You open the shutters of your Dordogne farmhouse after three months back in Kent, and your stomach drops. The back door hangs off its hinges, the television is gone, drawers lie emptied across the bedroom floor, and the small safe you kept in the wardrobe has been ripped from the wall. As a British second-home owner in France since Brexit, you are now a visitor with a house, a burglary, and two clocks ticking at once. The first clock is criminal: you need a French police complaint, known as a plainte, or nothing else moves. The second clock is financial: your French home insurer gives you only two working days to declare a theft, and a single misstep can hand it a reason to pay nothing. This guide walks you through both battles in order, from the gendarmerie counter to the insurer’s expert visit, and finishes with exactly how to challenge a refusal, a forfeiture or an offer that undervalues everything you lost.
French law treats burglary as an aggravated form of theft with serious penalties, it obliges every police station to take your complaint, and it strictly frames what your insurer can and cannot hold against you. The pages below explain each rule in plain English, with the official texts quoted so you can rely on them in your letters. Every French term is explained the first time it appears, and every deadline is given the way your contract counts it.
I. You Have Just Been Burgled in France: How Do You File the Complaint and Protect the Evidence?
A. Where and how do you file the plainte (criminal complaint) when you live in the UK?
Start with the offence itself. French criminal law defines theft simply: “Le vol est la soustraction frauduleuse de la chose d’autrui.” That is article 311-1 of the Code pénal, the criminal code, and it covers everything from a stolen bicycle to an emptied house. The basic penalty is set by article 311-3: “Le vol est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 45 000 euros d’amende.” But a break-in at a dwelling is punished far more severely. Article 311-4 raises the penalty to five years’ imprisonment and a 75,000 euro fine in several situations that describe a typical holiday-home burglary word for word: “Le vol est puni de cinq ans d’emprisonnement et de 75 000 euros d’amende”, notably “Lorsqu’il est commis dans un local d’habitation ou dans un lieu utilisé ou destiné à l’entrepôt de fonds, valeurs, marchandises ou matériels”, and “Lorsqu’il est précédé, accompagné ou suivi d’un acte de destruction, dégradation ou détérioration”. A forced door plus a dwelling means the facts you report are, on paper, a five-year offence, and the police must treat them accordingly. Tell the officer at the counter that the entry involved breaking and damage, point to the marks, and make sure the words effraction (breaking in) and dégradation (damage) appear in the written statement, because that wording follows your file all the way to the prosecutor and to your insurer.
The next rule surprises many British victims, and it works in your favour. Any police station or gendarmerie in France must take your complaint, wherever the burglary happened. Article 15-3 of the Code de procédure pénale, the criminal procedure code, provides: “Les officiers et agents de police judiciaire sont tenus de recevoir les plaintes déposées par les victimes d’infractions à la loi pénale, y compris lorsque ces plaintes sont déposées dans un service ou une unité de police judiciaire territorialement incompétents.” So if you discover the break-in on a Saturday evening far from your house, or you have already driven to the airport area, walk into the nearest commissariat (police station in a town) or gendarmerie (military-status police covering villages and rural areas) and file there. The station forwards the file to the locally competent unit. The same article guarantees your proof of filing: “Tout dépôt de plainte fait l’objet d’un procès-verbal et donne lieu à la délivrance immédiate d’un récépissé à la victime”. That récépissé, the filing receipt, is the single most important piece of paper of the whole affair: your insurer will demand it, and no claim file is complete without it. If the officer offers only an oral statement or a main courante (a mere incident note with no investigation), refuse politely and insist on a plainte with a récépissé. A main courante triggers no investigation and satisfies no insurer.
If the burglar is unknown, which is the usual case, you can start the process online before travelling. The official service-public.fr pages confirm that victims of theft and burglary by an unknown person may use the online complaint service, and the interior ministry’s Ma Sécurité portal lists cambriolage (burglary) among the offences covered by online filing. In practice you complete a pré-plainte en ligne (online pre-complaint), then attend the chosen station to sign the procès-verbal (the written record). If you are still in the UK when you learn the news, from a neighbour or your alarm company, you have two practical options: travel promptly and file in person, or write immediately to the procureur de la République (the public prosecutor) at the tribunal judiciaire (the main civil and criminal court) of the place where the house stands, by recorded delivery, describing the facts, the address, the dates of your absence and the list of missing items. A complaint sent to the prosecutor counts as a complaint, and the date on the receipt protects you against any accusation of delay. Keep a copy of everything, and ask a French-speaking friend, your estate agent or your lawyer to accompany you or to translate, because the statement is drafted in French and you will sign it. The British government’s emergency help pages for nationals in France confirm that consular staff can help you contact the local police and explain the procedure, which is worth using if you arrive with limited French; see Emergency help for British nationals in France for the current contacts.
Once filed, your complaint goes to the procureur de la République, who decides what happens next: investigation, prosecution, alternative measures, or classement sans suite (closure with no further action). The service-public guidance states plainly that the prosecutor decides the follow-up and that you receive the filing receipt. A closure letter is not the end of your rights. Article 85 of the criminal procedure code lets any person claiming to be the victim of a crime or délit (a mid-level offence, which burglary is) file a complaint directly with the investigating judge, the juge d’instruction, and thereby become a partie civile (civil party claiming damages inside the criminal case): “Toute personne qui se prétend lésée par un crime ou un délit peut en portant plainte se constituer partie civile devant le juge d’instruction compétent”, subject to the admissibility conditions that the same article then lists. That route is open once the prosecutor has told you no prosecution will follow, or once three months have passed since your complaint: “soit qu’un délai de trois mois s’est écoulé depuis qu’elle a déposé plainte devant ce magistrat, contre récépissé ou par lettre recommandée avec demande d’avis de réception”. For a British owner this matters twice over. First, becoming a partie civile forces an investigation where a simple complaint stalled. Second, it lets the criminal court itself award you damages against the convicted burglar, which is often faster and cheaper than a separate civil lawsuit from abroad. You will need a French lawyer for that step, but the three-month rule means the door stays open while you organise yourself from the UK.
B. What evidence should you preserve in the first 48 hours so the claim survives?
The hours after discovery decide whether your insurer pays in full, haggles, or walks away. British owners make one classic mistake: they tidy up. They straighten the rooms, throw away the smashed lock, and call the carpenter before anyone has photographed anything. Do the exact opposite. Leave everything as you found it until the police have attended and you have photographed every room yourself. Take wide shots of each room, close-ups of every point of forced entry, the damaged frames, the emptied cupboards, the wall where the safe hung, and any footprints or tool marks. Photograph the outside too: the garden gate, the lane, any ladder marks under a window. Modern phones stamp the date, which is useful, but also email the pictures to yourself the same day so the sending date proves when they were taken. If valuables remain scattered, film a slow walk-through video with commentary in English describing what is missing from each spot. This material serves twice: it feeds the criminal file, and it answers the insurer’s expert when, months later, he asks how you prove the television ever existed.
Second, build the paper inventory immediately, while the shock is fresh. List every stolen or damaged item with its approximate purchase date, price, brand and serial number where you have it. Then hunt for proof of ownership: invoices, order confirmations, bank and credit card statements showing the purchase, guarantee cards, manuals, and older photographs of the rooms in which the items appear. Holiday snaps showing the television on the wall or the bicycles by the pool are genuine evidence of possession. If you bought items in the UK and carried them over, the UK receipts count exactly as much as French ones, so ask relatives or check email archives for confirmations from retailers. Insurers systematically discount undocumented items, sometimes to zero, so every receipt you attach converts directly into euros of indemnity. Send the insurer the inventory quickly but label it provisional and explicitly reserve the right to complete it, because you will remember further items over the following days and a file marked final is harder to reopen.
Third, consider a constat by a commissaire de justice, the officer formerly called huissier de justice, who is a sworn public officer whose written findings carry strong weight in French courts. For a few hundred euros, this officer travels to the house, records the damage, photographs the scene and draws up a formal report that neither an insurer nor a court lightly contradicts. It is the single best antidote to the argument that you exaggerated or that the damage predated the burglary. The legal foundation for preserving evidence before any trial is article 145 of the Code de procédure civile, the civil procedure code: “S’il existe un motif légitime de conserver ou d’établir avant tout procès la preuve de faits dont pourrait dépendre la solution d’un litige, les mesures d’instruction légalement admissibles peuvent être ordonnées à la demande de tout intéressé, sur requête ou en référé.” In plain terms, a judge can order evidence-preserving measures before any lawsuit at the request of any interested person, and a constat requested on your own initiative plays the same practical role without even needing the judge. For a second home whose burglary may end in a disputed claim, ordering that report within days is money well spent, and the cost itself can be claimed as part of your loss.
Fourth, keep the physical traces. Do not discard the broken lock, the forced shutter blade, the cut alarm cable or the damaged door. Bag them, label them and store them. If the burglar left tools, gloves or cigarette ends, do not touch them with bare hands; call the police and let the technical teams decide about fingerprints and DNA. Keep the alarm company’s incident log and every message from the neighbour who raised the alert, with dates and times. If you had guests, cleaners or tradespeople with keys, note their names for the police, because the insurer will ask who had access and an evasive answer looks like concealment. Finally, remember the civil fallback if the thief is identified. Article 1240 of the Code civil, the civil code, states: “Tout fait quelconque de l’homme, qui cause à autrui un dommage, oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arrivé à le réparer.” Any person whose fault causes damage must repair it, which is the basis for claiming the uninsured remainder, the excess and the moral distress directly from the convicted burglar. And the time limit for that personal action is comfortable: article 2224 provides that “Les actions personnelles ou mobilières se prescrivent par cinq ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant de l’exercer.” Five years from the day you knew or should have known the facts. The criminal complaint and the preserved evidence are what let you use those five years effectively instead of watching them expire.
II. Will Your French Home Insurer Pay, and How Do You Challenge a Refusal or a Low Offer?
A. How do you declare the burglary to the insurer within the two-working-day deadline?
Your assurance habitation, the French home insurance contract, almost always includes a garantie vol, the theft cover, but that cover only works if you declare the loss on time and in the contractual form. The statute sets a floor that no contract may go below. Article L113-2 of the Code des assurances, the insurance code, obliges the policyholder: “De donner avis à l’assureur, dès qu’il en a eu connaissance et au plus tard dans le délai fixé par le contrat, de tout sinistre de nature à entraîner la garantie de l’assureur.” You must notify the insurer as soon as you learn of the loss and at the latest within the contractual deadline. Then comes the protective minimum: “Ce délai ne peut être inférieur à cinq jours ouvrés.” That deadline cannot be shorter than five working days, with the decisive exception for your case: “Ce délai minimal est ramené à deux jours ouvrés en cas de vol”. For theft, the minimum is reduced to two working days, the jours ouvrés, meaning days actually worked, Monday to Friday excluding public holidays. The official service-public guidance on home insurance and theft confirms it: you must declare the theft within a minimum of two working days after learning of it, and the declaration may be made at the agency, by recorded letter on paper or electronically, online or by telephone depending on the contract. Because you live in Britain and may learn of the burglary through a third party, the clock runs from when you personally gained knowledge, not from the night of the break-in. Still, never test that argument if you can avoid it: telephone the insurer the day you learn the news, follow up the same day by email or through the online claim portal, and then send the formal recorded letter. Each step timestamps your diligence.
What you send matters as much as when. The service-public checklist for theft claims lists the standard attachments: the complaint receipt, photographs of the break-in and damage, invoices or guarantee slips for the stolen goods, and where possible older photographs showing the items in the home. Add your provisional inventory with values, the constat of the commissaire de justice if you ordered one, the alarm log, and proof of your absence dates such as ferry or Eurotunnel bookings, because long absence is the issue insurers probe first in second-home files. Read your policy’s second-home clauses before the expert visits. Many contracts cap unoccupancy, the non-occupation or inhabitation period, often at 60 or 90 consecutive days, require working shutters, locks or an alarm to be activated, and limit valuables, jewellery and cash to low sub-ceilings unless specifically scheduled. If you exceeded the unoccupancy limit or left the alarm off, do not lie about it; misrepresentation poisons the whole file and can cost you the entire cover. Instead, gather counter-arguments: the neighbour who visited weekly, the gardener’s invoices, the connected alarm subscription, the timer switches on the lights. And know one statutory shield by heart. If the insurer argues that your long absences aggravated the risk and should void the cover, article L113-4 answers that an insurer which knew of the situation and carried on regardless has accepted it: “l’assureur ne peut plus se prévaloir de l’aggravation des risques quand, après en avoir été informé de quelque manière que ce soit, il a manifesté son consentement au maintien de l’assurance, spécialement en continuant à recevoir les primes ou en payant, après un sinistre, une indemnité.” An insurer that knew of the aggravation in any way and showed consent to continue, especially by going on taking your premiums, can no longer rely on it. If you told the insurer at subscription that the house is a résidence secondaire (second home) occupied a few months a year, and it took your premiums for years, that history is your evidence.
Then comes the expert’s visit, the expertise. The insurer appoints a loss adjuster who inspects the damage, checks the signs of forced entry, reviews your inventory and values each item. Prepare for that visit as carefully as for a court hearing. Be present yourself or send a representative who knows the house, lay out the invoices and photographs item by item, walk the expert through the entry route, and hand over the constat. Do not carry out permanent repairs before the visit except emergency weatherproofing such as boarding a smashed window, and photograph even that. Understand the valuation rule in advance so the figures do not shock you. Article L121-1 states the indemnity principle: “L’assurance relative aux biens est un contrat d’indemnité ; l’indemnité due par l’assureur à l’assuré ne peut pas dépasser le montant de la valeur de la chose assurée au moment du sinistre.” Property insurance is an indemnity contract, and the payment cannot exceed the value of the insured thing at the moment of the loss. That means depreciation, the vétusté, applies unless your contract includes new-for-old, the valeur à neuf option. A five-year-old television is indemnified at its current value, not its shop price, and jewellery without scheduling hits the sub-ceiling. Check whether your contract carries valeur à neuf, gather proof of recent purchases that suffer little depreciation, and challenge any depreciation rate that looks plucked from the air by asking for the scale used. Sign nothing at the end of the visit except an attendance note, and never sign a final settlement, the quittance, while you still dispute the figures.
B. How do you challenge a refusal, a forfeiture (déchéance) or an undervalued offer?
Refusals follow familiar scripts, and each has a legal answer. The most common is late declaration leading to déchéance, the forfeiture of cover. Here the statute protects you twice. First, where the contract provides for forfeiture for late notification, it can be held against you only if the insurer proves your delay harmed it: “Lorsqu’elle est prévue par une clause du contrat, la déchéance pour déclaration tardive au regard des délais prévus au 3° et au 4° ci-dessus ne peut être opposée à l’assuré que si l’assureur établit que le retard dans la déclaration lui a causé un préjudice.” The insurer must establish that the delay caused it prejudice, which a few days rarely do when the police file and the photographs exist. Second, forfeiture can never be raised where the delay comes from chance or force majeure: “Elle ne peut également être opposée dans tous les cas où le retard est dû à un cas fortuit ou de force majeure.” Learning of the burglary weeks later because you live in Manchester, with no alarm and a neighbour who was himself away, is precisely the kind of cas fortuit (unforeseeable event) to plead, with travel records and witness statements attached. So when the refusal letter invokes late declaration, reply by recorded delivery demanding the exact clause number, the proof of the alleged prejudice, and an explanation of why your circumstances abroad were ignored. Most late-declaration refusals collapse at that first serious letter.
The second script is the absence of signs of forced entry. Many policies exclude vol sans effraction, theft without break-in, suspecting an inside job or gross negligence such as keys left under the mat. Counter it with the police file, the constat, the locksmith’s report on the forced cylinder, and the alarm log showing the intrusion time. If entry used your own keys stolen earlier, produce the earlier complaint for that theft. The third script is the unoccupancy exclusion: the house stood empty beyond the contractual limit, so the cover is suspended. Counter with proof of surveillance and with the article L113-4 argument above where the insurer always knew the pattern of occupation. The fourth script is undervaluation rather than refusal: heavy depreciation, items dismissed as unproven, valuables capped, and a plump excess, the franchise, deducted. Counter each line in writing, attach the missing invoices you have since found, request the depreciation scale and the basis of each cap, and propose a joint counter-valuation. At every stage, put the insurer on formal notice, the mise en demeure, by recorded letter giving a clear deadline, usually fifteen days, to review its position, because that letter later proves its resistance was deliberate.
If the file stays blocked, escalate in the order French practice expects. First, the insurer’s internal complaints department, then an independent counter-expertise: appoint your own expert, at your cost initially, to produce a reasoned valuation challenging the insurer’s figures point by point. Insurers take a documented counter-expertise seriously because it foreshadows what a court-appointed expert would say. Next, the insurance mediator, the médiateur de l’assurance, a free out-of-court process whose opinion, while not binding, shifts negotiations and is followed in a large share of files. Throughout, watch the limitation clock, because insurance actions expire fast. Article L114-1 provides: “Toutes actions dérivant d’un contrat d’assurance sont prescrites par deux ans à compter de l’événement qui y donne naissance.” All actions arising from an insurance contract are time-barred after two years from the event giving rise to them. Two years from the burglary is shorter than it feels when you live abroad and correspond in a second language. The same article adds a precious qualification for owners who discovered the loss late: time does not run “En cas de sinistre, que du jour où les intéressés en ont eu connaissance, s’ils prouvent qu’ils l’ont ignoré jusque-là.” In loss cases, time runs only from the day those concerned gained knowledge of it, if they prove they were unaware until then. Keep the proof of when you learned the news, because it fixes your starting point. And note the contrast with the general five-year limit of article 2224 quoted above for your action against the thief: the two-year clock governs your claim against the insurer, the five-year clock your claim against the burglar, so pursue both tracks without confusing them. Sending a recorded complaint, appointing the mediator or filing suit interrupts the running of time, so never let the second anniversary approach with the file still sitting on an adjuster’s desk.
The final forum is the court, and you have two doors. The civil door is the tribunal judiciaire of the place where the house stands or where the insurer’s branch sits, where you claim the indemnity plus interest and the costs of the constat and counter-expertise. The criminal door, where the burglar is identified and prosecuted, is the constitution as partie civile described earlier, letting the criminal court award damages for everything the insurance left unpaid: the excess, the capped jewellery, the spoiled holiday, the trips back and forth. British claimants sometimes hesitate to litigate from abroad, but representation by a French lawyer is routine, many steps can be handled with scanned instructions, and fee-shifting rules let the losing insurer contribute to your costs. The practical lesson of hundreds of second-home files is simple. The owners who recover in full are not the ones with the most expensive policy. They are the ones who filed the plainte first, photographed before tidying, declared within days, answered the expert with invoices rather than adjectives, and challenged every refusal in writing with the article numbers attached. Be that owner, and the burglary stays a bad memory instead of becoming a second loss.
Conclusion
A burglary at your French second home tests two systems at once, and both reward speed and paper. File the plainte at any station, secure the récépissé, and write to the prosecutor if you are still in Britain. Photograph before tidying, commission a constat where the stakes justify it, and build the inventory with receipts from both sides of the Channel. Declare to the insurer within two working days of learning the news, attach the complaint receipt and the photographs, and prepare the expert visit with the depreciation rules in mind. Then, if the answer is no or too little, challenge it methodically: demand the clause and the proof of prejudice, invoke the late-discovery rules, seek counter-expertise and mediation, and file in court before the two-year insurance clock expires while keeping the five-year action against the thief alive. Handle the file in that order and a French burglary remains what it should be, an insured misfortune with a legal remedy, rather than a dispute you lose from 6,000 miles away.
Need a quick opinion on your case?
For a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm, call +33 6 46 60 58 22 (Maître Reda Kohen). You can also reach us through our contact page. We assist British clients in Paris and across Île-de-France, as well as remotely throughout France.