You bought a house in France years ago, or you moved here permanently after Brexit, and your will was written by a solicitor in England long before that. It leaves everything to your spouse, or divides the estate unequally between your children, exactly as English law allows. Then somebody tells you, perhaps a French notary (the public officer who handles successions, the French term for estates, in France), perhaps a worried child, that this English will may not work for your French house. French law, you are told, reserves a fixed share of your estate for your children, and your spouse could end up with far less than you intended. Is your English will worthless in France? Must you start again from scratch before a French notary? And what happens if a child challenges the will after your death, or if the notary simply refuses to apply it?
Brexit did not change the answer to the first question: an English will can still be fully effective for a French house, provided it is valid as to its form and, crucially, provided it contains an express choice of English law to govern your whole succession. What Brexit changed is the context around that answer. You are now a third-country national in France, your residence position is examined more closely, and every cross-border step, from probate to the tax return, is handled through the standard third-country channels. The good news is that the European succession framework still protects your planning, because the European Union Succession Regulation applies on the basis of residence and nationality, not on the basis of European Union citizenship, and it expressly allows a choice of the law of a non-member state. The French courts have confirmed this approach in cases directly involving British widows and Franco-British families. This article explains, in plain English, whether your English will is valid in France, how to choose English law so that it governs your French house, what the French forced heirship rules can still do to your plan, what tax will be charged, and how to react when a notary refuses your will or a child challenges it.
I. Will your English will work for your French house after Brexit?
A. Is my English will valid in France and which law applies if I choose nothing?
The first distinction to grasp is between the form of your will and the law that governs your succession. Form means the external validity of the document: was it signed, witnessed, dated and executed correctly? Substance means everything else: who inherits, in what shares, what your spouse receives, whether your children can claim a fixed share. An English will that is properly executed under English law is recognised as to its form in France under the 1961 Hague Convention on testamentary form, to which France remains a party: a will that is valid where it was made is valid as to form where the property lies. In practice, a will drawn up by an English solicitor, signed by you and witnessed by two independent witnesses present at the same time, passes the French form test without difficulty. Keep the original somewhere safe, tell your family and your French notary where it is, and have a certified French translation prepared now rather than in a hurry after a death. Translation problems cause more delays in Franco-British successions than any legal argument.
If your will says nothing about which law governs your estate, the default rule of the European Union Succession Regulation applies: your whole succession is governed by the law of the country where you were habitually resident at the time of your death. Habitual residence is a question of fact, not of nationality or passport. The French Court of Cassation, in a judgment of 21 September 2022 concerning a French father whose widow lived in the United Kingdom, examined precisely how that residence is assessed and confirmed that the French courts apply the Regulation’s own criteria, recalling the Regulation’s recital 23, in the Court’s words: “La résidence habituelle ainsi déterminée devrait révéler un lien étroit et stable avec l’État concerné, compte tenu des objectifs spécifiques du présent règlement”, that is, habitual residence should reveal a close and stable connection with the State concerned in light of the Regulation’s specific objectives. The Court went on to hold, on the facts of that case: “les juridictions françaises sont donc compétentes pour statuer sur l’ensemble de sa succession en application de l’article 10, § 1, sous a), du Règlement (UE) n° 650/2012 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 4 juillet 2012”, that is, the French courts are competent to rule on the whole of the succession under Article 10(1)(a) of the Regulation. The Court quashed the Versailles appeal judgment in its entirety: “CASSE ET ANNULE, en toutes ses dispositions, l’arrêt rendu le 21 février 2019, entre les parties, par la cour d’appel de Versailles”. The full judgment is published by the Court of Cassation under appeal number 19-15.438 (Cour de cassation, First Civil Chamber, 21 September 2022, no. 19-15.438). For a British reader the lesson is direct: if you live permanently in France, with your home, your daily life and the centre of your family and social interests here, your habitual residence at death will normally be France, and without a choice of law your succession, including your French house, will be governed by French law as a whole.
French law as a whole includes the réserve héréditaire, the forced heirship share that the statute books define as follows: “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” (Civil Code, Article 912). In ordinary language, a fixed part of your estate must go to your children, free of conditions, if they accept the succession. The shares are set by statute: “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” (Civil Code, Article 913). With one child, half of your estate is reserved; with two children, two thirds; with three or more, three quarters. Only the remainder, called the quotité disponible or disposable share, can be left freely, for example to your spouse. A will that leaves everything to your spouse when you have two children from a first marriage therefore fails under French default law as to two thirds of the estate, whatever your solicitor in England told you about testamentary freedom. The Court of Cassation has long held that, for property situated in France, the applicable French rules on the reserved share are a matter of domestic public policy that a foreign will cannot simply brush aside: ruling on a will made abroad and homologated by a foreign judgment, it approved the appeal court for having held “que la dévolution successorale desdits immeubles devait tenir compte des règles de la réserve héréditaire, laquelle, d’ordre public interne, ne pouvait être écartée par des dispositions testamentaires établies selon la loi du domicile du défunt et régissant son statut personnel” (Cour de cassation, First Civil Chamber, 4 July 2018, nos. 17-16.515 and 17-16.522). That decision concerned property in France and a foreign-approved will, and its reasoning is exactly the objection a French notary will raise against an English will that ignores the reserved share.
Since the law of 31 August 2021, France has added a corrective mechanism aimed precisely at successions governed by a foreign law that protects children poorly or not at all. Where the deceased or at least one of the children was, at the time of the death, a national of a European Union member state or habitually resident there, and the applicable foreign law offers children no reserved-share protective mechanism, the statute provides that “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” (Civil Code, Article 913, final paragraph). In plain terms, a child left with nothing can take compensatory value from the French assets up to the amount of the French reserved share. A July 2026 analysis by the London firm Farrer and Co, written for Anglo-French families, explains that after objections from the European Commission the French authorities clarified that this compensatory levy only applies where the foreign law provides no protective mechanism for children at all, and that the family-provision rules of Anglo-Saxon systems count as such a mechanism, so that an estate properly governed by English law under a valid choice may fall outside the levy even where children are disinherited (see Farrer and Co, France clarifies treatment of forced heirship rights in cross-border wills, 2 July 2026). That clarification is helpful, but it is an administrative interpretation, not a statute, and it does not remove the need for a clean, express choice of English law in your will. Without that choice, none of this debate arises: French law applies by default and the reserved share applies in full.
B. How do you choose English law in your will and what does the choice actually cover?
The European Union Succession Regulation allows you to choose, for your whole succession, the law of any country whose nationality you hold at the time of the choice or at the time of your death. This choice of law is often called professio juris, the Latin tag for choosing the law that will govern your estate. Because the Regulation applies universally, you may choose the law of a country that is not a member of the European Union, which is exactly the position of British nationals since Brexit: a British citizen habitually resident in France can validly choose English law, or Scots law for a Scot, to govern the succession as a whole, including the French house. The choice must be express and recorded in a testamentary disposition, which means in practice a clear clause in your will stating that you choose the law of England and Wales to govern your entire succession. British citizens should name the legal system precisely, England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, rather than writing “British law” or “UK law”, because the United Kingdom contains several territorial legal systems and imprecision invites challenge. The clause should state that it covers all of your property wherever situated, confirm or revoke earlier wills expressly so that no older French or English document contradicts it, and be mirrored in any French will if you decide to keep two documents. One will covering everything is usually cleaner than two wills that must be read together, but if you already own French life policies, joint accounts or a French marriage contract, your solicitor and your French notary should review the whole package together so the English choice of law does not collide with instruments governed by their own rules.
Once validly made, the choice governs the succession as a unity: the same English law decides who inherits, in what shares, what the surviving spouse receives, whether gifts made during your lifetime are brought back into account, and how the estate is administered. English testamentary freedom then applies to the French house in principle: you may leave it to your spouse, favour one child, or benefit a person outside the family, free of the French reserved shares. Your English executors, the persons your will appoints to administer the estate, remain your chosen administrators, although in France the practical steps still run through a French notary: French statute provides that “Les successions s’ouvrent par la mort, au dernier domicile du défunt” (Civil Code, Article 720), meaning the succession opens at the last domicile of the deceased, and that “Les héritiers désignés par la loi sont saisis de plein droit des biens, droits et actions du défunt” (Civil Code, Article 724), meaning the heirs designated by the applicable law take possession of the estate’s property, rights and claims by operation of law. Concretely, the French notary draws up the acte de notoriété (the formal deed identifying the heirs), publishes the transfer of the French house at the land registry, and may issue a European Certificate of Succession, the standard European document proving who inherits, for use in the other countries where you hold assets. If your will creates a universal legacy in French terms, remember the statutory definition: “Le legs universel est la disposition testamentaire par laquelle le testateur donne à une ou plusieurs personnes l’universalité des biens qu’il laissera à son décès” (Civil Code, Article 1003), and make sure the English wording of your will, residuary estate, issue, surviving spouse, maps onto those French categories in the translation your notary will work from.
Three practical precautions make the choice genuinely Brexit-proof. First, review any will signed before you moved to France: wills written when you were habitually resident in England often contain no choice-of-law clause at all, because none was needed while all the property lay in England. That old will is valid as to form but silent on the applicable law, which is precisely the gap that lets French default law in. A short codicil adding the choice can cure the defect, but a fresh consolidated will is usually safer once the estate includes a French house. Second, consider a handwritten backup kept in France: French law recognises the holographic will, providing that “Le testament olographe ne sera point valable s’il n’est écrit en entier, daté et signé de la main du testateur : il n’est assujetti à aucune autre forme” (Civil Code, Article 970), which means a will entirely handwritten, dated and signed by you needs no other formality. A short holographic will repeating the choice of English law, stored with your French notary and entered in the French wills register, gives your family an immediately available French-language instrument while the English original is being transmitted and translated. Third, deposit and register: ask your French notary to keep a copy of the English will with its translation and to record your testamentary dispositions in the central wills file, so that no heir can claim the English will was lost or revoked. These steps cost little and they answer in advance the two objections you will otherwise meet, that the will cannot be found and that its foreign form cannot be trusted.
II. How do you protect your spouse and children and challenge a refusal?
A. What tax will be charged on the French house and how do you declare and challenge it?
French inheritance tax follows the French house wherever the deceased and the heirs live. The territorial rule is set by the Tax Code: property situated in France is subject to French transfer duties on death even where the deceased was not fiscally domiciled in France, while the whole worldwide estate is taxable in France where the deceased was fiscally domiciled here, and the worldwide estate can also be caught where the heir has been fiscally domiciled in France for at least six of the last ten years. The statute opens with the principle itself: “Sont soumis aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit” (General Tax Code, Article 750 ter), and then details the three cases, French fiscal domicile of the deceased, French-situated property of a non-resident deceased, and French fiscal domicile of the heir. For a British family this means the French house is always declared and taxed in France, whether you stayed resident in England with a Dordogne holiday home or retired permanently to Normandy. The rates are then applied per heir on the net share each receives: “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” (General Tax Code, Article 777), with the direct-line scale running from 5 per cent to 45 per cent and heavier scales for distant relatives and unrelated beneficiaries. Against those rates, each child benefits from a personal allowance, since “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” (General Tax Code, Article 779). The surviving spouse and the civil partner are fully exempt from death duties: “Sont exonérés de droits de mutation par décès le conjoint survivant et le partenaire lié au défunt par un pacte civil de solidarité” (General Tax Code, Article 796-0 bis). Leaving the French house to your spouse under English law is therefore tax-efficient in France as well as legally possible, a point worth weighing when you decide how to use your testamentary freedom.
Two common mistakes inflate the bill unnecessarily. The first is forgetting that allowances apply per parent per child and can be used during your lifetime: gifts of the French house or of money towards it, properly declared, consume the allowance once but remove future growth from the taxable estate, a strategy explained in our guide to gifting your French home to your children. The second is misdeclaring the value or the occupancy status of the house: the family home occupied as a main residence, the deduction for the surviving spouse’s rights, outstanding loans and deductible liabilities all change the net taxable base, and an incorrect valuation is the single most frequent ground for reassessment on Franco-British files. The succession must be declared to the French tax office within the statutory time limit, which runs from the death and is longer where the death occurred abroad, with the return accompanied by the notary’s deed, the will and its translation, and the valuation evidence. If the assessment seems wrong, contest it in writing first through a formal claim to the tax office, setting out the correct legal basis, the correct valuation with comparable evidence, and the allowance or exemption relied upon, then appeal to the courts if the reply is negative or never comes. Keep every envelope, receipt and acknowledgement: time limits for tax claims are strict and they run from notification. Where the estate also pays inheritance tax in the United Kingdom on the same French house, the British side must be handled through the United Kingdom self-assessment and inheritance tax procedure, for which the official starting points are the government’s guidance on wills, probate and inheritance and on inheritance tax, alongside the French declarations described on service-public.fr and the payment and return procedures on impots.gouv.fr. Double taxation is relieved through the treaty mechanisms and the domestic foreign-tax-credit rules applicable on each side, but the relief has to be claimed expressly with proof of the tax paid abroad: it is never automatic.
Valuation disputes deserve a paragraph of their own because they decide most Franco-British reassessments. The tax office values the French house at its market value on the day of the death, and it has its own databases of local transactions. Challenge an inflated figure with dated estate-agent appraisals from the locality, with the notary’s own valuation, with evidence of defects, protected tenancies or planning constraints that depress the price, and with the actual sale price where the house was sold within months of the death. Where the surviving spouse keeps rights over the house, the value of those rights follows the statutory scale by age, and the children’s bare ownership is taxed only on the remainder: an assessment that taxes the children on the full freehold value while the widow holds lifelong rights over the property is simply wrong and should be contested as such. Readers facing the mirror situation after a death, a British husband who has died leaving a French house, will find the immediate steps, papers to gather and first deadlines in our companion guide on what to do when a British husband dies in France, and surviving spouses worried about keeping the roof over their heads should read our analysis of the widow’s rights over the French home alongside this article.
B. The notary refuses your English will or a child challenges it: what do you do, including in Paris and the Paris region?
Refusals come in three familiar shapes. The first is the notary who will not apply the English will, either because the translation is missing, because the choice-of-law clause is absent or ambiguous, or because the notary considers the reserved share mandatory regardless. Answer each objection on its own ground. Supply a sworn translation by a certified translator, with the solicitor’s file note on execution if form is questioned. Point to the express choice of the law of England and Wales and to the universal application of the Succession Regulation, which the French courts apply to third-state laws as well as to member-state laws. Ask the notary to set out the refusal in writing, with the precise legal ground, because a written refusal can be challenged while a verbal reluctance cannot. If the notary persists, a second notary may be instructed, and the courts can be asked to determine the applicable law and the validity of the will: the 2022 judgment discussed above shows the Court of Cassation deciding exactly these questions of jurisdiction and applicable framework for a Franco-British family, ending with an order that the French courts were competent for the whole succession. Do not let the file drift: every month of deadlock is a month in which insurance, charges and loan repayments on the French house fall on the wrong shoulders, and in which the tax return deadline keeps running.
The second shape is the challenge by a disappointed child. A child who received nothing, or less than the French reserved share, may write to the notary claiming forced heirship rights, or may issue proceedings for the reduction of excessive gifts and legacies and for a compensatory levy over the French assets. Take such letters seriously from day one: acknowledge them, preserve the estate assets, and have the will, the choice-of-law clause and the lifetime gifts reviewed immediately. Where English law was validly chosen, the defence rests on the choice itself, on the scope of English testamentary freedom, and on the protective mechanisms English law does offer, including claims for reasonable financial provision, which the French administrative clarification described above treats as a qualifying protective mechanism for the purposes of the compensatory levy. The Court of Cassation’s older case law, quoted above, which enforced the reserved share over French immovables against a foreign will, belongs to the era before the Succession Regulation and before any valid choice of English law: it is the authority the other side will cite, and your answer is that the Regulation and your express choice have changed the applicable framework. Gifts also matter in this fight for a reason illustrated by the same 2018 judgment, which recalled, for a gift of money made by handing over a cheque, that “le don manuel d’une somme d’argent fait au moyen de la remise d’un chèque suppose la volonté du tireur de se dessaisir de manière irrévocable au profit du bénéficiaire de la propriété de la provision” (Cour de cassation, First Civil Chamber, 4 July 2018, on the gift by cheque). Lifetime gifts by cheque, transfer or manual delivery can be brought back into account and reduced if they infringe protected rights, so the history of family payments must be reconstructed honestly before any hearing.
The third shape is the vulnerable surviving spouse, and here French law, even displaced as the general applicable law, still offers tools worth using. Where French law does govern, the statute gives the surviving spouse, where the deceased leaves children, a choice: “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” (Civil Code, Article 757), which means a life interest over all the existing property or outright ownership of one quarter. A spouse who was favoured by the deceased can also receive more through the special spouse’s disposable share: the deceased “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” (Civil Code, Article 1094-1). Under a valid choice of English law these French provisions do not govern as such, but they set the benchmark your planning must beat: an English will leaving the whole French house to the spouse outright, combined with the spouse’s full exemption from French death duties, will normally protect the survivor better than the French default. Where the couple also owns the house jointly or through a property-holding company, the interaction with the will must be checked line by line, because survivorship clauses and company shares obey their own logic.
For readers in Paris and the Paris region, three local points strengthen the strategy. First, Paris notaries handle a large share of Franco-British successions and most are familiar with English wills accompanied by sworn translations, so a refusal at one office is worth testing at another before litigating. Second, jurisdiction for challenges concerning a Paris house or a Paris-based notary lies with the Paris courts, and an avocat at the Paris Bar can apply for interim measures, such as the appointment of an estate administrator, where the succession is blocked. Third, time and documents decide these cases: death certificate with apostille and sworn translation, the English grant of probate where one exists, the original will and its translation, the marriage contract if any, title deeds for the French house, bank statements showing lifetime gifts, and the property valuation evidence for the tax return. Assemble this bundle before the first appointment and every subsequent step, from the notary’s deed to a court application or a tax claim, moves faster. Whatever the family configuration, act within the deadlines stated on each document you receive, because limitation periods for reduction claims, tax claims and appeals all run independently of one another.
Conclusion
An English will remains a perfectly good instrument for a British owner with a French house after Brexit, but only if it does the one job the old pre-move will usually fails to do: it must expressly choose the law of England and Wales to govern your whole succession. Without that clause, your habitual residence in France draws your entire estate under French law, with the reserved shares for your children applying in full to the French house. With that clause, English testamentary freedom governs the house as part of a single succession, the surviving spouse can be fully protected and exempted from French death duties, and even the newer compensatory levy is, on the current French administrative reading, unlikely to bite where English law applies. Form is rarely the problem; silence on the applicable law is. Have your existing will reviewed now, add or rewrite the choice-of-law clause with precision, prepare a sworn French translation, keep a holographic backup with your French notary, and align the will with your gifts, your marriage regime and your property structure. If a notary refuses the English will or a child challenges it, demand written grounds, defend the choice of law expressly, and contest valuations and assessments with evidence and within the time limits. Done properly, your English will does not merely survive Brexit: it organises your French house exactly as you intended.
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