You married in England, bought a stone house in the Dordogne or a flat in Paris, and built a life in France. Now the marriage is over, and one brutal question decides everything else: which country’s courts should pronounce your divorce? Since the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020, there is no longer a single automatic European system allocating divorces between France and England. Two court systems can claim your case at the same time, they do not talk to each other the way they used to, and the spouse who files first, in the right place, often keeps a decisive advantage over the house, the maintenance payments and the children. This guide explains, for a British reader living in France, where you can file, which law will divide what you own, how an English divorce is recognised in France and how a French divorce is recognised in England, and how to challenge a decision that goes against you.

A note on language before we start. Every French legal term below is explained the first time it appears. The juge aux affaires familiales, usually shortened to JAF, is the French family court judge who hears divorces. Résidence habituelle means habitual residence, the place where you actually and stably live. An assignation is a formal summons served by a commissaire de justice, the court officer formerly called a huissier de justice, telling your spouse that proceedings have started. A requête is a written application asking a court to decide something. Exequatur is the French court procedure that makes a foreign judgment enforceable in France. Keep these five in mind and the rest follows.

If you are at the start of the process, read first our hub guide British Couple Divorcing When One of You Lives in France, which works through the French house, pensions and children in depth. This companion guide focuses on the cross-Channel mechanics: winning the race between the French and English courts, choosing the applicable law in writing, and getting the final decree recognised, or challenging it, on the other side of the Channel.

I. Where to file for divorce after Brexit: getting to the right court first

A. When will the French family court hear the divorce of a British couple living in France?

Until 31 December 2020, divorces between France and the United Kingdom were allocated by a European regulation, Brussels II bis, which gave both countries the same jurisdictional rules and an automatic first-come-first-served mechanism between competing courts. That system is gone for any new case. Between the Member States of the European Union, a successor regulation now applies, Brussels II ter, Council Regulation 2019/1111 of 25 June 2019. It binds France but it does not bind the United Kingdom, which is now treated as a non-member country, exactly like the United States or Australia, for divorce jurisdiction purposes. So a French court hearing your case applies European rules on its own side and French domestic private international law for everything facing England.

On the French side, the starting point is Article 3 of Brussels II ter, which lists the courts that may hear a divorce. In substance it gives jurisdiction to the courts of the Member State where both spouses are habitually resident, where they were last habitually resident if one of them still lives there, where the respondent lives, where either spouse lives in a joint application, where the applicant has lived for at least a year, or of the spouses’ common nationality. In plain terms, if you and your spouse both live in France, the French courts can hear your divorce. If only one of you lives in France and that person is the respondent, meaning the one defending the case, the French courts can also hear it. If you are both British, English nationality alone does not give France jurisdiction, because that ground points to the courts of the country of common nationality, but combined with residence in France it reinforces the French link.

Once France has jurisdiction internationally, a domestic rule decides which French court hears the case. Article 1070 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the Code de procédure civile, states: “Le juge aux affaires familiales territorialement compétent est : – le juge du lieu où se trouve la résidence de la famille ; – si les parents vivent séparément, le juge du lieu de résidence du parent avec lequel résident habituellement les enfants mineurs en cas d’exercice en commun de l’autorité parentale, ou du lieu de résidence du parent qui exerce seul cette autorité ; – dans les autres cas, le juge du lieu où réside celui qui n’a pas pris l’initiative de la procédure.” In English: the locally competent family judge is the judge of the place where the family home is, or, where the parents live apart, the judge where the children habitually live with one parent, or otherwise the judge where the spouse who did not start the case lives. So if your family home is in Bordeaux, the Bordeaux family court normally hears the divorce, and if your children live with you in Lyon while your spouse stayed in London, Lyon is the natural forum.

France also keeps a residual jurisdictional safety net for its own nationals in Articles 14 and 15 of the Civil Code, the Code civil. Article 14 provides: “L’étranger, même non résidant en France, pourra être cité devant les tribunaux français, pour l’exécution des obligations par lui contractées en France avec un Français ; il pourra être traduit devant les tribunaux de France, pour les obligations par lui contractées en pays étranger envers des Français.” This nationality privilege mainly matters where one spouse is French or dual-national, and it shows the French system straining to keep a door open when a French-connected litigant would otherwise have nowhere to sue. For a purely British couple habitually resident in France, the habitual residence grounds above are the clean route, and you do not need Article 14.

Procedure in France is lawyer-driven from the first step, and your lawyer, your avocat, does the filing. The official French public service, on its judicial divorce page, explains that where spouses disagree on the consequences of divorce, the family court is seised by an assignation, while spouses who agree to divorce together may use a joint requête. Your lawyer drafts the summons with you, the court officer serves it, and the case runs through the family judge. France also offers divorce by mutual consent without a judge, by private deed countersigned by each spouse’s lawyer and filed with a notary, a notaire. Article 229 of the Civil Code lists the cases of divorce and opens with this route: “Les époux peuvent consentir mutuellement à leur divorce par acte sous signature privée contresigné par avocats, déposé au rang des minutes d’un notaire.” Warning for British couples: the fast notarial divorce is designed for purely domestic cases. Where England will later be asked to recognise the divorce, or where property, pensions and children span two countries, the judicial divorce before the JAF, with homologation, meaning court approval, of your agreement, is far easier to export and far harder to attack. Speed now can mean unenforceability later.

Two practical traps deserve emphasis. First, habitual residence is a question of fact, not of paperwork. A British passport, a UK postal address and a house in Kent do not stop you being habitually resident in France if your daily life, children and work are in France, and conversely a French titre de séjour, the residence permit, does not by itself prove habitual residence if you actually live in London. Courts look at stability, integration, schooling, work and intention. Second, the applicant grounds in Brussels II ter allow a spouse who moved back to their home country to file there after a qualifying period of residence, which means a British spouse who returns to England can, after time, open a competing English case while your French case is running. That race is the subject of the next section, and it is the reason filing promptly in the right court matters more after Brexit than it ever did before.

B. Can you still divorce in England while living in France, and does filing there first block the French case?

Yes, England can still divorce you after Brexit, under its own long-standing statute, section 5 of the Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1973, which survived Brexit untouched. In substance that section gives the courts of England and Wales jurisdiction where both spouses are habitually resident there, where they were last habitually resident there and one of them still lives there, where the respondent is habitually resident there, where both spouses or even one spouse is domiciled there, and, for applicant-led cases, where the applicant has been habitually resident for at least a year, or is both domiciled and habitually resident after six months, with a joint-application route where either party lives there. Domicile, the country you treat as your permanent home, is the distinctively English hook: many British expatriates retain an English domicile even after years in France, and that retained domicile alone can open the door of the English court.

Compare the two systems and the tactical picture appears. A British couple living in France can usually file in either country: in France on joint or respondent habitual residence, in England on retained domicile. Before Brexit, the European lis pendens rule, first court seised wins, stopped the second court while the first case lived, so the race was orderly. That automatic brake no longer operates between France and the United Kingdom. An English court is not obliged to stay its case because a French divorce started first, and a French court is not obliged to stay because an English petition started first. Each side decides under its own law whether to pause, which turns parallel filings into a genuine race with two possible winners and contradictory orders.

French case law shows how seriously French courts take the order of battle. In a much-cited divorce conflict, the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, the Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court for civil matters, quashed a Paris appeal ruling that had given effect to a foreign divorce over a prior French conciliation order. The Court recalled the old procedural rule that “en matière de divorce, l’exception de litispendance ne peut être invoquée que devant le juge aux affaires familiales avant toute tentative de conciliation. La décision rendue de ce chef est revêtue de l’autorité de chose jugée”, meaning that in divorce cases the parallel-proceedings objection can only be raised before the family judge before conciliation is attempted, and the ruling on it carries final authority. That decision, First Civil Chamber, 15 September 2021, appeal number 20-19.640, published in the Bulletin, teaches a concrete lesson: if your spouse files abroad, raise the parallel-case objection immediately before the French family judge, because a French order that has become final will then shield you against the foreign judgment. The official decision is published by the Court of Cassation under reference 20-19.640 of 15 September 2021.

Which country should you choose? There is no universal answer, only trade-offs your lawyer must price. England is famous for discretionary financial orders that can divide pensions, order house transfers and award maintenance well beyond what a French court typically grants, which often attracts the financially weaker spouse. France offers the forfaitaire, meaning fixed lump-sum, logic of the prestation compensatoire, predictable procedure, and direct control over French property and children living in France. Speed differs: an uncontested English divorce can be quick administratively, but sorting out French property through an English order later requires the exequatur procedure described below, which eats the time saved. Children living in France will in practice be dealt with by the French court whatever England says, because that is where enforcement happens. As a rule of thumb, the spouse who wants English-level financial orders files in England on domicile, and the spouse who wants the French house and French-based children settled swiftly files in France on habitual residence, and each must file before the other locks in a competing forum.

One warning closes this part. Do not file in both countries yourself to keep your options open. Parallel cases double your costs, create contradictory interim orders on the children, and hand your spouse the argument that you are forum shopping in bad faith. Pick your forum on advice, file once, file early, and contest the other forum immediately if your spouse files there.

II. What the divorce will cost you and whether the other country will respect it

A. Which law divides the French house, the maintenance and the children?

Jurisdiction decides who judges; applicable law decides by which rules. Here Brexit changed nothing on the French side, because the European divorce choice-of-law regulation, Rome III, Regulation 1259/2010, applies universally. Its universal-application rule means the law it designates governs even where that law is the law of a country that never joined the system. France is one of the participating states, the United Kingdom never joined, but a French court still uses Rome III for every international divorce, and Rome III can designate English law even though England is outside the system. As a regulation directly applicable in France, Rome III takes precedence over the older domestic conflict rule in Article 309 of the Civil Code for divorces within its scope, which includes Franco-British cases despite the United Kingdom never having joined the system. So paradoxically, your French divorce in Lyon can be decided under English divorce law if the designation rules point there.

The first designation route is your own choice. Article 5 of Rome III lets both spouses together designate the law governing their divorce, provided the chosen law is the law of their current habitual residence, of their last habitual residence where one of them still lives, of either spouse’s nationality, or of the court hearing the case, and the agreement can be made or changed at any point up to the moment the court is seised. For a British couple in France, that means you may validly choose English law, French law, or, if one spouse is French, the law linked to that nationality, but the choice must satisfy strict formal validity: the agreement has to be in writing, dated and signed by both spouses. A clause buried in an English-language email chain or agreed orally across the kitchen table does not satisfy this. Put the choice in the divorce petition documents your lawyers draft, or in a separate signed agreement, before the court is seised.

Without a valid choice, Article 8 imposes a cascade running from the closest connection downwards: first the law of the spouses’ habitual residence when the court is seised, failing that the law of their last habitual residence if abandoned less than a year before and one spouse still lives there, failing that the law of their common nationality, and finally the law of the court hearing the case. For most British residents divorcing in France, the cascade stops at the first step: French law governs, because France is the habitual residence when the court is seised. English law reaches a French courtroom mainly through an express written choice under Article 5, or where both spouses already left France and share only English nationality.

Under French law, money between ex-spouses is dominated by the prestation compensatoire, the lump-sum payment compensating the living-standard gap the divorce creates. Article 270 of the Civil Code states: “Le divorce met fin au devoir de secours entre époux. L’un des époux peut être tenu de verser à l’autre une prestation destinée à compenser, autant qu’il est possible, la disparité que la rupture du mariage crée dans les conditions de vie respectives. Cette prestation a un caractère forfaitaire. Elle prend la forme d’un capital dont le montant est fixé par le juge.” Divorce ends the duty of support, and one spouse may owe the other a fixed capital sum compensating, as far as possible, the disparity in living conditions. Article 271 then lists what the judge weighs: “La prestation compensatoire est fixée selon les besoins de l’époux à qui elle est versée et les ressources de l’autre en tenant compte de la situation au moment du divorce et de l’évolution de celle-ci dans un avenir prévisible”, taking into account “la durée du mariage”, “l’âge et l’état de santé des époux”, “leur qualification et leur situation professionnelles”, and “le patrimoine estimé ou prévisible des époux, tant en capital qu’en revenu, après la liquidation du régime matrimonial”, alongside each side’s pension rights. Expect the French judge to capitalise everything into one figure rather than order open-ended monthly spousal maintenance as an English court might, and expect your respective pension entitlements, including a British state or private pension, to enter the calculation.

Children are treated separately from the marriage itself. Parental responsibility, called autorité parentale in French, and custody and contact follow the child’s habitual residence: under Article 7 of Brussels II ter, the courts of the Member State where the child is habitually resident when the court is seised hear parental responsibility matters. Children schooled and living in France are therefore dealt with by the French family judge even if the parents divorce in England, and any English children order concerning them would still need French recognition to bite. Day-to-day child maintenance, the pension alimentaire, follows Article 373-2-2 of the Civil Code: “En cas de séparation entre les parents, ou entre ceux-ci et l’enfant, la contribution à son entretien et à son éducation prend la forme d’une pension alimentaire versée, selon le cas, par l’un des parents à l’autre, ou à la personne à laquelle l’enfant a été confié.” The amount tracks the needs of the child and the resources of each parent, it is usually collected monthly with annual indexation, and it is commonly routed through the family benefits agency, which chases arrears administratively.

The French house itself is governed by your matrimonial property regime, your régime matrimonial, which is a different question from divorce jurisdiction and deserves its own analysis. English couples who married in England without a contract are usually treated as married under the English regime of separation of property, while a French court dividing French land applies French conflict rules that can surprise English spouses. Our companion guide on matrimonial regimes for British couples in France, Married in England, Living in France, works through which regime owns your house and how to change it, and our guide on English wills and French houses, British Will, French House After Brexit, covers the inheritance side. Read them alongside this article before signing anything about the property, because conceding the house in the divorce can contradict the will you signed the year before.

B. How do you get an English divorce recognised in France, or a French divorce enforced in England, and how do you challenge it?

Start with the English divorce that must work in France: selling the French house, remarrying, or sorting out French tax status all require France to accept that you are divorced. Since Brussels II bis recognition ended for new UK judgments, an English divorce decree is a foreign judgment like any other, and it becomes enforceable in France through exequatur. Article 509 of the Code of Civil Procedure sets the frame: “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 are enforceable in France in the manner and cases provided by law, and the judge-made law for non-treaty countries is now settled.

The Court of Cassation restated the three conditions in a leading 2021 decision: “Pour accorder l’exequatur à un jugement étranger, le juge français doit, en l’absence de 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.” That is First Civil Chamber, 3 March 2021, appeal number 19-19.471, published in the Bulletin: without an applicable treaty, the French judge grants exequatur only after checking the indirect jurisdiction of the foreign court based on a genuine link between the dispute and that court, compatibility with French international public policy on substance and procedure, and the absence of fraud. Apply that to your English decree: the English court must have had a real link to your case, normally habitual residence or domicile of at least one spouse; the procedure must have respected defence rights, meaning your spouse was properly served and able to be heard, with default judgments against an absent spouse the classic refusal ground; and neither spouse may have manufactured jurisdiction fraudulently, for example by inventing an English address. The official decision is published at 19-19.471 of 3 March 2021.

In practice, your French lawyer files an exequatur application before the judicial court, the tribunal judiciaire, of the place where enforcement is needed, producing the English order with proof it is final, a certified translation, and proof of proper service on the other spouse. Ask the court clerk early whether an apostille, the international legalisation stamp, or consular legalisation is required on your English documents, because registries differ and a missing stamp is the commonest avoidable delay. Once granted, the exequatur order makes the English decree enforceable exactly like a French judgment: the land registry, the service de publicité foncière, will register the transfer of the French house, and the civil status records can be updated. Budget for translation and counsel fees in both countries, and for several months, longer if your spouse contests.

Challenging recognition is the mirror image. The defending spouse can oppose exequatur by attacking any of the three conditions: deny the English court’s genuine link, argue the procedure breached international public policy, for instance service at an old address while the spouse lived in France, or allege fraud in manufacturing jurisdiction. Appeal lies against the exequatur ruling, and where a French divorce case on the same marriage is already pending, the final French conciliation or judgment can block the foreign decree, exactly as the 20-19.640 case above illustrates. Conversely, if you hold the English decree, do not let your spouse open a second French divorce quietly: intervene fast, exhibit the English judgment, and demand the French court recognise the situation rather than re-litigate the marriage. Delay is the challenger’s worst enemy, because every French interim order on children or money made in the meantime becomes harder to unwind.

The reverse direction, a French divorce that must work in England, runs under Part II of the Family Law Act 1986, which recognises divorces obtained outside the United Kingdom. In substance, section 46 requires the divorce to be effective under the law of the country where it was obtained, plus a personal link with that country through habitual residence or domicile of one spouse, with a fallback where both spouses were domiciled there, and recognition is refused where both spouses spent the whole previous year habitually resident in the United Kingdom. A French judicial divorce between spouses living in France therefore obtains recognition in England smoothly, since it is effective under French law and both spouses were habitually resident in France. Refusals target unusual cases: divorces whose effectiveness England doubts on the facts, or cases where both spouses never left England for a year and shopped for a quick foreign decree. One asymmetry to know: English courts may in some cases entertain a later claim for financial provision after a foreign divorce, with the court’s permission, so a French lump sum does not always end the money story in England. Take English advice before treating the French settlement as globally final.

Maintenance across the Channel deserves a final practical word. Child support fixed by the French judge is enforced in France through direct administrative collection, but collecting it from a parent who moved to England, or enforcing an English child maintenance order against assets in France, passes through international cooperation channels that move slowly and demand exact paperwork. Fix the maintenance order in the country where the paying parent earns and holds assets wherever possible, index it, secure payment through the family benefits agency where available, and keep every proof of payment and arrears. Cross-border arrears are won by the parent with the tidiest file.

Conclusion

Divorcing as a British resident in France after Brexit means running two legal systems in parallel and making them converge. File early in the court whose orders will actually bite on your house, your children and your money, usually France if your life is there, sometimes England on domicile if English-scale financial orders matter more to you. Choose the applicable law in signed writing before anyone files, because Rome III lets you pick English law for a French divorce but only if the formalities are respected. Then make the winning judgment enforceable where it counts: exequatur in France under the three-tested-conditions route, recognition in England under the Family Law Act, and immediate challenge wherever your spouse tries to re-litigate. Every step rewards the spouse who moves first with proper advice and punishes the one who assumes the old automatic Europe still exists. It does not.