You own a house in the Dordogne, you live there for most of the year, and your English will leaves everything to your husband or wife. Then the French notaire (the public officer who settles every French estate) tells your family that your children can still claim a fixed share of the house, whatever the will says. For British owners after Brexit, this is the most common shock in French succession law, and it is also the most avoidable. This guide answers the three questions every British owner asks: which law governs your French house when you die, whether your children can still claim the forced share known as the réserve héréditaire (the fixed portion of the estate French law reserves to certain heirs), and what paperwork will get your English will accepted by the French notaire without a court fight. It explains each French term as it appears, quotes the exact legal texts, and ends with the practical steps that protect a surviving spouse.
I. Will my English will govern my French house, or will French law step in?
A. Which law applies to your French house when you die living in France?
The starting point is not your nationality and not where your will was signed. Since 17 August 2015, one European text governs which law applies to cross-border estates in France: Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 on succession. France applies it to every succession with an international element, including estates of British nationals, because Brexit did not take the United Kingdom out of French private international law. The default rule is habitual residence. Under the Regulation, one law governs the succession as a whole by default, namely the law of the country where the deceased was habitually resident at the time of death. If you live year-round in France, that default points to French law, and French law includes the réserve héréditaire and the action in reduction (action en réduction, the court claim by which a protected heir claws back gifts and legacies that eat into the fixed share) described below. Your English will is then read through French eyes, and any clause that disinherits a child fails against the fixed share.
The Regulation gives you one powerful escape route: the choice of law, called professio juris (the choice by a person of the law that will govern the succession). The mechanism is a choice-of-law clause: a person may designate, to govern the succession as a whole, the law of a country whose nationality that person holds when signing the clause or at death. A British citizen can therefore choose English law, and the choice works even though the United Kingdom has left the European Union, because the test looks only at the nationality you hold when you sign the clause or when you die. If you hold both British and French nationality, you may choose either law. The choice must be visible in the will itself: That designation must be stated expressly in a testamentary disposition, or at least clearly emerge from what the disposition says. In practice, that means one express sentence in your will, for example that you choose the law of England and Wales to govern your succession as a whole. Once validly made, the chosen law governs the whole estate, including the French house: the Regulation states that the law determined by the choice governs matters such as the beneficiaries, their shares, disinheritance and the transfer of assets to the heirs.
Three practical consequences follow. First, if you are habitually resident in France and your will contains no choice-of-law clause, French succession law applies by default and your children keep their fixed share. Second, if you still live mainly in England and only keep a second home in France, your habitual residence at death is normally England, so English law already applies without any clause, but an express choice remains the safest drafting because habitual residence is a question of fact that children can dispute after your death. Third, the choice must be renewed in form whenever you remake your will: any change or revocation of the choice has to meet the same formal requirements as changing the will itself, so every new will should repeat the clause rather than assume the old one survives.
Before 17 August 2015 the position was very different, and older advice still circulates. French courts used to split estates: movable property followed the law of the domicile, while French buildings followed French law automatically. The Court of Cassation confirmed that logic for deaths under the old rules, holding that buildings in France were governed by French law under the former conflict rule. That split no longer applies to anyone who died on or after 17 August 2015: one law now governs everything, and the habitual-residence default plus the nationality choice have replaced the old automatic application of French law to French land. If an adviser quotes you the old split without mentioning the Regulation, the advice is out of date. The decision is the judgment of the First Civil Chamber of 4 July 2018, appeal No 17-16.515 (Cour de cassation, 4 July 2018, No 17-16.515).
B. Can my children still claim the forced share against my English will?
Under French domestic law, the answer starts with a definition. The Civil Code provides: “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.” In plain terms, the réserve héréditaire is the slice of the estate the law guarantees to protected heirs, free of conditions, and the quotité disponible (the freely disposable portion) is whatever is left for the deceased to give away. The protected heirs are the children first, and the surviving spouse only if there are no descendants. The Code fixes the shares with a famous scale: “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.” So with one child, half the estate is locked; with two children, two thirds; with three or more, three quarters. Gifts made during your lifetime count too: they are added back to a notional pot before the shares are calculated, which is why lifetime gifts of the French house to one child can be attacked by the others. The texts are Article 912 of the Civil Code and Article 913 of the Civil Code.
English law works the opposite way. There is no fixed share for children: a testator may leave everything to the surviving spouse, and a disappointed child has only a needs-based application to the court, never a guaranteed fraction. That contrast is exactly why the choice of English law matters so much: once English law governs the succession, there is no French fixed share to apply, and a will leaving the French house to the spouse stands. But the French Parliament added a safety net in 2021 aimed precisely at choices of a foreign law that leaves children with nothing. The same Article 913 now continues: “Lorsque le défunt ou au moins l’un de ses enfants est, au moment du décès, ressortissant d’un Etat membre de l’Union européenne ou y réside habituellement et lorsque la loi étrangère applicable à la succession ne permet aucun mécanisme réservataire protecteur des enfants, 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.” (Article 913 of the Civil Code, final paragraph). The prélèvement compensatoire (compensatory levy) lets a child take assets in France to top up what French law would have guaranteed.
Read the conditions carefully, because Brexit runs through them. The levy is available only 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 applicable foreign law offers no protective reserve mechanism for children. For a British family, the outcomes split three ways. If you have taken French nationality, or one of your children lives in France, the European link is satisfied and that child can claim the top-up out of the French house when your English-law will leaves less than the French fixed share. If the whole family lives in England and nobody holds an EU nationality, the mechanism is closed and your choice of English law works at full strength. The middle case is the dangerous one: parents settled in France whose adult children stayed in Britain. The parents may satisfy the residence condition themselves, opening the levy to children who never lived in France. Map where each child lives before you draft, and record it in the file, because the answer changes the advice.
When a child does attack the will, the weapon is the action en réduction, and the Court of Cassation treats it as a core succession claim governed by the succession law, not as a side dispute. In a judgment on a pre-2015 estate that still illustrates the method, the Court recalled that “les tribunaux français sont compétents pour statuer sur une succession mobilière lorsque le défunt avait son domicile en France. Ils sont compétents pour statuer sur une succession immobilière pour les immeubles situés en France.” and that “La nature de l’action successorale est déterminée selon la loi du for.” The reference is the judgment of the First Civil Chamber of 14 April 2021, appeal No 19-24.773 (Cour de cassation, 14 April 2021, No 19-24.773). The lesson for today is simple: expect the French court where the house sits to hear the reduction claim, and expect it to classify the claim under French conflicts method. Your defence is not to deny the court, but to arrive with a valid Article 22 choice and, where the 2021 levy could apply, with lifetime planning that already gave each child at least the French-equivalent value.
II. How do I get the French notaire to accept my English will and protect my spouse in practice?
A. What paperwork will the French notaire demand for your English will?
The notaire is not an adviser you can skip: in France, the transfer of a house on death passes through the notarial settlement (règlement de la succession), the land register entry and the tax filing. A will only helps if the notaire can read it, trust it and fit it into French forms. Start with what a will is in French law: “Le testament est un acte par lequel le testateur dispose, pour le temps où il n’existera plus, de tout ou partie de ses biens ou de ses droits et qu’il peut révoquer.” That definition is deliberately wide, and it is also revocable at any time, which means your latest will governs and older English wills should be expressly revoked to avoid parallel documents pointing in different directions. The reference is Article 895 of the Civil Code.
As to form, many British owners already hold exactly what French law recognises. A will wholly written, dated and signed by hand is valid in both countries: French law states 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.” The testament olographe (holographic will) needs no witness and no notaire, which is why a careful handwritten English will with an express choice-of-law clause can work in France. Wills signed before two witnesses in England, the everyday English format, are in practice also received by French notaires, but they invite questions: the notaire may ask for proof of English law on execution, and the file moves faster when a French testament authentique (notarial will dictated to the notaire before two witnesses) mirrors the English will for the French assets. One document per country, saying the same thing, is the gold standard. The texts are Article 970 of the Civil Code and, for gifts of the whole estate, Article 1003 of the Civil Code, which defines the universal legacy: “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.” If your English will leaves “my whole estate to my spouse”, that is a legs universel, and the surviving spouse will still need a court order (envoi en possession) unless the will was notarial in form, another reason to double up with a French will.
The probate file the notaire expects has four layers. First, the will itself plus every codicil, with a sworn French translation (traduction assermentée, a translation by a court-approved translator) attached to each English page. Second, the English grant of probate (the court document appointing the executor, called the executor, the person who winds up the estate), carrying an apostille under the Hague Convention, because French offices will not take a foreign public document at face value without it. Third, civil-status papers: death certificate, marriage certificate and birth certificates, likewise legalised and translated, proving who the heirs are. Fourth, the property papers: title deed (titre de propriété), recent tax bills and any loan statements, so the notaire can value the house and check charges. Owners who arrive with this bundle cut months off the settlement; owners who arrive with only the will spend the first three months in correspondence between the notaire, the English probate registry and the translator.
On the English side, keep your own will in good order too. The official English guidance tells anyone making a will to name the beneficiaries, to say what should happen if a beneficiary dies first, and to appoint the person who will administer the estate and carry out their wishes. Mirror those points across both wills: same beneficiaries, same substitute beneficiaries if the spouse dies first, same executors, and in each will an express reference to the other. Name at least one executor willing to deal with France, give the notaire the executor’s contact details in advance, and store the originals where they will be found: tell the executor, the spouse and the French notaire where each original sits. A will nobody can find is no will at all. (See gov.uk guidance on making a will.)
If the family disagrees about where the deceased really lived, or a child sues in France over the house, the dispute will be heard by the French courts, and recent case law confirms how widely they can hear it. The Court of Cassation held on 20 May 2026 that “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.” That ruling concerned a French national who died in Morocco, and it recalls that the jurisdiction given by the Regulation has mandatory force, citing the Court of Justice rulings in VA and ZA (C-645/20) and Hantoch (C-291/23). British owners should draw two lessons. Where the deceased held French nationality as well as British, the French courts can hear the whole succession, and a testamentary clause giving everything to the spouse does not strip them of that jurisdiction: the location of the assets is judged on the physical facts at death, not on what the will says. Where the deceased was only British, disputes centred on the French house still land before the French judge of the place where the property sits, and the reduction claim travels with it. The reference is the judgment of the First Civil Chamber of 20 May 2026, appeal No 23-20.436 (Cour de cassation, 20 May 2026, No 23-20.436). Draft and file as if the French judge will read everything, because that judge probably will.
B. How do you protect your spouse now and challenge a refusal if things go wrong?
Protecting the spouse starts while both partners are alive, because a will alone is often not enough. If you die with children and no valid choice of English law, intestacy and the fixed shares apply, and the Civil Code ranks heirs strictly: “Chacune de ces quatre catégories constitue un ordre d’héritiers qui exclut les suivants.” Children come first and exclude the spouse from ownership, leaving the spouse at best a life interest. See Article 734 of the Civil Code. Three tools, combined with the will, change that picture. First, the matrimonial property regime: British couples who married in England usually own assets under English separate-property ideas, but once resident in France they can adopt a French regime before a notaire, and a community with full allocation to the survivor (communauté universelle avec attribution intégrale) passes the common assets to the spouse outside the succession arithmetic. Second, the gift between spouses on death (donation au dernier vivant, also called donation entre époux), signed before a notaire, which lets the survivor take a larger share or a life interest (usufruit, the right to use the house and take its fruits for life) over the estate. Third, life assurance (assurance-vie), which pays out outside the succession and is the standard French vehicle for protecting a spouse, within its own premium limits. Each tool has tax and cost consequences, so take them as a package in one notarial appointment rather than piecemeal across years.
Time limits then decide everything, and they run fast. The heir who wants to claw back excessive gifts must sue within strict periods: “Le délai de prescription de l’action en réduction est fixé à cinq ans à compter de l’ouverture de la succession, ou à deux ans à compter du jour où les héritiers ont eu connaissance de l’atteinte portée à leur réserve, sans jamais pouvoir excéder dix ans à compter du décès.” A child who learns late that the French house was given away still has two years from discovery, capped at ten years from death. Symmetrically, the notaire now has a statutory warning duty: “Lorsque le notaire constate, lors du règlement de la succession, que les droits réservataires d’un héritier sont susceptibles d’être atteints par les libéralités effectuées par le défunt, il informe chaque héritier concerné et connu, individuellement et, le cas échéant, avant tout partage, de son droit de demander la réduction des libéralités qui excèdent la quotité disponible.” Expect that letter if you are a protected heir, and treat it as the starting gun for advice, not as background noise. Both passages come from Article 921 of the Civil Code.
If a notaire refuses your English will, or a sibling blocks the settlement, work through the challenge ladder in order. Ask for the refusal in writing, with the exact legal ground: form, translation, proof of English law, or the fixed share. Cure what can be cured within weeks: sworn translation, apostille, a legal opinion (consultation juridique) on English execution rules, or a fresh French mirror will if the testator is still alive. If the block is the fixed share itself, put the holder on notice (mise en demeure) to complete the settlement, then apply to the court for partition (assignation en partage) and, for a protected heir, add the reduction claim within the periods above. Never let the file sleep: limitation runs against the silent, and a house left undivided accumulates taxes, insurance and co-ownership bills while the family argues.
Tax follows the civil analysis but obeys its own territorial rule, and it can bite even when the civil fight is won. The General Tax Code provides that French transfer duties catch French-situated property even where the deceased was not a French tax resident: “Les biens meubles et immeubles, que ces derniers soient possédés directement ou indirectement, situés en France” are taxable “lorsque le donateur ou le défunt n’a pas son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article précité.” In other words, the French house is taxed in France whether the owner died in London or in Bergerac, and the France-United Kingdom double-tax treaty then decides how the British tax bill gives credit for the French one. The full mechanics, allowances and treaty credit are set out in the companion guide on inheritance tax for British heirs, which should be read alongside this article, and the text is Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code. For owners in Paris and Ile-de-France, add one local reflex: high-value Paris property pushes estates into the top duty bands quickly, the competent offices are the Paris notarial chambers and the non-resident tax services, and valuations should be evidenced by agency appraisals at the date of death, because the tax office checks Paris prices closely.
Conclusion
Three documents decide whether your English will protects your spouse or collapses at the first meeting with the notaire: a will with an express choice of English law under Article 22, a French mirror will in matching terms, and a probate bundle with apostille and sworn translations ready to file. Add the spouse-protection package, matrimonial regime, gift between spouses and life assurance, and diary the dates, because reduction claims expire five years after death or two years after discovery. If a child lives in France, assume the 2021 top-up levy applies and give value early rather than litigating late. Sign the clause now, while both partners can still sign together.
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Related reading: British heirs and a French house: inheritance tax, allowances and the treaty; the family property company for a French house; how British spouses can change matrimonial property regime; whether a UK birth certificate needs an apostille.