Your mother has died in England, the French notary has read the will, and you now own a stone house in the Dordogne with your brother and your sister. You live in Kent, your sister lives in Lyon, and your brother has moved into the house “just for the winter” and changed the locks. The taxe foncière bill has arrived in all three names, the roof needs repairing, your sister wants to sell, your brother refuses to leave, and you are caught in the middle wondering whether English ideas about jointly owned property apply at all. They do not. From the death onwards, the house sits in indivision, the French regime of undivided co-ownership between heirs, and every decision about the house obeys French rules even though the family is British and the money is in sterling. This guide explains those rules in the order your problem presents itself: how decisions and bills are shared while the co-ownership lasts, what the sibling living in the house owes the others, how to force a sale when one heir blocks everything, and how to keep the house yourself when keeping it is the right answer. It gives the exact statutory tests, three recent Court of Cassation rulings you can rely on, and the practical routes for challenging what goes wrong. Our companion guide on English wills, forced heirship and the French notary covers how the shares were fixed; this guide covers what happens next.
Three principles organise everything that follows. First, nobody owns a particular bedroom: each heir owns an undivided share of the whole, so your third is a third of every tile and every bill. Second, the law prefers agreement but never lets one heir hold the others hostage indefinitely; every blocking position has a judicial answer with its own procedure and deadline. Third, money fixes most things: the sibling who occupies, improves or damages the house settles the account in euros at the division, and the sibling who wants the house pays the others a balancing sum. Keep these three ideas in mind and the detail below falls into place.
I. Living With the House You Own Together: Decisions, Bills and the Sibling Who Stays
A. Who decides what, and who pays the bills while the co-ownership lasts
The first shock for British families is that selling, giving away or mortgaging the French house requires the agreement of every co-owner. The official service-public guidance on succession and undivided ownership between heirs states the rule plainly: the most important acts concerning undivided property, including sale and gifts of buildings, must be decided unanimously, and it lists only narrow exceptions such as a co-owner unable to express their wishes or one who endangers the common interest, in which case the others can apply to the court (see Succession: undivided ownership between heirs, service-public.fr). One sibling cannot therefore sell the house over the others’ heads, but symmetrically one sibling can veto an ordinary private sale simply by refusing to sign. That veto is the starting point of most British family disputes over a French house, and everything in the second part of this guide is the answer to it.
Day-to-day management is deliberately easier. Article 815-3 of the Civil Code provides that the co-owner or co-owners holding at least two-thirds of the undivided rights may, by that majority, carry out acts of administration of the undivided property, give a general management mandate to one of their number or to a third party, sell undivided movables to pay the debts and charges of the undivided ownership, and conclude or renew leases other than farm, commercial, industrial or craft leases. So two siblings holding two-thirds between them can instruct the insurance, renew the ordinary letting of the gîte, appoint the local agent and sell the deceased’s furniture to pay the succession bills, provided they inform the third sibling, because decisions taken without that information cannot be held against the others. But the same article draws a hard line: “le consentement de tous les indivisaires est requis pour effectuer tout acte qui ne ressortit pas à l’exploitation normale des biens indivis”, the consent of all the co-owners is required for anything outside normal management and for any act of disposal. Commissioning a new swimming pool, granting a long building lease or selling the house itself needs everyone, and a sibling who goes ahead alone binds only themselves.
Bills follow the shares, not the use. The taxe foncière, the French local property tax on owners, the buildings insurance, the co-ownership charges where the house is a flat, and the succession debts are divided in proportion to each heir’s undivided rights, and the sibling who advances them has an account against the others at the division. Where a sibling improves the house at their own expense, article 815-13 of the Civil Code states the accounting rule: “Lorsqu’un indivisaire a amélioré à ses frais l’état d’un bien indivis, il doit lui en être tenu compte selon l’équité, eu égard à ce dont la valeur du bien se trouve augmentée au temps du partage ou de l’aliénation.” A sibling who pays for a new roof or a compliant septic tank out of their own pocket is therefore credited, fairly, by reference to the increase in the property’s value at the time of the division or sale, and the same article credits necessary preservation spending even where it added no value. The reverse also applies: the sibling who strips the fixtures, neglects the house until the damp spreads or fells the mature walnuts for firewood answers for the loss in value caused by their own act or fault. Keep every invoice, every bank transfer and every photograph of the before and after, because ten years later nobody remembers who paid the roofer, and the notary settling the accounts works from paper, not memory.
Emergencies have their own fast route that British families underuse. Article 815-6 of the Civil Code provides that the president of the tribunal judiciaire, the ordinary civil court, “peut prescrire ou autoriser toutes les mesures urgentes que requiert l’intérêt commun”, may order or authorise all urgent measures required by the common interest, including authorising a co-owner to collect a provision from the debts owed to the co-ownership to meet urgent needs, appointing one co-owner as administrator, if necessary against security, or appointing a receiver. A burst pipe flooding the ground floor in January, an insurer threatening to cancel cover on an empty house, a dangerous chimney the mayor orders repaired: any co-owner can go to the court president alone and obtain authority to act and to draw the funds, without waiting for the brother in Kent to answer his post. This is an interim protective jurisdiction, so use it for genuine urgency and document the danger with the insurer’s letter, the mayor’s order or the plumber’s report.
B. The sibling who lives in the house: when living there rent-free becomes a debt
The most bitter dispute in British successions is also the most misunderstood. One sibling occupies the French house full-time while the others pay a third of the bills each and receive nothing. English instincts suggest two opposite errors: either that an owner can live in their own property for free, or that any sole occupation automatically triggers rent. French law takes a middle position with a precise test, and two 2025 Court of Cassation rulings drew its boundaries in terms every British family should memorise. The starting text is article 815-9 of the Civil Code: “Chaque indivisaire peut user et jouir des biens indivis conformément à leur destination, dans la mesure compatible avec le droit des autres indivisaires et avec l’effet des actes régulièrement passés au cours de l’indivision. A défaut d’accord entre les intéressés, l’exercice de ce droit est réglé, à titre provisoire, par le président du tribunal. L’indivisaire qui use ou jouit privativement de la chose indivise est, sauf convention contraire, redevable d’une indemnité.” Each co-owner may use and enjoy the undivided property consistently with its purpose and compatibly with the others’ rights; failing agreement, the court president regulates that exercise provisionally; and the co-owner who uses or enjoys the property privately owes compensation unless otherwise agreed.
The whole question is therefore what counts as private use, jouissance privative. On 30 April 2025 the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation quashed a Montpellier appeal ruling that had ordered a separated co-owner to pay an occupation indemnity merely because he admitted living alone in the jointly bought property since the separation (Court of Cassation, First Civil Chamber, 30 April 2025, appeal no. 23-16.963, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:C100254). The Court held: “En statuant ainsi, alors que la circonstance que l’un des titulaires d’un droit de jouissance indivise occupe seul l’immeuble ne caractérise pas, en soi, une occupation privative, laquelle suppose en outre que son occupation exclue la même utilisation par son cotitulaire, la cour d’appel a violé le texte susvisé.” The mere fact that one holder of an undivided right of use occupies the building alone does not in itself establish private occupation, which additionally requires that their occupation excludes the same use by the co-owner. Demonstrating that your brother sleeps there every night is therefore only half the case; you must also show that his occupation shuts the others out, through changed locks, an express refusal to share the keys, a declared exclusive use or conduct that in practice bars concurrent enjoyment.
A companion ruling sharpened the test from the other side. On 26 March 2025 the same chamber quashed an Amiens ruling that had fixed an occupation indemnity from an agreed date without any inquiry into exclusion (Court of Cassation, First Civil Chamber, 26 March 2025, appeal no. 23-19.685, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:C100206). The Court recalled the full text of article 815-9 and then stated the governing formula: “La jouissance privative d’un immeuble indivis résulte de l’impossibilité de droit ou de fait pour les coïndivisaires d’user de la chose.” Private enjoyment of an undivided building results from the legal or factual impossibility for the co-owners to use the property. It then quashed the appeal decision because the judges had “sans rechercher si l’occupation du bien indivis par M. [O] [B] excluait un usage concurrent de Mme [W]”, decided without investigating whether the occupation excluded concurrent use by the other co-owner. For British siblings this is a practical litigation checklist. If you are the excluded sibling, gather the locksmith’s invoice for the changed barrel, the text messages refusing you the alarm code, the)। If you are the occupying sibling, do the opposite: offer keys in writing, propose a calendar sharing the house across school holidays, and keep the written proof, because a court that finds concurrent use was genuinely possible owes no indemnity even for years of sole factual occupation.
Where private use is established, the indemnity is assessed by reference to the rental value of the property, apportioned to the excluded shares, and it runs as a credit in the final division accounts rather than as monthly rent in the ordinary sense. Two procedural points decide real cases. First, failing agreement between the siblings, the president of the tribunal judiciaire regulates the exercise of use provisionally under article 815-9, which means you can obtain an interim order fixing who lives where and on what financial terms without waiting years for the full division trial. Second, the claim is subject to time limits that punish passivity: the sibling who tolerates a decade of exclusive occupation and then presents a ten-year bill may find the older years time-barred, while the sibling who sends a formal demand through a French lawyer and then issues proceedings preserves the account. Do not rely on English limitation instincts; take French advice on the applicable time bar the moment exclusion becomes clear, and put every demand in writing in French.
II. Ending the Deadlock: Forcing the Sale or Keeping the House Yourself
A. Forcing the division: the anytime right, the two-thirds court sale and auction as a last resort
French law states the exit right in the bluntest sentence of the Civil Code. Article 815 provides: “Nul ne peut être contraint à demeurer dans l’indivision et le partage peut toujours être provoqué, à moins qu’il n’y ait été sursis par jugement ou convention.” No one can be forced to remain in undivided ownership, and division can always be demanded unless postponed by a court decision or an agreement. A sibling who “refuses to sell” therefore has no veto on the principle of division itself; they have, at most, a say on the method and the timing. In practice the exit proceeds in three stages of increasing pressure, and British heirs should understand each stage before choosing where to start.
The first stage is the notarial division by agreement, the partage amiable. The service-public guidance on sharing succession property explains that division means attributing to each heir property equal in value to their undivided rights, that lots of unequal value are balanced by a cash payment called the soulte, and that a notary is compulsory where the succession includes a building (see Partage des biens de la succession, service-public.fr). Start here even when relations are poor, through a French notary and with an independent valuation, because a court later asks what attempts were made, and because an agreed division costs a fraction of a litigated one. Put the valuation, the proposed lots and the soulte calculation in a dated written proposal so the refusal is documented.
The second stage is the court-authorised sale on a two-thirds majority, the mechanism most British families have never heard of and the one that breaks most deadlocks. Article 815-5-1 of the Civil Code provides that, except where the property is split between bare ownership and usufruct or where a specially protected heir is concerned, “l’aliénation d’un bien indivis peut être autorisée par le tribunal judiciaire, à la demande de l’un ou des indivisaires titulaires d’au moins deux tiers des droits indivis”, the sale of an undivided property may be authorised by the court at the request of co-owners holding at least two-thirds of the undivided rights. The procedure runs through a notary: the two-thirds majority records its intention to sell before the notary, the notary serves that intention on the other co-owners within one month, and if any co-owner objects or stays silent for three months from service, the notary records the position in formal minutes and the court may authorise the sale provided it does not excessively harm the other co-owners’ rights. The sale then proceeds by licitation, auction, and the proceeds cannot be reinvested except to pay the co-ownership’s debts and charges. For three siblings in equal shares, two of them can therefore force the sale of the Dordogne house through this route even against the third’s opposition, provided the court is satisfied the sale price and conditions are fair. The timetable matters: one month for service, three months for objections, then the court application, so count roughly half a year before the auction process even begins.
The third stage is the full judicial division, the partage judiciaire, available to any single co-owner with no majority requirement. The claim is brought before the tribunal judiciaire of the place where the succession opened, with a lawyer compulsory, and the application must describe the estate to be divided and state the claimant’s intentions on distribution, as the service-public guidance confirms. Article 1361 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides: “Le tribunal ordonne le partage, s’il peut avoir lieu, ou la vente par licitation si les conditions prévues à l’article 1378 sont réunies.” The court orders division in kind where possible, or sale by auction where the statutory conditions are met, and it may appoint a notary to draw up the division deed. In complex British successions the court typically appoints both a notary to conduct the accounting operations and a supervising judge, the juge-commissaire, to oversee them, which stretches the case over one to three years but produces a fully enforceable settlement of every account: occupation indemnities, improvement credits, bill reimbursements and the final lots or sale price.
Two defences regularly invoked by the blocking sibling deserve honest treatment. The first is the request to postpone the division, the sursis au partage. Article 820 of the Civil Code allows the court, at any co-owner’s request, to postpone division “pour deux années au plus si sa réalisation immédiate risque de porter atteinte à la valeur des biens indivis”, for up to two years where immediate division risks harming the property’s value, or where a co-owner needs the delay to take over a family business. A collapsing local market documented by genuine valuation evidence can therefore buy time, but the ceiling is two years, not indefinite, and mere reluctance to sell never qualifies. The second supposed defence is demanding an auction in the hope the family buyer cannot follow; here the Court of Cassation closed a common error on 5 February 2025 (First Civil Chamber, appeal no. 21-15.932, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:C100087). The Court recalled, approving article 1377, first paragraph, of the Code of Civil Procedure, that “la licitation des immeubles indivis ne doit être ordonnée que s’ils ne peuvent être facilement partagés en nature”, auction of undivided buildings may only be ordered where they cannot easily be divided in kind, and it quashed a Lyon ruling that had ordered auction of several buildings merely because the co-owners disagreed on how to divide. Disagreement alone never justifies the auctioneer’s hammer; the court must investigate whether the property can conveniently be divided in kind, and a single house that one sibling can take with a balancing payment points towards attribution, not auction.
B. Keeping the house: buy-out lots, the preferential award and the tax bill on the way out
Forcing a sale is not always the goal. Often one sibling genuinely wants the house: the sister in Lyon plans to retire there, or the brother already living there can raise a French mortgage to buy the others out. French law offers two consensual routes and one judicial lifeline for keeping the property in the family. The consensual routes are the agreed attribution of the house to one heir within the division, with a soulte balancing payment to the others, and the partial division leaving only the house undivided while everything else is settled. Both require the notary, both require a serious valuation, and both should address in the same deed the occupation indemnity for past exclusive use, the reimbursement of bills advanced and the credit for improvements, so that no account survives to poison the next decade. A clean notarial deed that settles every cross-claim at once is worth more than a quick handshake that leaves the indemnity issue open.
The judicial lifeline is the attribution préférentielle, the preferential award of the dwelling. Article 831-2 of the Civil Code provides that the surviving spouse or any co-owner heir may also request the preferential award: “De la propriété ou du droit au bail du local qui lui sert effectivement d’habitation, s’il y avait sa résidence à l’époque du décès, et du mobilier le garnissant”, of the ownership or tenancy right of the premises actually serving as their home, where they resided there at the time of death, together with its furnishings. The sibling who already lived in the French house at the death, perhaps caring for the elderly parent in their final years, can therefore ask the court to award them the house within the division, paying a soulte where its value exceeds their share. Three practical conditions decide success: genuine residence at the death rather than a convenient move-in afterwards, the financial ability to pay the balancing sum, demonstrated by a mortgage offer in principle rather than optimistic assertions, and a valuation the court trusts. Raise the request expressly and early in the division proceedings, because a court cannot grant what nobody asks for, and support it with council-tax equivalents, utility bills and sworn statements from neighbours proving the residence predates the death.
Every exit has a price beyond the family arithmetic, and British heirs consistently underestimate it. The service-public guidance on sharing succession property warns that division by notarial deed attracts regulated notary fees on a sliding scale of the gross assets plus disbursements, and that certain divisions between co-heirs additionally attract a tax called the droit de partage, levied as a percentage of the estate’s value. The rate is fixed by article 746 of the General Tax Code: “Les partages de biens meubles et immeubles entre copropriétaires, cohéritiers et coassociés, à quelque titre que ce soit, pourvu qu’il en soit justifié, sont assujettis à un droit d’enregistrement ou à une taxe de publicité foncière de 2,50 %.” Divisions between co-owners, co-heirs and partners are subject to a registration duty or land-publicity tax of 2.50 per cent, with the reduced 1.80 and then 1.10 per cent rates reserved for divisions following separation, divorce or the break-up of a civil partnership. A British family dividing a 400,000 euro house therefore owes 10,000 euros of droit de partage on top of the notary’s fees, the mortgage costs of the sibling buying out the others and any capital-gains position on the soulte treated as a partial disposal. Obtain the notary’s detailed fee and tax estimate before committing to a buy-out figure, because a soulte calibrated without the tax is a promise the buyer cannot fund.
Finally, a signed division is not always the end. The service-public guidance records two challenge routes with strict clocks: an action to annul the division for violence or fraud, or for lesion exceeding one quarter where the estate contains no prior authorised acts, within five years of the division before the tribunal judiciaire of the place where the succession opened with a lawyer compulsory, and an action for a supplement in kind or money where a co-heir received less than their entitlement, within two years of the division. A sibling who discovers the house was deliberately undervalued by the occupying brother’s friendly estate agent, or who finds a forgotten English bank account that should have been in the estate, therefore has remedies, but both expire quickly and both require proof, not suspicion. Commission the second valuation before signing rather than the expert report after, and list every worldwide asset in the disclosure schedules, because the division signed on incomplete information is the dispute of the following year.
Conclusion
A French house inherited between British siblings rewards method and punishes improvisation. While the indivision lasts, remember that unanimity governs sales but a two-thirds majority governs management, that bills follow the shares, that improvements and damage are credited and debited at the division, and that urgent measures never have to wait for the absent sibling. Where one sibling occupies the house, apply the 2025 test honestly: sole occupation alone creates no indemnity, but occupation that excludes the others’ concurrent use does, so offer keys in writing if you occupy and demand them in writing if you are shut out. Where deadlock sets in, escalate in order: a documented notarial proposal, the two-thirds court-authorised sale with its one-month service and three-month objection timetable, then the full judicial division before the court of the place where the succession opened. Where keeping the house is the aim, marshal residence evidence, a mortgage offer and a trusted valuation for the preferential award, and price the droit de partage at 2.50 per cent into every buy-out calculation. Around all of this, watch the clocks: five years to annul a tainted division, two years to claim a supplement, and no time at all to waste once exclusion or deterioration begins. Prepare the paper, quantify in euros with proof, and challenge precisely what is wrong rather than everything at once.