The rent has not arrived for two months. Your tenant in Lyon, Bordeaux or the Paris suburbs answers less and less, and you are sitting in Manchester, Edinburgh or London wondering what you can actually do from across the Channel. English instincts are dangerous here: nothing in French law allows you to change the locks, cut off utilities, seize furniture or simply declare the tenancy over because the money stopped. Every step passes through a commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly called huissier de justice, and a judge, and every deadline is counted in weeks fixed by statute. Handled properly, an unpaid-rent case is a predictable sequence that usually ends either in full repayment on a court-approved schedule or in an eviction carried out lawfully with police support. Handled badly, it collapses on a missing line in a formal demand and you start again months later. This guide walks the whole sequence in order. First, how you open the case with the formal demand for payment, the commandement de payer, and what you ask the court to order. Second, how the judgment is enforced through the order to vacate, the winter truce and the challenges each side can still raise, including how you run all of it while living in Britain.

I. My Tenant Has Stopped Paying: How Do I Start the Recovery and Protect the Lease?

A. The Commandement de Payer: the Six-Week Formal Demand That Opens Every Unpaid-Rent Case?

Everything starts with one formal act, and no informal reminder can replace it. You must instruct a commissaire de justice to serve the tenant, and then any caution, any guarantor, with a commandement de payer, a bailiff’s formal demand for payment. Since the reform of 27 July 2023, every residential lease signed from 29 July 2023 onwards must contain a clause résolutoire, a termination clause, and the demand gives the tenant six weeks to pay the full arrears (service-public.fr, unpaid rent and eviction of the tenant). The general law of termination clauses sits behind this mechanism: “La clause résolutoire précise les engagements dont l’inexécution entraînera la résolution du contrat. La résolution est subordonnée à une mise en demeure infructueuse, s’il n’a pas été convenu que celle-ci résulterait du seul fait de l’inexécution. La mise en demeure ne produit effet que si elle mentionne expressément la clause résolutoire.” (Article 1225 of the Civil Code on Légifrance). In plain terms, the clause must name the obligations whose breach ends the contract, the demand must have failed, and the demand is only effective if it expressly mentions the clause. A commandement that forgets to reproduce the clause produces nothing, however large the arrears. More broadly, “La résolution résulte soit de l’application d’une clause résolutoire soit, en cas d’inexécution suffisamment grave, d’une notification du créancier au débiteur ou d’une décision de justice.” (Article 1224 of the Civil Code on Légifrance). For older leases that contain no termination clause, the judge alone decides whether the tenant’s fault is grave enough to end the tenancy, which is why the court stage described below matters even when the six-week mechanism does not apply.

The contents of the demand are prescribed line by line, and a missing line voids it. It must state the six-week payment deadline, the monthly rent and charges, the itemised statement of the debt, a warning that you may ask the judge to terminate the lease and order eviction if the debt is not paid and no payment delay is requested, the address of the fonds de solidarité pour le logement, the local solidarity fund for housing that may grant the tenant financial help, and a notice that the tenant may ask the judge at any time for a grace period under article 1343-5 of the Civil Code (service-public.fr, unpaid rent and eviction of the tenant). The officer who serves the demand must also report it to the Ccapex, the departmental commission for the coordination of eviction-prevention actions, which examines possible support for the household. From a British landlord’s perspective, two practical points matter immediately. First, serve early: the six-week clock only runs from proper service, so every month of informal chasing from London is a month lost. Second, keep the paper trail immaculate from day one, because the judge will work almost entirely from documents: the lease, the rent ledger showing each missed due date, proof of charges, every letter sent, and the guarantor’s undertaking if there is one. If the tenant pays everything within the six weeks, the incident is closed and the tenant stays. If the tenant pays nothing, or too little, and no agreed repayment schedule exists, you move to court. Do not accept vague verbal promises at this stage without dating them and confirming them in writing, because an undocumented arrangement complicates the court application without suspending any deadline.

Tenants sometimes answer the demand by saying the flat is unfit and they were entitled to stop paying. That defence, the exception d’inexécution, the right to withhold performance when the other party has failed first, is real but narrow, and the Cour de cassation has just restated how judges must handle it. In a ruling of 5 March 2026 the Third Civil Chamber held: “Lorsque, assigné par le bailleur en constatation de l’acquisition d’une clause résolutoire en raison du non-paiement de loyers dans le mois ayant suivi la délivrance d’un commandement de payer, le locataire invoque une exception d’inexécution, le juge doit en vérifier le bien-fondé, peu important que le locataire n’ait pas demandé en justice des délais de paiement dans le mois de la délivrance du commandement.” (Court of Cassation, Third Civil Chamber, 5 March 2026, no. 24-15.820). The dispute concerned a commercial lease, whose one-month mechanism mirrors the residential six-week one, but the lesson travels directly: when the tenant pleads that your own breaches caused the withholding, the judge must genuinely examine that claim even if the tenant never applied for payment delays. The same decision recalls that a tenant may rely on the defence from the day the premises become unfit for their intended use because of the landlord’s failure, without any prior formal notice (same decision, paragraph 12). The practical consequence for you is symmetrical. If the tenant’s complaint about damp, heating or safety has any substance, repair quickly and keep the invoices, because an unrepaired defect can paralyse your termination clause. If the complaint is invented after the arrears began, gather the counter-evidence now: the entry inventory, any interim inspection reports, the managing agent’s correspondence and proof that the tenant never reported anything before the demand. Judges see through tactical disrepair claims, but only when the landlord’s file proves the chronology.

B. Which Court Do I Seize From Britain and What Do I Ask the Judge to Order?

Once the six weeks expire unpaid and no repayment agreement exists, you apply to the juge des contentieux de la protection, the specialist judge for residential tenancy disputes at the local tribunal judiciaire, asking for four things together: an order that the tenant pay the arrears and the costs, a finding that the lease is terminated, an eviction order, and the fixing of an indemnité d’occupation, the monthly occupation payment due after termination. You can bring the case urgently through the référé, the fast-track interim procedure, and you instruct the commissaire de justice to serve the court summons, the assignation, on the tenant and to notify the State’s representative in the department, the préfet, of that summons. The hearing takes place at least six weeks after the tenant receives the summons, and during that interval a social and financial assessment, the diagnostic social et financier, is prepared to inform the judge about the arrears, including the consequences of the debt for your own financial and personal situation, so answer its requests carefully from the United Kingdom rather than ignoring a form in French (service-public.fr, unpaid rent and eviction of the tenant). You do not need to fly over for every hearing: a French lawyer, an avocat, can represent you, and your managing agent or a holder of a written authority can supply the documents, but the authority must be explicit and the exhibits professionally ordered, because a distant landlord with a confused file is the easiest party in the room to disbelieve.

At the hearing the judge has three paths, and you should prepare your claim for each of them. If the tenant resumed paying the full current rent before the hearing and shows a genuine ability to clear the arrears, the judge may impose a repayment schedule of up to three years and suspend the effects of the termination clause, which freezes the eviction while the schedule runs. If the tenant then misses the schedule, through non-payment or late payment, the lease is terminated and you proceed to enforcement by having the judgment served and a commandement de quitter les lieux, an order to vacate, delivered. If the tenant cannot repay, the judge terminates the lease and orders eviction, and you enforce in the same way. Where the lease has no termination clause, the judge decides whether the tenant’s fault is sufficiently grave to justify termination and eviction, or grants a repayment schedule instead. The Cour de cassation polices the boundary between indulgence and enforcement strictly. On 26 October 2023 the Third Civil Chamber held: “Il résulte de ce texte que lorsqu’une ordonnance de référé passée en force de chose jugée a accordé au titulaire d’un bail à usage commercial des délais pour régler un arriéré de loyers et le loyer courant en suspendant la réalisation de la clause résolutoire, le non-respect de ces délais rend la clause définitivement acquise sans que la mauvaise foi de la bailleresse à s’en prévaloir puisse y faire obstacle.” (Court of Cassation, Third Civil Chamber, 26 October 2023, no. 22-16.216). Again a commercial lease, but the principle is the one residential judges apply every week: once final deadlines have been granted and broken, the clause is definitively acquired and no argument about the landlord’s motives reopens it. For you as claimant, the message is to propose realistic schedules you can live with rather than impossible ones designed to fail, because a schedule the tenant observably honours keeps you paid, while a breached schedule must then be enforced to the end, including through the winter rules examined below.

Two traps catch British landlords at this stage. The first is the guarantor: the demand must be served on the caution after the tenant, and any claim against the guarantor later depends on that service having been done properly, so confirm with your officer that both services are completed and keep both reports, the procès-verbaux. The second is insurance: many owners hold a garantie des loyers impayés, unpaid-rent guarantee insurance, which pays the arrears and sometimes handles the procedure, but policies impose strict declaration deadlines and require the prescribed formal steps to have been followed, so notify the insurer the week the first payment fails rather than the month the file reaches court (service-public.fr, unpaid rent and eviction of the tenant). Tenants with no housing solution may also receive support through the solidarity fund mentioned in the demand, and the judge sees evidence that you engaged constructively with the prevention bodies favourably. None of this weakens your claim; it frames you as the reasonable professional creditor that French housing judges expect, which matters when discretionary relief is on the table.

II. From the Judgment to the Door: How Does the Eviction Finish and How Can Each Side Challenge It?

A. The Commandement de Quitter, the Two-Month Period and the Winter Truce: When Can the Bailiff Actually Act?

The judgment does not empty the flat by itself. You must have the decision served on the tenant and a commandement d’avoir à libérer les locaux, the formal order to vacate, delivered by the commissaire de justice, who also informs the préfet of that order. The statute is categorical about the need for a court decision: “Sauf disposition spéciale, l’expulsion d’un immeuble ou d’un lieu habité ne peut être poursuivie qu’en vertu d’une décision de justice ou d’un procès-verbal de conciliation exécutoire et après signification d’un commandement d’avoir à libérer les locaux.” (Article L. 411-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures on Légifrance). The order to vacate is itself strictly regulated: “Le commandement d’avoir à libérer les locaux prend la forme d’un acte d’huissier de justice signifié à la personne expulsée et contient à peine de nullité : 1° L’indication du titre exécutoire en vertu duquel l’expulsion est poursuivie ; 2° La désignation de la juridiction devant laquelle peuvent être portées les demandes de délais et toutes contestations relatives à l’exécution des opérations d’expulsion ; 3° L’indication de la date à partir de laquelle les locaux devront être libérés ; 4° L’avertissement qu’à compter de cette date il peut être procédé à l’expulsion forcée du débiteur ainsi qu’à celle de tout occupant de son chef.” (Article R. 411-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures on Légifrance). Note the older vocabulary, huissier de justice, still used in the codified text for the officer now titled commissaire de justice. On top of those four mentions, the order must reproduce articles L. 412-1 to L. 412-6, again on pain of nullity: “Lorsque l’expulsion porte sur un lieu habité par la personne expulsée ou par tout occupant de son chef, le commandement d’avoir à libérer les locaux contient, à peine de nullité, en plus des mentions prévues à l’article R. 411-1 , la reproduction des articles L. 412-1 à L. 412-6 .” (Article R. 412-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures on Légifrance). These nullity rules are your sword and, if your officer is careless, your own trap: check the served copy against each required mention the day you receive it, because a tenant’s lawyer will.

Once the order is served, the tenant generally has two months to leave: “Si l’expulsion porte sur un lieu habité par la personne expulsée ou par tout occupant de son chef, elle ne peut avoir lieu qu’à l’expiration d’un délai de deux mois qui suit le commandement, sans préjudice des dispositions des articles L. 412-3 à L. 412-7 .” (Article L. 412-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures on Légifrance). The judge may have reduced or removed that period for a tenant found to be acting in bad faith, and the tenant may apply to the enforcement judge, the juge de l’exécution, for an additional period of one month to one year, granted according to age, health, good faith and rehousing prospects (service-public.fr, unpaid rent and eviction of the tenant). From the day the lease is terminated the tenant becomes an occupant sans droit ni titre, an occupier without right or title, and you bill an indemnité d’occupation rather than rent, a distinction your accounts and your French tax return must respect. Then comes the date every foreign landlord misunderstands: “Nonobstant toute décision d’expulsion passée en force de chose jugée et malgré l’expiration des délais accordés en vertu de l’article L. 412-3, il est sursis à toute mesure d’expulsion non exécutée à la date du 1er novembre de chaque année jusqu’au 31 mars de l’année suivante, à moins que le relogement des intéressés soit assuré dans des conditions suffisantes respectant l’unité et les besoins de la famille.” (Article L. 412-6 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures on Légifrance). That is the trêve hivernale, the winter truce: no eviction of an unrehoused occupier between 1 November and 31 March inclusive. If the two-month period ends inside the truce, the physical eviction waits until April. Tenants who filed an over-indebtedness case, a dossier de surendettement, benefit from specific protective rules that can further suspend enforcement, so ask your lawyer to check the over-indebtedness register position before budgeting the recovery quarter by quarter. The officer carries out the eviction on a working day between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., draws up the record, and arranges storage of any belongings left behind at the expelled person’s expense.

B. Grace Periods, Repayment Schedules and Appeals: What Can Still Stop or Reopen the Case?

Even after termination, the tenant is not without remedies, and you must know them to price the risk and to challenge their misuse. The tenant may ask any judge for grace periods at any stage: “Le juge peut, compte tenu de la situation du débiteur et en considération des besoins du créancier, reporter ou échelonner, dans la limite de deux années, le paiement des sommes dues.” (Article 1343-5 of the Civil Code on Légifrance). The decision suspends enforcement measures already started, and penalty uplifts do not run during the judge-fixed period. Separately, the enforcement judge may grant renewable stays to occupiers under a judicial eviction order whenever they cannot be rehoused in normal conditions: “Le juge peut accorder des délais renouvelables aux occupants de lieux habités ou de locaux à usage professionnel, dont l’expulsion a été ordonnée judiciairement, chaque fois que le relogement des intéressés ne peut avoir lieu dans des conditions normales.” (Article L. 412-3 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures on Légifrance). In practice, contest these applications with evidence rather than indignation: proof that the tenant resumed work, receives benefits that could fund a schedule, refused a suitable offer of rehousing, or never paid anything despite means. The March 2026 ruling quoted above helps landlords here in reverse: where the tenant invokes unfitness to resist termination, the judge must verify the claim genuinely, which entitles you to demand a court-appointed expert assessment instead of accepting photographs of disputed date and origin. And the October 2023 ruling sets the outer limit of indulgence: deadlines granted by a final order and then broken make the termination clause definitively acquired, whatever is said about your motives. Read together, the two decisions describe the French compromise accurately: judges examine tenant defences seriously, but they enforce breached schedules ruthlessly.

Your own challenges run in the opposite direction. Attack defective acts promptly: a commandement de payer that omits a mandatory mention, a demand never served on the guarantor, an order to vacate missing the reproduced articles, an assignation not notified to the préfet where the statute requires it. Each nullity restarts a segment of the procedure rather than ending the case, so raise them early through your avocat instead of discovering them on eviction day. Appeal the judgment within the applicable time limit where the judge refused termination despite grave and persistent default, or where a schedule was granted on incoherent figures: unpaid-rent litigation turns on arithmetic, and appellate courts correct schedules built on wrong arrears totals. If the tenant appeals, protect yourself by seeking provisional enforcement of the payment orders where available and by keeping the guarantee or insurer in the loop. Throughout, observe one absolute prohibition. Never take enforcement into your own hands: no lock changes, no belongings removed, no pressure visits while you are over for a weekend. “Le fait de forcer un tiers à quitter le lieu qu’il habite sans avoir obtenu le concours de l’Etat dans les conditions prévues à l’article L. 153-1 du code des procédures civiles d’exécution , à l’aide de manœuvres, menaces, voies de fait ou contraintes, est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 30 000 € d’amende.” (Article 226-4-2 of the Criminal Code on Légifrance). Three years’ imprisonment and a 30,000 euro fine for forcing someone out of their home without the State’s enforcement machinery: that single sentence should govern every frustrated impulse between the judgment and the bailiff’s visit.

Running all of this from Britain is routine for the professionals involved, provided you organise it. Give your avocat a written authority covering hearings, settlement discussions and enforcement instructions, with an explicit ceiling for any negotiated write-off so a deal can be struck without waking you at midnight. Keep a French euro account able to receive the indemnité d’occupation and to pay officers’ fees, because cross-border transfers for each procedural advance slow every step. Centralise the file in one place: lease and renewals, the guarantor’s undertaking, the rent ledger, the demand and its service reports, the summons, the judgment, the order to vacate, and every payment received with its date. Brexit changed none of the procedural rules described here, but it ended any assumption that distance excuses delay: summonses, hearings and truces run identically whether you live in Kent or in the next street. If you own through a British company or are considering a société civile immobilière, take separate advice on the ownership structure, because the eviction procedure is the same whoever the landlord is, while the tax treatment of the recovered arrears and the occupation payments is not. And if the same tenant relationship also involves a deposit dispute at the end of the tenancy, our companion guide for British tenants explains the inventory and refund machinery from the other side of the table (British tenants: deposits, inventories and deductions).

Conclusion

An unpaid-rent case in France rewards the landlord who moves early, writes everything down and never skips a statutory step. Serve a complete commandement de payer at the first confirmed default, notify the insurer and the guarantor chain the same week, apply to the specialist judge when the six weeks expire, and enforce the judgment through a valid order to vacate while respecting the two-month period and the winter truce. Expect the judge to examine tenant defences genuinely and to grant schedules where repayment is credible, and expect enforcement to be uncompromising once schedules are breached. Above all, keep your hands off the locks: only the commissaire de justice, armed with a court decision and the State’s support, can put a tenant out. Organised from Britain with a competent officer and lawyer, the procedure is slow but certain; improvised, it is slow and expensive. Start the file this week, not next quarter.

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