be a survivor’s pension to claim from the deceased’s retirement funds, with a means test, an age floor and sharing rules where there was a divorce. On the British side there may be bereavement money and an inherited State Pension to protect, but the claim rules change completely once you live outside the United Kingdom, and one widely assumed benefit cannot be newly claimed from France at all. Then comes the tax question, which the 2008 Franco-British double tax treaty answers pension by pension: most private pensions follow the country of residence, while pensions paid for government service usually stay taxable in the country that pays them. Get any of these three sequences wrong and money is lost permanently, because survivor benefits are rarely backdated without limit and treaty relief has to be claimed on the return, not assumed. This article explains, for a British reader living in France, what a pension de réversion (survivor’s pension) is and who can get one, what the United Kingdom still pays to a widow or widower living in France, how France taxes every pension the survivor receives, what happens where there was a divorce or a remarriage, and how to challenge a refusal or a wrong tax bill. Every French term is translated at first use, and every decisive statement is tied to the statute, decision or official guidance that says it.

I. What money the surviving spouse can still claim, on each side of the Channel

The first reflex after a death is often to telephone the pension providers. That call matters, but it should come second. What matters first is understanding that France and the United Kingdom run two entirely separate survivor systems, with different logics: France pays a share of the deceased’s own retirement pension to a spouse who meets age and resource conditions, while the United Kingdom pays short-term bereavement benefits and lets a survivor inherit part of a State Pension. A British widow or widower in France may qualify under both systems, under one, or under neither, and Brexit changed the coordination between them. The two halves below take each system in turn, with the exact conditions as published by the two administrations.

A. Can a British widow still claim a French survivor’s pension after Brexit?

Yes, in principle, because the French survivor’s pension does not depend on nationality. The statute opens the right in these terms: “En cas de décès de l’assuré, son conjoint survivant a droit à une pension de réversion à partir d’un âge et dans des conditions déterminés par décret si ses ressources personnelles ou celles du ménage n’excèdent pas des plafonds fixés par décret.” (article L. 353-1 du code de la sécurité sociale) In plain English: where an insured person dies, the surviving spouse is entitled to a survivor’s pension from a decreed age and under decreed conditions, provided personal or household resources stay below decreed ceilings. A British spouse married to someone who built up rights in a French basic scheme, typically the general scheme (régime général) run through the Carsat funds, claims on exactly the same footing as a French spouse. The deceased’s nationality is equally irrelevant; what counts is that the deceased was insured under the French scheme, whether as an employee, a self-employed worker covered by the aligned rules, or a pensioner already drawing the pension. Note the important extension the same article makes: where the deceased had gone back to work after retirement and earned a second pension under the post-retirement work rules, that second pension also opens a survivor’s pension under the same conditions. Years the deceased worked in Britain do not create French rights directly, but that is a coordination question dealt with below, not a nationality bar.

The conditions themselves are strict, and each has trapped applicants. First, the marriage condition. The official service-public guidance organises the whole entitlement around marriage, and the supplementary scheme states the corollary bluntly for its own benefit: neither cohabitation nor a civil partnership opens any right: (Agirc-Arrco, La pension de réversion). A British couple who lived together in France for twenty years without marrying, or who registered a British civil partnership or a French Pacs and never converted it into a marriage, has no réversion claim, however long the life together. Marriage, including a marriage celebrated in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland and recognised in France, is the gateway. Second, the age condition, with the floor set at fifty-five. (service-public.fr, Pension de réversion de l’Assurance retraite) A younger widow must wait, and the start date cannot be earlier than the first day of the month following the month of the fifty-fifth birthday, so pick the requested start date on the form accordingly. Third, the resource condition, which surprises British applicants most because nothing equivalent exists in the United Kingdom.

The regulation states: “La pension de réversion est attribuée lorsque le conjoint de l’assuré décédé ou disparu ne dispose pas de ressources dépassant un montant fixé par décret.” (article R. 353-1 du code de la sécurité sociale) In plain English: the pension is awarded where the spouse of the deceased or missing insured person has resources not exceeding a decreed amount. The published ceilings stand, at the figures currently shown on service-public, at 25,001.60 euros for a person living alone and 40,002.56 euros for a person living as a couple, with the pension cut back wherever pension plus resources would exceed the ceiling. These figures move, so re-check them in the year of claim, but the mechanism is permanent: above the ceiling the pension shrinks euro for euro, and well above it there is nothing to pay.

What counts as resources is where files are won and lost, and the regulation is more generous than applicants fear. The resources examined are those of the three calendar months before the pension takes effect, extended to twelve months where they exceed a quarter of the yearly ceiling. Excluded from the count are, first, the earnings and replacement income of the deceased, second, the survivor’s pensions paid by the compulsory supplementary schemes, which means an Agirc-Arrco réversion does not eat into the basic réversion, and third, income from property acquired through the deceased or because of the death, so the inherited house in the Dordogne does not count against you. The survivor’s own earnings get a thirty per cent reduction where the survivor is fifty-five or older. Concretely, a British widow in France drawing a small UK private pension, with the French house inherited from her husband and an Agirc-Arrco réversion already in payment, may still sit below the ceiling even though her bank statements look comfortable: the UK pension counts, the house does not, and the Agirc-Arrco money does not. Declare everything, because the fund cross-checks tax data, but apply the exclusions before concluding you earn too much.

The amount, once awarded, follows a fixed arithmetic. The guidance sets the survivor’s pension at 54 per cent of the basic retirement pension the deceased drew or could have drawn. That fifty-four per cent is the headline rate for the basic scheme, with a guaranteed minimum where the deceased had a full insurance record and an 11.1 per cent increase where the beneficiary meets the conditions of article L. 351-12 of the Social Security Code. Do not confuse the basic scheme with the compulsory supplementary scheme for employees, Agirc-Arrco, which runs its own survivor’s pension at its own rate of sixty per cent of the deceased’s supplementary pension rights, computed from the point total, and with no means test at all. The practical consequence is a two-track claim: one file for the basic scheme with the means test, one for Agirc-Arrco without it. The single application form for the basic schemes, referenced on service-public as the form whose attached leaflet lists the countable resources on pages 3 and 4, does not cover Agirc-Arrco, so a separate application to that fund is needed, and missing it is the commonest administrative loss in these files.

Two family situations change the picture and must be addressed honestly. Where the deceased was divorced, a former spouse is not shut out: A divorced former spouse counts as a surviving spouse for the basic survivor’s pension (article L. 353-3 du code de la sécurité sociale). Where the deceased remarried, the pension opened by the death “est partagée entre son conjoint survivant et le ou les précédents conjoints divorcés au prorata de la durée respective de chaque mariage”, meaning it is split between the surviving spouse and the divorced former spouses in proportion to the length of each marriage, with the split operated when the first of them claims and the share of any beneficiary who later dies accruing to the others. A British second wife widowed in France may therefore discover that a French first wife, divorced decades ago, takes a slice proportional to the earlier marriage, and vice versa. Remarriage by the survivor is the sharper trap on the supplementary side: On remarriage the Agirc-Arrco survivor’s pension is not awarded, and if it was already being paid it is permanently withdrawn. There is no suspension and no revival on a second widowhood. On the basic scheme a remarriage does not kill the right outright but the new household’s resources are tested against the couple ceiling, which often extinguishes payment in practice. Anyone contemplating remarriage after being widowed should have the funds recalculate both pensions before the wedding, not after.

B. What the United Kingdom still pays to a widow or widower living in France?

The British side starts with an unpleasant surprise that must be stated first, because it reverses the expectation of almost every newly bereaved reader. The United Kingdom’s main bereavement benefit, the Bereavement Support Payment, cannot be newly claimed from France. The official guidance on claiming benefits abroad draws a hard line: An existing bereavement benefit continues regardless of a move abroad, so a widow already receiving the payment in Britain keeps it on moving to France (gov.uk, Claiming benefits if you live, move or travel abroad: bereavement benefits). A brand-new claim from abroad, the same page explains, is possible only from certain listed countries. For countries outside the European Economic Area, the page then lists the qualifying states exhaustively: for Bereavement Support Payment, Barbados, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Channel Islands, Israel, Jamaica, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, New Zealand, the Philippines, Serbia, Turkey and the United States; for Widowed Parent’s Allowance, the same list plus Bermuda and Mauritius. France is not on either list, and France is outside the European Economic Area rules that cover EEA residents. The consequence is binary and should be understood before any other step: a British widow or widower already settled in France when the spouse dies cannot make a fresh claim for Bereavement Support Payment or Widowed Parent’s Allowance, while a widow receiving one of these benefits in Britain who later moves to France keeps it. Do not let a well-meaning friend in Britain tell you to claim the bereavement money as if residence made no difference; from France, that particular door is closed, and weeks spent pursuing it are weeks lost on the claims that are actually open.

What remains open on the British side is the deceased’s State Pension itself, in two forms. First, a surviving spouse may inherit State Pension built up by the late spouse, as extra State Pension or a lump sum depending on which scheme each of them was in and on the relevant dates. The detailed rules turn on whether the deceased had reached State Pension age, whether either spouse was in the old or the new scheme, and whether pension had been deferred, so no single sentence covers every couple; the authoritative starting point is the official inheriting rules and, for individual cases, the International Pension Centre, which is the Department for Work and Pensions unit that handles State Pension claims and queries from abroad. Telephone the Centre as soon as the death is registered, because it both records the death for pension purposes and advises what the survivor can inherit. British deaths are normally notified through the Tell Us Once service or the local registrar, but a death in France must be actively reported with the French death certificate (acte de décès), and any continuing payments made to the deceased after death are recoverable, so speed protects the survivor from an overpayment debt on top of grief.

Second, the survivor’s own British State Pension, and any inherited element added to it, keeps its yearly increases while the survivor lives in France. The official position is that the yearly increase goes only to pensioners living in the European Economic Area, Gibraltar, Switzerland or the listed social-security-agreement countries, and to no one living anywhere else. (gov.uk, State Pension if you retire abroad: how your pension is affected) France appears by name in the published list of countries where the annual increase is paid, so a British widow in the Dordogne, the Var or Paris sees her State Pension uprated each April exactly like a pensioner in Leeds, unlike a widow in Australia or Canada, whose pension is frozen at the rate first paid abroad. This matters enormously over a twenty-year widowhood: the uprated pension compounds while a frozen one withers against inflation. It also matters for the French means test described above, because the uprated sterling amount, converted to euros, is the countable resource figure each year. Keep the Department for Work and Pensions informed of the French address and bank details, report any change of circumstances, and keep every award letter, since the French funds and the French tax office will both ask for the exact yearly amounts.

One coordination point deserves a clear statement because Brexit muddied it. Before the end of the transition period, European coordination rules totalised insurance periods across Member States, so years worked in Britain could help open a French pension. Since 1 January 2021, that European machinery no longer operates for new situations between the United Kingdom and France as Member State and third country, except for persons protected by the Withdrawal Agreement. What survives is the older bilateral social security convention between the two countries and the domestic rules of each scheme. In practice this means a British widow in France should claim in both countries separately, declare the foreign benefit honestly in each file, and never assume that one country’s decision automatically updates the other. Where the deceased worked in both countries, ask each fund in writing how the foreign periods are treated rather than assuming totalisation; the written answer becomes part of the file if a refusal has to be challenged. The Franco-British double tax treaty, examined in Part II, then decides which country taxes each pension, which is a different question from which country pays it, and the two answers frequently point in opposite directions.

II. How France taxes the survivor, and how to fight a wrong bill

Once the pensions are in payment, France taxes its residents on their worldwide income, and a British widow living in France is a French tax resident on the same terms as anyone else who makes France the centre of their life. Every pension described in Part I therefore has to be declared in France, including the British State Pension, British private pensions and any inherited element, alongside the French réversion pensions. The treaty then allocates the right to tax each pension to one country or divides it between them, and the French return applies the domestic computation. Readers who have never filed a French return should read this section together with the walkthrough of the first French tax return, the 2042, the 2047 for foreign income and the 3916 for foreign accounts, at British Newcomer, First French Tax Return After Brexit, because the mechanics of declaring a United Kingdom pension in euros sit there. This section answers the harder question that comes next: which country is legally entitled to tax each pension the widow receives, how France computes the charge, and what to do when the bill or the benefit decision is wrong.

A. Which country taxes which pension: the treaty rule and the French computation

The governing instrument is the United Kingdom-France double taxation convention signed in 2008 and in force, and its pensions article states the default rule in one sentence: pensions for past work paid to a person living in one of the two countries are taxable only in the country of residence. (2008 UK-France Double Taxation Convention, Article 18) In plain English: pensions for past work paid to a person living in one of the two countries are taxable only in the country where that person lives. For a British widow resident in France, that means the British State Pension, a British company pension, a personal pension and any inherited addition to them are taxable only in France, not in the United Kingdom. They must still be declared in France, and any British tax deducted at source in disregard of the treaty should be reclaimed from HM Revenue and Customs with the treaty residence position, not simply suffered. The mirror applies to the French réversion pensions: paid to a French resident, they are taxable in France as a matter of course.

The exception, and it is a large one for certain families, is government service. The treaty provides that a pension paid by a state, a local authority or, for France, a statutory body for work done for that body stays taxable in the paying state. (2008 UK-France Double Taxation Convention, Article 19) In plain English: a pension paid by a state for work done for that state stays taxable in the paying state. A classic Crown pension, such as a British civil service, armed forces or police pension earned by the late husband, therefore remains taxable in the United Kingdom even though the widow lives in France. France must then give relief, under the treaty’s elimination article, by credit or exemption as the article provides for that category, so the same pounds are not taxed twice. But there is a twist that helps some widows: Where the recipient lives in the other country and holds only that country’s nationality, the government-service pension flips to residence-only taxation. Where the recipient is a French national living in France and not also a British national, the government-service pension flips to France-only taxation. A French widow of a British civil servant, living in France on a French passport alone, is therefore taxed in France on the whole pension, while a British widow in the same position stays within United Kingdom taxation with French relief. Nationality, which was irrelevant to claiming the réversion, becomes decisive for taxing a Crown pension, so check passports before filing. Readers dealing with service pensions should also consult the detailed treatment of forces and injury awards under Article 19 at British Veteran in France: Service Pensions and Article 19, and readers facing lump-sum questions on private pensions should see British Pension in France: the 25% Tax-Free Lump Sum France Still Taxes.

On the French computation side, the starting point is that everything counts. The Tax Code states: “Les traitements, indemnités, émoluments, salaires, pensions et rentes viagères concourent à la formation du revenu global servant de base à l’impôt sur le revenu.” (article 79 du code général des impôts) In plain English: salaries, pensions and life annuities all go into the total income on which income tax is based, and retirement benefits paid as capital count too. The widow therefore aggregates the French réversion pensions, the British State Pension including any inherited element, and every British private pension, all converted into euros at the appropriate rate, into one worldwide total. Against that total the Code grants pensioners its standard relief: “Les pensions et retraites font l’objet d’un abattement de 10 % qui ne peut excéder 4 439 €.” (article 158, 5, a du code général des impôts) In plain English: pensions are reduced by ten per cent, capped at 4,439 euros for the household, and the same paragraph adds that “L’abattement indiqué au deuxième alinéa ne peut être inférieur à 454 €”, meaning the relief cannot fall below 454 euros per pensioner. Widows should note two consequences. First, the ten per cent applies to the aggregate of pensions per tax household, so a widow taxed alone gets one computation, while a widow in a new couple files under the couple rules. Second, income tax is only half the French bill: pensions of a person resident in France and covered by a French health scheme can also bear the social charges, the CSG, the CRDS and, above a threshold, the CASA solidarity contribution, at rates that depend on the household’s reference tax income. The scale moves regularly and the exemptions turn on fine conditions of residence and cover, so verify the current table on impots.gouv.fr and the BOFiP before treating a net pension figure as final. A British widow newly affiliated to the French health system through PUMA after the death, or covered as before through an S1, should confirm with her caisse which charges apply to her pensions rather than assuming the first payslip figure is the lasting one.

B. Divorced, remarried or refused: splitting the pension, counting pensions at divorce, and challenging the decision

Death rarely ends the family’s legal complications; it rearranges them. The three rearrangements that cause most dispute for British families in France are the divorced former spouse who claims a share, the divorce settlement in which pensions were or should have been counted, and the outright refusal that must be challenged within its deadline. Each has its own procedure, and confusing them loses rights.

Start with the former spouse. As shown above, the divorced spouse counts as a surviving spouse for the basic réversion, and where the deceased remarried, the pension is split between the surviving spouse and the divorced predecessors in proportion to the length of each marriage, with the split operated when the first of them claims and later accrual of a deceased beneficiary’s share to the survivors. In a franco-British family this produces files the funds see every week: an English first wife divorced in London in the 1990s, a French second wife widowed in France today, and one réversion to divide between them by years of marriage. The former spouse does not need to live in France to claim, and the fund, not the widow, operates the division, but the widow must still declare the earlier marriage on the form, because concealment discovered later produces recovery of overpayments. Conversely, a British divorced woman whose French ex-husband dies should claim her proportional share even from across the Channel rather than assuming the current wife takes all. Where the marriage history includes a divorce pronounced abroad, attach the foreign decree with its translation and, if the fund queries it, proof that it is recognised in France, since the prorata cannot be computed until each marriage’s duration is established. The interface between an English divorce, its financial orders and French property and pension consequences is examined in depth at British Divorce in France: Court, Law, House, Pension and Enforcement, which should be read alongside this section by any reader whose family history includes both a divorce and a death.

Pensions also count at the divorce itself, and two recent decisions of the Court of Cassation say so with unusual firmness. The Civil Code opens divorce with the principle that “Le divorce met fin au devoir de secours entre époux. L’un des époux peut être tenu de verser à l’autre une prestation destinée à compenser, autant qu’il est possible, la disparité que la rupture du mariage crée dans les conditions de vie respectives.” (article 270 du code civil) In plain English: divorce ends the duty of support, and one spouse may have to pay the other a lump-sum payment offsetting, as far as possible, the living-standard gap the breakup creates. The Civil Code frames the compensatory payment (prestation compensatoire, the capital or annuity that offsets the living-standard gap divorce creates) in these terms: “La prestation compensatoire est fixée selon les besoins de l’époux à qui elle est versée et les ressources de l’autre en tenant compte de la situation au moment du divorce et de l’évolution de celle-ci dans un avenir prévisible.” (article 271 du code civil) In plain English: the payment is set by needs and resources taking account of the situation at the divorce and its foreseeable development. On 5 March 2025 the First Civil Chamber applied that text to pensions directly: it quashed a Chambéry appeal ruling that had refused a wife any compensatory payment, holding in substance that the disparity divorce creates must be assessed by considering each spouse’s foreseeable pension position, including where one spouse’s career choices favoured the other’s, and it “CASSE ET ANNULE, mais seulement en ce qu’il rejette la demande de prestation compensatoire formée par Mme [T]”, remitting the case to the Grenoble Court of Appeal (pourvoi no. 22-24.122, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:C100147; consultable on Légifrance). Less than two months later, on 30 April 2025, the same chamber did the same to a Montpellier ruling that had dismissed a wife’s claim, quashing it in the same terms and remitting to Nîmes (pourvoi no. 23-14.618, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:C100267; consultable on Légifrance). For a British spouse divorcing in France after years in which one career, often the wife’s, yielded to expatriation and children, the message is practical: put both spouses’ French and British pension statements on the table, quantify the foreseeable gap at retirement age, and do not accept a settlement that treats pensions as a subject for later. The English pension-sharing order has no direct French equivalent, so the compensation happens through the capital or annuity figure, and the two 2025 rulings give the lower courts no room to ignore the pension gap.

Finally, refusals. A Carsat refusal of réversion, a reduction to zero under the means test, or a dispute over the prorata accident must be challenged in the social-security track: the decision letter states the remedy and its time limit, normally the friendly-appeal commission (commission de recours amiable) first and then the social division of the judicial court, and the letter’s deadline governs, so calendar it on receipt rather than after seeking advice. Build the challenge the way the fund computes: three months of resources with the exclusions proved document by document, the marriage and divorce certificates with durations, the Agirc-Arrco decision alongside the basic decision, and the British pension award letters converted consistently. On the British side, a refused inherited-State-Pension decision goes back to the International Pension Centre with a request for mandatory reconsideration on the precise ground stated, and an SSI or residence dispute goes through the Department’s own appeal chain, where the Withdrawal Agreement protection, if held, should be evidenced by the residence document from the start. On the tax side, a French assessment that taxes a treaty-exempt pension or denies the credit is met first with a written complaint (réclamation) filed from the personal space on impots.gouv.fr identifying the treaty article and attaching the British residence and deduction evidence, then with the administrative court if the reply maintains the charge. In all three tracks the discipline is the same: the exact legal ground in the first paragraph, the official text attached, the figures reconciled to the euro, and no new argument saved for later that could have been made at once.

Conclusion

A British widow or widower in France stands at the junction of two systems that neither coordinate spontaneously nor forgive inattention. France offers a survivor’s pension worth fifty-four per cent of the basic pension within a means test, plus sixty per cent of the supplementary pension with no means test, provided the couple were married, the survivor is fifty-five, and the claim reaches both funds with the right form and the right start date. The United Kingdom offers no fresh bereavement benefit to a resident of France, but it preserves benefits already in payment, lets the survivor inherit State Pension value, and keeps uprating the pension in France year after year. The treaty then assigns each pension to its taxing country, residence for private pensions and the paying state for Crown pensions, with a nationality exception that can flip the answer, and France computes the charge on the worldwide total with its ten per cent pension relief. Divorce reshuffles the cards through the proportional split and the pension-sensitive compensatory payment, remarriage can extinguish the supplementary pension permanently, and every refusal carries its own appeal path with its own clock. Check the current ceilings, rates and forms before acting, because all of them move: the code articles, the treaty and the official guidance pages linked above state the position as verified for this article. The bereaved reader who claims in both countries, declares in France, applies the treaty article by article and challenges refusals on their stated grounds keeps everything the law provides. The one who assumes, delays or files in one country only funds the gap personally.