Your father died in England leaving a French holiday home in the Dordogne. You obtained the grant of probate from the London Probate Service, had it translated, and sent it to the French notaire handling the succession. Then came the letter every British family dreads: the notaire — the French public officer who alone can transfer the house into the heirs’ names — refuses to act on your English documents and asks for an apostille, a sworn translation, proof that the English will was registered for tax, and possibly a European Certificate of Succession. Is this obstruction, or is it the law? Since Brexit, British grants sit outside the European system that once smoothed cross-border successions, and French notaires have become stricter, not looser, about foreign papers. This guide explains, in plain English, what a grant of probate is worth in France, what document can replace or reinforce it, how to make your English papers formally acceptable — apostille (the international stamp that authenticates a public document), sworn translation, registration — and how to challenge a refusal that goes too far, without losing months or paying tax twice. Every French term is explained as it appears, and every decisive legal point is tied to the official text or judgment that proves it.

I. Why will the French notaire not simply accept your UK grant of probate, and what can replace it?

A. What is a UK grant of probate, and why is it not enough on its own in France?

A grant of probate — in full, a grant of probate of the High Court of Justice — is the English court order that confirms the executor named in a will and authorises that person to collect the assets, pay the debts and distribute the estate. Where there is no will, the equivalent paper is called a grant of letters of administration. The application is made through the Probate Service of His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, and the official guidance is published on gov.uk: applying for probate. For an English bank, an English share registrar or the Land Registry, the grant is conclusive. For a French notaire, it is only a starting point, and there are three reasons for that, each rooted in a different branch of the law.

First, a succession in France opens under French rules of status, not under the English order. Article 720 of the Civil Code provides: “Les successions s’ouvrent par la mort, au dernier domicile du défunt.” The estate opens by death, at the last domicile of the deceased. And article 724 of the Civil Code adds: “Les héritiers désignés par la loi sont saisis de plein droit des biens, droits et actions du défunt.” The heirs designated by law take the property, rights and claims of the deceased automatically. The notaire’s task is therefore not to enforce the English court order but to establish, under the law applicable to the succession, who the heirs are and in what shares they take the French house. An English grant proves that an English court appointed someone; it does not by itself prove heirship under French conflicts rules.

Second, since Brexit the United Kingdom stands outside the European succession system. The European Succession Regulation — Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 of 4 July 2012 — designates in principle one single law for the whole succession, usually the law of the deceased’s habitual residence, with a right to choose the law of one’s nationality instead. France applies that regulation to every succession, including those of British nationals, because the regulation claims universal application. But the United Kingdom never accepted it. The French Court of Cassation says so expressly: in its judgment of 18 November 2020, the First Civil Chamber describes the instrument as the “règlement (UE) n° 650/2012 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 4 juillet 2012, relatif à la compétence, la loi applicable, la reconnaissance et l’exécution des décisions, et l’acceptation et l’exécution des actes authentiques en matière de successions et à la création d’un certificat successoral européen, auquel le Royaume-Uni n’est pas partie” — the regulation to which the United Kingdom is not a party (Cass. civ. 1, 18 Nov. 2020, No 19-15.438). That single fact explains most refusals: no European rule obliges a French notaire to treat an English grant the way he would treat a German or Spanish succession paper.

Third, foreign judgments and foreign official acts are enforceable in France only through the channels French law provides. For court decisions from a non-European Union state — which the United Kingdom now is — the gateway is exequatur (the court procedure that declares a foreign judgment enforceable in France) under article 509 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The Court of Cassation restated the rule on 17 June 2026: “Aux termes de l’article 509 du code de procédure civile, les jugements rendus par les tribunaux étrangers et les actes reçus par les officiers étrangers sont exécutoires sur le territoire de la République de la manière et dans les cas prévus par la loi.” Foreign judgments and acts received by foreign officers are enforceable on the territory of the Republic in the manner and in the cases provided by law (Cass. civ. 1, 17 June 2026, No 24-16.004). Where no treaty applies, the same judgment continues: “Pour accorder l’exequatur, le juge français doit, en l’absence de toute convention internationale, s’assurer que trois conditions sont remplies, à savoir la compétence indirecte du juge étranger, fondée sur le rattachement du litige au juge saisi, la conformité à l’ordre public international de fond et de procédure ainsi que l’absence de fraude. Il lui est interdit de réviser au fond le jugement.” Three checks — indirect jurisdiction of the foreign court, compatibility with substantive and procedural international public policy, absence of fraud — and no review of the merits. A grant of probate is a non-contentious court order rather than a hostile judgment, so in practice nobody asks you to obtain exequatur of the grant itself; but the passage shows the general principle the notaire works under. An English paper has in France only the effects that French law, a treaty, or a European instrument gives it, and the notaire who demands more than a bare grant is not inventing obstacles — he is applying that principle.

Practical consequences follow. The notaire will normally ask, first, for the English will itself and the death certificate, each with an apostille and a sworn translation; second, for proof of the capacity of the person instructing him — executor or administrator — which the grant does supply; and third, for the fiscal registration of the foreign will, discussed below. Where the deceased chose English law in the will — the professio juris, the choice-of-law clause permitted by the regulation — the notaire will examine whether that choice is valid and what it displaces. Where children are left out by an English-law will, the notaire will also consider the compensatory levy of article 913 of the Civil Code: “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.” Each child may take a compensatory share from the assets located in France so as to recover the reserved rights French law grants. A grant of probate says nothing about any of this, which is why it never closes the file on its own.

B. Can a European Certificate of Succession unblock the file when the deceased was British?

The European Certificate of Succession — in French, certificat successoral européen — is the document many British families hear about from internet forums and hope will solve everything. Created by the Succession Regulation, it is a standard-form certificate issued in one Member State that proves heirship, the shares, and the powers of the executor throughout the Union, without any exequatur. Banks, land registries and notaires in other Member States must accept its probative effect. The obvious question after Brexit is whether a British estate can benefit from it at all, and the answer is nuanced: yes, but only from the French side, and with limits the leading judgment spells out.

The United Kingdom does not issue European Certificates of Succession, because it is not bound by the regulation. No English authority will deliver one. But the French notaire settling a succession with French assets can request one from the French court system, and French courts accept jurisdiction over the succession of a person who died resident in the United Kingdom where the regulation’s subsidiary jurisdiction rules point to France. The Court of Cassation examined exactly that mechanism in the judgment cited above: “Selon l’article 10, point 1a), du règlement (UE) n° 650/2012 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 4 juillet 2012, relatif à la compétence, la loi applicable, la reconnaissance et l’exécution des décisions, et l’acceptation et l’exécution des actes authentiques en matière de successions et à la création d’un certificat successoral européen, auquel le Royaume-Uni n’est pas partie, lorsque la résidence habituelle du défunt au moment du décès n’est pas située dans un Etat membre, les juridictions de l’Etat 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 Etat membre au moment du décès.” Where habitual residence at death is outside the Union, the courts of the Member State where estate assets lie may rule on the whole succession if the deceased held that State’s nationality (Cass. civ. 1, 18 Nov. 2020, No 19-15.438). The mirror situation — a British national who died resident in England leaving a house in France — falls to the French courts for the French assets, and commonly for the whole file where the family agrees. In practice, the French notaire prepares the succession and, where a certificate is needed for use in another Member State or to satisfy a bank, applies to the president of the judicial court for its issue. Ask your notaire expressly whether he intends to request one: many files move faster once the question is put in writing.

But the certificate is not a skeleton key, and the leading case on its limits deserves close reading because banks and notaires rely on it daily. On 13 April 2022 the First Civil Chamber ruled on a German European Certificate presented to a French bank for the release of funds: “La cour d’appel a justement retenu que, conformément au considérant 71 du règlement UE n° 650/2012 du 4 juillet 2012, le certificat successoral européen avait une efficacité probatoire mais ne constituait pas un titre exécutoire, de sorte que, s’il attestait de la qualité et des droits d’héritier, il n’épuisait pas nécessairement les formalités à mettre en oeuvre pour obtenir l’exécution de ces droits.” The certificate has probative effect but is not an enforceable title: it proves heirship without exhausting the formalities needed to enforce the rights (Cass. civ. 1, 13 Apr. 2022, No 20-23.530). The Court went on to approve the bank’s demand for prior registration of the foreign will: “Après avoir relevé que le règlement excluait de son domaine matériel les questions fiscales et administratives, son considérant 10 disposant qu’il appartenait au droit national de déterminer, par exemple, comment étaient calculés et payés les impôts et autres taxes, qu’il s’agît d’impôts dus par la personne décédée au moment de son décès ou de tout autre type d’impôt lié à la succession dont devaient s’acquitter la succession ou les bénéficiaire, elle a retenu à bon droit que les dispositions des articles 1000 du code civil et 655 du code général des impôts prévoyant l’enregistrement des testaments faits en pays étrangers, constituaient une formalité fiscale dès lors que celle-ci relevait de l’administration fiscale et donnait lieu au paiement d’un droit fixe de 125 euros.” Fiscal and administrative matters are outside the regulation; registration of foreign wills with the tax administration, for a fixed duty of 125 euros, is a fiscal formality the certificate does not replace. The conclusion follows: “Elle en exactement déduit que l’exigence d’enregistrement de tout testament établi à l’étranger, qui ne remettait pas en cause l’efficacité probatoire du certificat successoral européen et ne constituait pas une condition d’exécution des testaments prohibée par le Règlement, ne portait pas atteinte au principe d’application directe du règlement ni ne le privait de son effet utile.” Requiring registration of every foreign will neither denies the certificate’s probative effect nor breaches the regulation.

Three lessons for a British family follow directly. First, even with a European Certificate in hand, the English will must be registered with the French tax administration — the enregistrement — before banks release funds, and the notaire who insists on it is supported by the Court of Cassation, not obstructing your file. Second, the certificate proves heirship; it does not transfer the French house by itself. The transfer at the land registry still passes through the notaire’s attestation immobilière (the notarial deed that publishes the change of ownership in the land register). Third, because the United Kingdom neither issues nor receives the certificate under the regulation, the certificate route runs entirely through France: it helps you prove your rights in France and in the Union, never in England. Where the estate is purely Anglo-French — English assets plus a French house — combine the two instruments: the English grant to administer the English side, the French notarial settlement, with or without a European Certificate, to administer the French side. Families who grasp this division stop asking one document to do the work of the other, and their files move.

II. How do you get the French house transferred and the tax paid without losing months?

A. How do you make your English documents acceptable in France: apostille, sworn translation and land registration?

Once the applicable law is identified, the battle becomes formal: the notaire can only use documents whose origin is authenticated and whose content he can read in French. English grants, wills, death certificates and powers of attorney must therefore pass three gates — legalisation by apostille, translation by a sworn translator, and, for the house itself, publication at the land registry. Each gate has its own authority and its own delay, so start all three in parallel.

The apostille is the stamp, fixed to the document itself, that certifies the signature, the capacity of the signatory and the seal, under the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 abolishing legalisation. For English documents it is issued in the United Kingdom by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, on application with the original grant, will copy or certificate. For French documents to be used abroad, the mirror procedure runs through the French courts, and the official procedure is described on service-public.fr: legalisation or apostille of a public act. Two practical warnings matter. First, the apostille authenticates the signature, not the content: an apostilled grant proves the Probate Service issued it, not that English law governs the French house. Families who pay for an urgent apostille expecting the notaire to capitulate are disappointed; the stamp is necessary but never sufficient. Second, order apostilles on every English original you may need — grant, death certificate, affidavit of law if any — because each round trip to the United Kingdom costs weeks, and an incomplete bundle is the commonest cause of a stalled file.

Translation must be by a traducteur assermenté — a sworn translator listed by a French cour d’appel (court of appeal) — whose stamp and certification make the translation itself an admissible document. A translation by a bilingual relative, an English solicitor’s office, or an online service will be rejected, however accurate. Have translated the grant, the will with its choice-of-law clause, and any deed of variation or deed of appointment that changes the devolution. Ask the translator to reproduce the apostille certificates as well, so the chain of authentication reads continuously from English original to French use. Keep the originals and the bound translations together; the notaire annexes them to his deeds, and the land registry will want to see the chain.

The French house itself changes hands only through the notaire’s deeds. After establishing heirship — by acte de notoriété (the notarial deed that lists the heirs and their shares) — the notaire draws up the attestation immobilière and publishes it at the service de publicité foncière (the land registration service) for the area where the property lies. Registration duties on that publication are separate from inheritance tax and are calculated on the property’s value. Where the English will disposes of the French house in a way the notaire considers incompatible with the applicable law — for instance, disinheriting a child where French reserved heirship applies, or giving the whole house to a surviving spouse where siblings claim rights — he may decline to draw the deed until a French court rules or the family agrees. That refusal must be reasoned in writing: ask for the precise legal ground, the text relied on, and the missing document. A vague oral refusal is not a position; a reasoned letter is the basis for everything that follows.

Do not overlook the search for other wills. France keeps a central wills register — the fichier central des dispositions de dernières volontés — which any interested person can query to learn whether the deceased left a French will or entrusted papers to a French notaire (see service-public.fr: searching the central register of wills). Where the deceased lived part-time in France, a French holographic will or a will deposited with a French notaire may exist alongside the English one, and the English grant never reveals it. A negative search certificate also reassures the notaire and shortens his checks.

When the notaire’s demands seem excessive, verify them against the hierarchy above rather than arguing in the abstract. Registration of the foreign will for the fixed 125-euro duty: lawful, as the Court of Cassation confirmed. Apostille and sworn translation: lawful in principle, since a French public officer must verify what he publishes. A European Certificate to prove heirship to a bank: legitimate. But a demand for English exequatur of the grant as a precondition to any step, a refusal to examine a valid choice of English law, or months of silence without a list of missing items: those are challengeable. The first step is always a formal letter — lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception (registered letter with proof of receipt) — setting out the documents supplied, the regulation and judgments above, and a deadline. The second is a complaint to the chambre des notaires (the departmental disciplinary body) or to the procureur de la République (public prosecutor) who supervises notaries, for denial of service. The third, where ownership itself is disputed, is a petition to the tribunal judiciaire (the ordinary civil court) for a declaration of heirship or for appointment of a mandataire successoral (an administrator appointed by the court to settle a blocked estate). Our connected guide on choosing English law for a French house and protecting children — British Will, French House After Brexit: Choosing English Law, Keeping Your Children Protected, and Challenging a Blocked Succession — sets out the choice-of-law and reserved-share arguments to raise in that correspondence.

B. What inheritance tax and deadlines apply when a British estate includes a French house?

Inheritance tax — droits de succession — is the point on which delay costs real money, because interest and penalties run while families argue about papers. The Franco-British position is straightforward in structure and treacherous in detail: France taxes the French house in almost every configuration, and may tax more besides, with a credit for British inheritance tax under the 1963 Franco-British succession convention. Three questions determine the bill: where was the deceased domiciled for tax, what is the deadline for the return, and what reliefs reduce the charge.

Domicile for tax follows article 4 B of the General Tax Code, whose first test is: “Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal” — persons whose home or principal place of residence is in France. A British national who lived year-round in the Dordogne home will generally be treated as domiciled in France for tax, so that worldwide movable and immovable assets fall within French succession duty. Conversely, where the deceased remained domiciled in England and the heir lives in France, article 750 ter of the General Tax Code still catches the French house: “Les biens meubles et immeubles, que ces derniers soient possédés directement ou indirectement, situés en France” held by a person not domiciled in France are subject to French transfer duty. In either case the French house is taxed in France; only the treatment of the English assets changes, and the treaty credit then avoids double taxation on the same property. Declare the English assets honestly in the French return — the notaire and the tax office compare notes with increasing ease — and claim the credit with proof of the British payment.

Deadlines are strict and explained on service-public.fr: declaration of succession. Article 641 of the General Tax Code states: “Les délais pour l’enregistrement des déclarations que les héritiers, donataires ou légataires ont à souscrire des biens à eux échus ou transmis par décès sont : De six mois, à compter du jour du décès, lorsque celui dont on recueille la succession est décédé en France métropolitaine; D’une année, dans tous les autres cas.” Six months where the deceased died in metropolitan France, one year in all other cases — including death in England. The return — déclaration de succession, form 2705 with schedules 2705-S and 2706 — is filed at the tax office of the deceased’s last French domicile, or, for a non-resident, at the specialised non-resident office, with payment of the duty. Late filing draws interest for late payment plus surcharges that rise with the length of delay, so file within the year even if valuations are provisional, and correct afterwards. Do not let a blocked notarial file make you miss the fiscal deadline: the return can be filed by the heirs directly with the help of a lawyer where the notaire’s deeds are not ready.

Two further duties condition the final transfer. First, article 784 of the General Tax Code requires: “Les parties sont tenues de faire connaître, dans tout acte constatant une transmission entre vifs à titre gratuit et dans toute déclaration de succession, s’il existe ou non des donations antérieures consenties à un titre et sous une forme quelconque par le donateur ou le défunt aux donataires, héritiers ou légataires et, dans l’affirmative, le montant de ces donations ainsi que, le cas échéant, les noms, qualités et résidences des officiers ministériels qui ont reçu les actes de donation, et la date de l’enregistrement de ces actes.” Every prior gift must be disclosed, because the 15-year recall rule aggregates earlier gifts with the inheritance for the allowances and the progressive scale. English lifetime gifts — potentially exempt transfers under British rules — must therefore be listed where French law requires it, with dates, amounts and the solicitor’s details. Second, where the will favours one heir over the children, the compensatory levy of article 913, quoted above, may redirect value from the French house to the disadvantaged child, changing who pays duty on what. Model the two scenarios — will applied as written, then corrected by the levy — before signing any partition deed (acte de partage, the deed dividing the estate), because a signed partition is difficult to reopen.

Against an excessive assessment, the remedies are the ordinary ones, and they work. Start with a réclamation contentieuse (formal claim to the tax office) within the statutory time, attaching the grant, the valuations, the proof of British tax paid and the treaty computation. If the office maintains the assessment, appeal to the tribunal administratif (administrative court) for the duty or to the tribunal judiciaire for registration-duty disputes, and ask for suspension of enforced recovery in the meantime. Where the dispute turns on domicile, assemble the evidence early — leases, utility bills, travel records, NHS and CPAM records, school enrolments — because domicile for tax is a question of fact, and the administration’s presumptions yield to a coherent bundle of proof. Penalties for wilful omission are heavy; penalties for an honestly filed provisional return, corrected promptly, are routinely mitigated on request.

Conclusion

A French notaire who refuses a bare UK grant of probate is, in most cases, doing his job: since Brexit the grant stands outside the European succession system, it proves the English appointment without establishing heirship under the applicable law, and the Court of Cassation expressly allows banks and officers to require the fiscal registration of the foreign will on top of any European Certificate. The refusal becomes actionable only when it demands what the law does not require, ignores a valid choice of English law, or stalls without reasons. The method that unblocks files is therefore always the same: identify the law governing the succession, put the English grant, will and death certificate in due form with apostille and sworn translation, register the will for the fixed duty, file the French succession return within the one-year deadline for deaths in England, and set every request and every refusal down in registered letters that cite the texts above. Families who proceed in that order rarely need a judge; those who meet a truly unjustified refusal arrive before the court with a file that speaks for itself. The English grant opens the succession in England; the French settlement, properly documented, opens the French house. Neither replaces the other, and together they complete the estate.

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