You own a house in France, you are British, and you have an English will that leaves everything to your spouse, or divides your estate exactly as you wish. Will that will actually govern your French house when you die? Since Brexit, this question traps hundreds of British families every year, because the answer sits at the crossing of three systems that no longer move together: the European succession framework that France still applies to everyone, English testamentary freedom that stops at the French border, and French forced heirship that protects your children whether your will mentions them or not. A will drafted in England, perfectly valid under English law, can be read in France through an entirely different lens, and the family only discovers the gap when the French notaire — the public officer who settles estates and conveys property — refuses to distribute the house as the will directs, or when a French bank freezes the deceased’s accounts pending documents nobody prepared.

This guide answers the three questions every British owner of French property should settle before it is too late: which law governs your French estate now that the United Kingdom is a third country, how to choose English law expressly in your will and what that choice can and cannot achieve, and what to do — concretely, step by step — when a notaire, a bank or an heir blocks the succession. It is written entirely for a British reader, every French term is explained where it first appears, and every decisive legal proposition is anchored to the official statute or the published decision it comes from, quoted from the official text.

I. Which law governs your French house after Brexit, and how do you validly choose English law?

Since 17 August 2015, successions dealt with in France have been governed by Regulation (EU) No 650/2012, the European Succession Regulation, and Brexit did not remove your estate from its scope. The United Kingdom never opted into that Regulation, even before Brexit, but the Regulation applies in France on a universal basis: it designates the applicable law whatever the nationality of the deceased, including a British national, and whether or not the designated law is the law of a Member State. What Brexit changed is your position inside the mechanism. As a British citizen you are now a third-country national, so if you live in France your succession is handled under the general rule, while if you live in the United Kingdom and merely own a French house, your estate falls under the subsidiary jurisdiction rules designed for deaths outside the Union. Understanding which of the two situations is yours is the starting point of everything.

A. The default rule: your habitual residence decides one single law for your whole estate

Article 21 of the Succession Regulation lays down the default: the law applicable to the succession as a whole is the law of the State in which the deceased had his or her habitual residence at the time of death. Habitual residence is not domicile in the English sense and it is not a tax concept either; it is a factual assessment of where the centre of your life actually was. The Regulation’s own recitals direct the authority handling the succession to carry out an overall assessment of the circumstances of the deceased’s life in the years before death — the duration and regularity of presence, the conditions and reasons for that presence, the country where the family and social life were centred — and that assessment must reveal a close and stable connection with the State concerned. For a British retiree who has lived in the Dordogne for a decade, shopped, worshipped, treated doctors and paid bills there, habitual residence in France will be difficult to dispute, and French law will then govern the whole estate, including any remaining English assets. Conversely, a London-based owner of a Provençal holiday home who flies over for six weeks a year will normally remain habitually resident in England, and a different set of rules decides what happens to the French house.

The French courts take this assessment seriously and examine the facts rather than the labels. In a widely noted decision of 21 September 2022, the First Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court for civil matters, ruled on appeal no. 19-15.438 in a dispute where children argued their father’s habitual residence was in France while his widow maintained it was in the United Kingdom. The Court quashed the appeal ruling, held that the French courts were competent for the whole of the succession, and confirmed the appointment of a mandataire successoral, the court-appointed administrator who preserves and manages a disputed estate. The reasoning matters for every British family: habitual residence is assessed objectively from the facts of daily life, and illness or dependency does not deprive an elderly person of the ability to change it, because France was, in that case, the proven and undisputed place of the last years of life. Read the decision on the Cour de cassation website, appeal 19-15.438 of 21 September 2022. The lesson is direct: if you moved to France for care, for retirement or for work and centred your life there, do not assume an English will alone keeps your succession English.

Where habitual residence at death was outside the Union — the classic case of a British resident of England owning a French house — Article 10 of the Regulation organises subsidiary jurisdiction, and the Cour de cassation spelt out how it works in that same 2022 ruling. The Court recalled the rule in these terms (First Civil Chamber, 21 September 2022, appeal no. 19-15.438): “lorsque la résidence habituelle du défunt au moment du décès n’est pas située dans un État membre, les juridictions de l’État membre dans lequel sont situés des biens successoraux sont néanmoins compétentes pour statuer sur l’ensemble de la succession dans la mesure où le défunt possédait la nationalité de cet État membre au moment du décès.” In plain English, where the deceased was not habitually resident in a Member State, the courts of the Member State where estate assets lie may still rule on the whole succession if the deceased held that State’s nationality. And where the deceased held no Member State nationality — the ordinary British case — the French courts remain competent at least over the assets situated in France. The same ruling relays the answer given on 7 April 2022 by the Court of Justice of the European Union in case C-645/20, which held that the provision, as reported at paragraph 9 of the same 21 September 2022 ruling, “doit être interprété en ce sens qu’une juridiction d’un État membre doit relever d’office sa compétence au titre de la règle de compétence subsidiaire prévue à cette disposition lorsque, ayant été saisie sur le fondement de la règle de compétence générale établie à l’article 4 de ce règlement, elle constate qu’elle n’est pas compétente au titre de cette dernière disposition.” A French court seised of the estate must therefore raise of its own motion its subsidiary jurisdiction rather than turn the heirs away. For a British family this is protective: even with an English habitual residence, the French house can be dealt with by the French courts, and no heir can be left without a judge.

One further Brexit consequence deserves attention. The Regulation’s unity principle — one law for the whole estate, movables and immovables together — replaced the old French scission system under which French immovables always followed French law. But English private international law still applies the situs rule to foreign land in certain contexts, and the United Kingdom issues no European Certificate of Succession, the standard proof-of-heir document created by the Regulation. So a British estate straddling the Channel routinely produces a mismatch: France applies one law to everything, while England may look at the French house through English conflicts rules pointing to French land law. Coordination, not improvisation, is the answer, and the instrument for it is the express choice of law in your will, which is the subject of the next section.

B. Choosing English law in your will: the professio juris, its form, and its real limits

Article 22 of the Succession Regulation allows what practitioners call the professio juris, the profession or declaration of applicable law: any person may choose as the law to govern his or her succession as a whole the law of the State whose nationality he or she possesses, either at the time of making the choice or at the time of death. A British national may therefore choose English law — the law of England and Wales — to govern the succession of the French house. Three conditions make the choice effective. First, it must concern the succession as a whole; you cannot pick English law for the London flat and French law for the Dordogne farmhouse within a single choice. Second, it must be a nationality you actually hold when you sign or when you die, so a British passport is the foundation of the clause. Third, it must be express, contained in a disposition of property upon death — in practice, a sentence in your will stating that you choose the law of England and Wales to govern your succession. An ambiguous wish, a letter of intent or an oral instruction to your solicitor is not enough, and a choice hidden in a side document the French notaire never sees is as useful as no choice at all.

Form follows function: the will carrying the choice must itself be formally valid, and here the news is reassuring. An English will signed with two witnesses is recognised as to form in France, and a will handwritten, dated and signed entirely by your hand — the French testament olographe — is valid with no other formality, since the Civil Code provides 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.” Read Article 970 of the Civil Code on Légifrance. Many British owners hold two wills, one English and one French, and that structure works provided the two documents are coordinated: the notorious trap is the standard revocation clause by which a new English will revokes “all former wills”, accidentally destroying the French will that carried the choice of law. Each will should expressly state that it deals only with the assets in its country and that it does not revoke the will dealing with the other country’s assets, and both should carry the identical choice-of-law clause. Keep certified copies, sworn translations and, for English documents used in France, an apostille, the international authentication stamp, because the notaire will ask for them before releasing a euro.

The limits of the choice must be stated bluntly, because advisers on both sides of the Channel oversell it. Choosing English law does not exempt the estate from French inheritance tax, which follows its own territorial connecting factors regardless of the civil law applicable. It does not dispense with French procedural requirements for transferring registered land, since the land register, the notaire’s conveyancing monopoly and the mortgage publicity system remain French. And, crucially, it does not necessarily defeat the protection French law grants to children, because the statute of 24 August 2021 created a compensatory mechanism that can follow your children onto French soil even where the applicable foreign law knows no forced heirship. That mechanism, and the planning that surrounds it, is the core of the second part of this guide.

II. Protecting your children and your spouse: forced heirship, French tax, and the remedies when the succession stalls

English testamentary freedom — the principle that you leave your property to whom you please — does not exist in France. French law reserves a fraction of every estate to certain heirs, and since 2021 it gives children a compensatory claim on French assets even when a foreign law governs the succession and provides them nothing. This is the point on which British wills most often fail in France: a will leaving the French house entirely to the surviving spouse, disinheriting or passing over children, can be partly neutralised after death, and the family discovers it during an already painful bereavement. Add French inheritance tax, with its allowances, rates and disclosure duties, and the succession of a British-owned French house becomes a file that must be prepared during lifetime, not repaired after death.

A. The réserve héréditaire, the spouse’s share, and the 2021 compensatory levy your children can claim

The réserve héréditaire, the reserved portion, is defined by the Civil Code 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.” Read Article 912 of the Civil Code on Légifrance. The mirror concept is the quotité disponible, the disposable portion, the share of which the deceased could freely dispose by lifetime gifts or by will. The reserved heirs are, first, the descendants, and failing descendants, the surviving spouse. Where the deceased leaves one child, gifts and legacies may not exceed one half of the estate; with two children, one third; with three or more children, one quarter. Read Article 913 of the Civil Code on Légifrance. Where there is no descendant but a surviving spouse who is not divorced, the disposable portion is three quarters, leaving the spouse a reserve of one quarter. Read Article 914-1 of the Civil Code on Légifrance. Where there is neither descendant nor surviving spouse, gifts and legacies may exhaust the whole estate. Read Article 916 of the Civil Code on Légifrance. A gift or legacy exceeding the disposable portion is not void outright; it is reducible, meaning the overpaid beneficiary must compensate the reserved heirs in value for the excess. Read Article 924 of the Civil Code on Légifrance. Take a concrete British case: a widowed owner of a 600,000 euro house in France with two children leaves the house by will to a new partner. The disposable portion is one third, 200,000 euros; each child is entitled to 200,000 euros of value; the partner keeps the house only by compensating the children or selling. English freedom of testation would have given the partner everything; French law gives the partner one third of the value.

Before 2015, French courts applied this protection to French immovables as a matter of domestic public policy even where a foreign law governed the succession. The leading illustration is the decision of the First Civil Chamber of 4 July 2018, appeal no. 17-16.515, where the Court approved an appeal ruling that had subjected Paris immovables to French law under the former conflict rule and drawn the consequence: “ceux-ci sont soumis, par application de la règle de conflit édictée à l’article 3, alinéa 2, du code civil, à la loi française”, and “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”. Read the decision on the Cour de cassation website, appeal 17-16.515 of 4 July 2018. That decision concerned a death governed by the old scission system, before the Regulation’s unity rule applied, so it is history rather than current procedure — but it explains why Parliament legislated. Since the Regulation now imposes a single applicable law that may be English law with no reserved portion at all, the statute of 24 August 2021 added a second paragraph to Article 913 creating the prélèvement compensatoire, the compensatory levy. Where the deceased or at least one of the children is, at the time of death, a national of a European Union Member State or habitually resident there, and where the foreign law applicable to the succession provides no reserved-heir mechanism protecting children, each child may take a compensatory levy on the assets situated in France at the date of death, so as to be restored to the reserved rights French law grants, within their limits. In practice: British father habitually resident in France, English law chosen in the will, two children passed over in favour of a spouse — each child can claim against the French house the value French réserve would have given. The choice of English law survives, but its economic effect on French assets is capped by the levy. Note the conditions carefully, because not every family meets them: the mechanism requires the European nationality or residence link and a foreign applicable law with genuinely no protective mechanism for children.

Lifetime planning works with these rules rather than against them. The donation-partage, the gift-partition by which a parent distributes and shares property among the presumptive heirs during lifetime, allows a British owner to transfer the French house to the children early, fix values, organise who uses the property, and combine the transfer with the available tax allowances. The Civil Code provides that “Toute personne peut faire, entre ses héritiers présomptifs, la distribution et le partage de ses biens et de ses droits.” Read Article 1075 of the Civil Code on Légifrance. A companion guide on this site details how the donation-partage of a French house operates for British residents, including the allowance mechanics (see our guide on gifting your French house to your children after Brexit). On the tax side, each parent may pass 100,000 euros to each child free of transfer duty, since the Code provides an allowance of that amount on the share of each living or represented child. Read Article 779 of the General Tax Code on Légifrance. Above the allowances, the progressive direct-line scale runs from 5 to 45 percent depending on the net share received. Read Article 777 of the General Tax Code on Légifrance. And every lifetime gift must be disclosed in subsequent deeds and succession declarations, because the Code requires the parties to state in every gratuitous transfer deed and every succession declaration whether prior gifts were made by the deceased. Read Article 784 of the General Tax Code on Légifrance. Gifts you forgot, or never declared, resurface at the succession and can inflate the duty bill with interest and penalties. The surviving spouse, meanwhile, is fully exempt from French inheritance tax on what passes from the deceased spouse, which often surprises British couples who assumed the spouse was the exposed party: under French law the exposed parties are usually the children given too little, not the spouse given too much.

B. When the notaire, the bank or an heir blocks the succession: the remedies that unblock a British file

Blockages follow recurring patterns, and each has a remedy. The notaire declines to apply the English choice of law, arguing the clause is unclear or the will invalid. The bank freezes the deceased’s French accounts until an heir produces documents that do not exist in English practice. An heir who received nothing under the will disputes the applicable law, the habitual residence, or the values. Or the French and English procedures advance in parallel and contradict each other, with a grant of probate in England saying one thing and the notaire’s deed saying another. The worst response is inertia: time limits run, property insurance lapses, taxes accrue, and a buyer for the house walks away. The correct response is a graduated strategy that starts with documents and ends, only if necessary, before a judge.

Begin with proof of status, because most blockages are documentary rather than legal. The European Certificate of Succession, created by the Succession Regulation, is designed precisely for cross-border files: issued by the authority of the Member State whose courts have jurisdiction, it proves who the heirs are, what their shares are and who may administer, and banks and registries across the Union must accept it without further legalisation. A British succession handled in France can therefore obtain this certificate from the French side and present it to every institution holding frozen assets. Alongside it, assemble the file a French notaire expects: the death certificate with apostille and sworn translation, both wills with their choice-of-law clauses, marriage contract or civil partnership documents, birth certificates proving parentage for the réserve computation, deeds of any lifetime gifts for the disclosure duty, and the English grant of probate with translation where English assets are also in play. Where the notaire maintains a refusal on the applicable law, require a written, reasoned position: an oral “we do not do English law” is not a legal opinion, and a written refusal can be answered, whereas a shrug cannot. A formal letter before action from your avocat, setting out Articles 21 and 22 of the Regulation, the choice clause and the supporting documents, resolves a remarkable proportion of files at this stage, because it transfers the risk of being wrong onto the party refusing.

Where refusal persists, the courts offer calibrated tools rather than a single all-or-nothing lawsuit. For urgent preservation — a house deteriorating, accounts about to be debited, an heir dissipating assets — the presiding judge of the tribunal judiciaire, the ordinary civil court with jurisdiction over successions, can appoint a mandataire successoral in expedited proceedings, exactly as confirmed in the 2022 Cour de cassation ruling discussed above, where the Court upheld the administrator’s appointment for a cross-Channel estate. For the substance, an heir deprived of reserved rights brings an action for reduction against the overpaid beneficiary, claiming the compensatory indemnity in value; a child invoking the 2021 compensatory levy claims it against the French assets in the hands of whoever received them. Where the dispute is the applicable law itself or the validity of the choice clause, a declaratory action before the tribunal judiciaire settles which law governs before the estate is distributed amiss. Tax reassessments follow their own track: an administrative claim first, then the competent court, with the allowances, valuations and disclosure history as the battleground. And throughout, parallel English proceedings should be coordinated, not duplicated: inform the English personal representatives, align valuations, and avoid contradictory distributions, because an heir paid twice in two countries eventually repays with interest. Strict time limits apply to several of these actions, so the family should take advice within weeks of the death, not at the anniversary. The through-line of the case law is consistent: French courts assert jurisdiction over the French estate, apply the Regulation’s connecting factors as written, and enforce the children’s protected share — families that arrive with a clear choice-of-law clause, coordinated wills and a complete documentary file are distributed; families that arrive with a single uncoordinated English will are litigated.

Conclusion

A British-owned French house passes after death under rules that neither English solicitors nor French notaires own exclusively. If you live in France, French law will normally govern your whole estate through your habitual residence unless your will validly chooses English law; if you live in England, the French courts retain at least the French house and will apply the Regulation’s subsidiary rules of their own motion. The express choice of English law in a coordinated will is effective and should be made, but it neither shelters the estate from French inheritance tax nor guarantees that children passed over will receive nothing from the French assets, because the reserved portion and the 2021 compensatory levy protect them in value. The practical programme follows: verify where your habitual residence truly lies, insert an identical express choice-of-law clause in coordinated English and French wills without cross-revocation, explain every French term to your English executor and every English concept to your French notaire, transfer what can usefully be given during lifetime through a donation-partage within the allowances, and keep the file — wills, translations, apostilles, gift deeds — where the survivors will find it. Done during lifetime, these steps convert a cross-Channel succession from a dispute about which law applies into an administration under a law already chosen, and that is the difference between heirs who inherit and heirs who litigate.

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