The bill on the kitchen table is from the French notaire, and it is not the inheritance tax. A notaire is a public officer who draws up certain deeds and collects regulated fees for them. The sum he asks a British heir to pay is built from those regulated fees, called émoluments, from money he advances to third parties, called débours, and sometimes from an unregulated fee, called an honoraire. Inheritance tax, the droits de succession, may travel in the same bank transfer, but it is owed to the Treasury. After Brexit, a London flat, a UK current account or the survivor’s own savings can be pulled into the fee base, or left out, according to rules that a purchase-fee guide does not apply to a death. This note, read against the Code de commerce, the Commercial Code, in force on 1 October 2026, explains how the succession fee is calculated, when assets in the United Kingdom raise it, and how a wrong invoice is challenged. It is not a guide to the fee on buying a French house. It does not decide whether French inheritance tax is due on those UK assets. That tax question is a different exercise. The judge, not this note, decides a dispute on your figures.

I. How the French notaire’s succession fee is built, and when UK assets raise it

A. Emoluments, disbursements and inheritance tax are three different sums

The first task is to split the bill into the pots the Commercial Code already uses. Article L444-1 of the Commercial Code, in force since 22 November 2023, opens the title that governs regulated tariffs for notaires. Article R444-2 then defines the words. An émolument is the sum received for a prestation whose tariff is regulated. An honoraire is the sum received for a prestation whose amount is not so regulated. Frais are expenses the professional incurs to do the work. Débours are sums advanced for the client’s account. A prestation, in the same article, is the work attached to an act, a formality or a service, “incluant les conseils dispensés en lien avec cet acte, formalité ou service”: including the advice given in connection with that act, formality or service. Advice that belongs to the deed is not a second fee. Work that is not a tariffed act is not an émolument either.

Article L444-1 of the Commercial Code and article R444-3 point to the annex that lists the notaires’ tariffed prestations. An act is regulated only if it is on that list. If it is not, article L444-1 says that, unless a contrary provision applies, prestations which these professionals carry out in competition with untariffed work of other professionals “ne sont pas soumises à un tarif réglementé”. The same article then requires a written agreement for that untariffed work: “Les professionnels concernés concluent par écrit avec leur client une convention d’honoraires, qui précise, notamment, le montant ou le mode de détermination des honoraires couvrant les diligences prévisibles, ainsi que les divers frais et débours envisagés.” The professionals concerned conclude in writing with their client a fee agreement which states, in particular, the amount or the method of determining the fees covering the foreseeable work, and the various expenses and disbursements envisaged. Chasing a UK bank that never appears in the French deed, translating an English grant of probate, or corresponding with an English solicitor about assets the French file does not contain, is the sort of work that falls on the honoraire side of that line. It needs the written agreement before it is billed as a professional fee. It cannot be quietly folded into the regulated scale.

The inheritance tax is a third pot, and it is not the notaire’s pay. The economy ministry’s page of 30 September 2024, Succession: à quels frais de notaire vous attendre?, describes the notaire’s role as identifying the heirs, searching the central file of last wills, listing lifetime gifts, drawing the deeds, drawing up the estate balance, preparing the déclaration de succession, which is the inheritance-tax return, calculating the tax and paying it to the Treasury, and carrying out the partage, the division. Paying the tax through the office does not turn the tax into an émolument. A British heir who adds the tax line to the fee line, and then compares the total with an English solicitor’s bill, is comparing two different things. The tax computation itself, including the 1963 estate-duty treaty on a French house, is treated in the note on who taxes the French property when a British owner dies. This note stops at the fee.

Service-public, on the page Quels sont les tarifs des notaires en matière de succession?, verified on 25 September 2025, says the same thing in practical language. The succession tariff is made of regulated émoluments and of untariffed items, including disbursements, duties and taxes such as registration duties owed to the Treasury, and VAT. The regulated amount is the same whichever notaire is chosen. The untariffed amount is not. That page’s metropolitan table, for work since January 2021, matches the code articles read for this note on 1 October 2026. The match is a useful check. The code, not the table, is the rule.

VAT is a separate question from the scale. Article 278 of the Code général des impôts, the General Tax Code, still says, in the version applicable on 1 October 2026, “Le taux normal de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée est fixé à 20 %.” The Légifrance record for that version shows a deferred repeal date of 1 January 2027. A bill issued after that date has to be checked against the text then in force. Where French VAT applies, the standard rate on this date is therefore 20 per cent. Whether a given service supplied to an heir living in the United Kingdom is within French VAT is not decided by article 278. A service connected with French land is not in the same position as a service that has nothing to do with French land. This note does not treat every British heir as outside VAT, and it does not treat every line on a Paris invoice as automatically taxable. The practical step is to ask which lines carry VAT, and why. The economy ministry page of 30 September 2024 shows the fixed fee for an acte de notoriété, the deed that records who the heirs are, as €56.60 before tax and €67.92 including tax. That pair is the statutory €56.60 plus 20 per cent. It is a cross-check of the arithmetic, not a ruling on a UK-resident heir’s own liability.

Before any deed is signed, the notaire can, and the code says he does, ask for money on account. Article R444-61 provides: “Préalablement à la signature des actes dont ils sont chargés, les notaires réclament la consignation d’une provision suffisante pour couvrir l’émolument correspondant ainsi que, le cas échéant, les frais et débours.” Before the signature of the acts they are instructed to draw, notaires demand the deposit of a sufficient provision to cover the corresponding émolument and, where relevant, the expenses and disbursements. The article speaks of a demand before signature. It does not, in the text read on 1 October 2026, say that the office may refuse to start any work at all until the provision is paid. A demand that is several times the regulated fee, or that is calculated on UK assets which are not going to appear in the deed, is a demand to be queried in writing before the money is sent. The final account must still be capable of being reconciled to the deeds that were actually signed.

Service-public, on the page Comment régler un litige avec un notaire?, verified on 17 August 2026, states that the notaire must explain a refusal to draw up an act, or the conditions of his intervention, and must hand over a detailed statement of the costs: duties, disbursements, émoluments and honoraires. That detailed statement is the document a British heir should insist on before arguing about the total. A single figure labelled “frais de notaire” is not a statement. It hides whether the office has charged the tax, the scale, a disbursement, and an untariffed fee as one lump. The official pages explain the pots. They do not apply them to a mixed British estate, and they do not work the bands on a French house sitting beside UK assets. That is the gap this note fills.

B. The statutory bands, the gross base, and the UK assets that do and do not belong in it

The bands now in force are not a matter of the office’s discretion, and they are not due to change next month. Article A444-53, in the version starting on 1 March 2026, says: “Les émoluments applicables jusqu’au 29 février 2028 sont ceux qui sont prévus par la présente section.” The émoluments applicable until 29 February 2028 are those provided by this section. The same article adds percentage uplifts in Wallis-and-Futuna, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, Réunion and Mayotte. A succession handled on the metropolitan tariff, which is the ordinary case for a house in Paris or the rest of mainland France, does not take those uplifts. A house in the overseas departments does. The figures below are the unlifted metropolitan bands.

Three deeds dominate a British file that contains a French house. They are different prestations, and each has its own base. The attestation notariée, also called an attestation de propriété, is the deed that records the transfer of the property. Article A444-59 gives it a proportional émolument on a banded scale: 1.935 per cent from €0 to €6,500, 1.064 per cent from €6,500 to €17,000, 0.726 per cent from €17,000 to €30,000, and 0.532 per cent above €30,000. The déclaration de succession is the tax return. Article A444-63 gives it a proportional émolument “à l’actif brut total”, on the total gross assets, at 1.548 per cent, 0.851 per cent, 0.580 per cent and 0.426 per cent on the same first three thresholds, the last rate applying above €30,000. The partage, the division, whether voluntary or judicial, is dealt with by article A444-121: a proportional émolument “à l’actif brut, déduction faite seulement des legs particuliers”, on the gross assets, deducting only particular legacies, at 4.837 per cent, 1.995 per cent, 1.330 per cent and 0.998 per cent, the third band running to €60,000 rather than €30,000. The acte de notoriété after death, the deed recording who inherits, is a fixed émolument. Article A444-66 sets it at “56,60 €”.

These are tranches d’assiette, bands of the base. Each rate applies only to the slice of the base that falls in that band. The scale is degressive: the rate falls as the base rises. Applying the top rate to the whole sum would undercharge, not overcharge. The overcharge, when there is one, comes from the base, from an act that was not done, or from a second fee for work the tariff already includes. Article A444-54 is the general rule for the base, unless the section says otherwise. It provides: “Sauf dispositions contraires de la présente section, les émoluments proportionnels sont perçus sur le capital énoncé dans les actes, augmenté de la valeur des charges figurant dans lesdits actes ou sur l’évaluation retenue pour la liquidation des droits et taxes, si elle est supérieure.” Proportional émoluments are taken on the capital stated in the acts, increased by the value of the charges appearing in those acts, or on the valuation used to calculate the duties and taxes, if that valuation is higher. The base is therefore the greater of those two figures. A low figure typed into the deed does not win if the tax computation uses a higher one. A high figure typed into the deed is not displaced by a lower tax valuation. The same article rounds the base “à l’euro le plus proche”, to the nearest euro. It does not, in the text read on 1 October 2026, impose a further rounding rule on the centimes of the product. A one-cent difference on a printout is not the dispute. A swollen base is.

The word “charges” in that sentence of article A444-54 is defined, and it is not a mortgage. Article A444-54 continues: “Sont considérées comme charges les sommes que, dans l’acte et outre le prix, les parties s’engagent à payer ainsi que les prestations en nature qu’elles s’engagent à fournir.” Charges, for this purpose, are the sums which, in the deed and in addition to the price, the parties undertake to pay, and the benefits in kind they undertake to provide. A debt of the deceased is not, by that definition, added to the fee base. Nor is it deducted from the déclaration base. Article A444-63 uses the actif brut, the gross assets, not the net estate. A French mortgage, a UK care-home invoice or funeral expenses may matter to the tax computation. They do not, under the fee articles read for this note, reduce the déclaration émolument. The tax treatment of those debts belongs with the inheritance-tax note already linked, not with a demand that the notaire “take the mortgage off his fee”.

A worked illustration makes the bands usable. Take a metropolitan file with no communauté, no participation aux acquêts and no société d’acquêts, those being the marital regimes article A444-63 names. The only asset stated in the French deeds, and the only asset used in the French tax computation, is a house worth €400,000. There is no particular legacy. The base is already a whole number of euros. The déclaration bands produce €100.62 on the first €6,500, €89.355 on the next €10,500, €75.40 on the next €13,000, and €1,576.20 on the remaining €370,000. The products total €1,841.575 before any VAT. The attestation on the same house produces €125.775, €111.72, €94.38 and €1,968.40, totalling €2,300.275 before any VAT. The acte de notoriété adds €56.60. Those three sums can lawfully appear together. They are three prestations. The fact that the house is the base of both the attestation and the déclaration is not, by itself, a double charge. Article A444-121‘s once-only rule is narrower. It says the partition émolument “n’est perçu qu’une seule fois sur les valeurs qui figurent dans plusieurs opérations successives comprises dans un même acte de liquidation”: it is taken only once on values which appear in several successive operations contained in the same liquidation deed. It stops a second partition fee inside one liquidation deed. It does not cancel the attestation because a déclaration was also drawn.

Now add €500,000 of UK assets to the same illustration, and watch only the bands that change. On the déclaration, the extra €500,000 sits entirely in the top band, at 0.426 per cent, which is €2,130. On a partition, the first €60,000 of a €400,000 base has already been charged, so the extra €500,000 is charged at 0.998 per cent, which is €4,990. Together, that is €7,120 before VAT, and before any honoraire, solely because the UK assets have entered the gross base of those two acts. The attestation, being charged on the French house, does not move. This is an illustration of the statute, not a prediction of a named office’s invoice. It shows why the base is the fight. A bill that is merely large, because the house is valuable and both the attestation and the déclaration were properly drawn, is not the same thing as a bill that has been enlarged by assets which article A444-54 does not allow into the capital stated in the act, and which were not the valuation used for the taxes.

That is the test for a London flat, a UK current account, a stocks-and-shares ISA or a private pension fund. Article A444-63 charges the déclaration on the total gross assets of that declaration. Article A444-54 charges proportional émoluments on the capital stated in the act, or on the higher tax valuation. A UK asset raises the regulated fee if it is stated in the deed, or if it is part of the valuation used to calculate the French duties and taxes, and that valuation is higher. It does not raise the regulated fee merely because the heir mentioned it in an email, or because the English solicitor’s schedule was attached for information. Whether the asset belongs in the French tax return at all is the tax question left to the linked note and to the deeds. This note’s point is narrower, and it is the one the invoice depends on. If the asset is in the fee base, it must be possible to point to the line of the deed, or to the line of the tax computation, that put it there. If neither line exists, the inclusion is the ground of challenge.

The marital regime can swell the base even when every asset is in France. Article A444-63 includes in the total gross assets, “s’il y a communauté, participation ou société d’acquêts, les biens qui en dépendent”: if there is a community, a participation or a société d’acquêts, the assets which depend on it. Service-public’s succession-tariff page, verified on 25 September 2025, states the practical consequence: the émoluments for drawing the déclaration are calculated on the common assets of the deceased and his or her spouse, unless they were married under separation of property, in which case the émoluments are calculated on the deceased’s assets. A marriage celebrated in England does not, by that fact alone, create a French community. Whether a community, a participation or a société d’acquêts exists after a move to France is the question dealt with in the note on which matrimonial regime owns the house. If no such regime exists, article A444-63 does not bring the survivor’s separate assets into the fee base. If such a regime does exist, the assets that depend on it are in the gross base of the déclaration, and a demand to charge only the deceased’s half is a demand the article does not grant. The survivor’s own ISA in London is not brought in by the community sentence unless it actually depends on that regime. It may still be brought in by the capital-stated-in-the-act rule, if the notaire has written it into the deed. The two routes have to be checked separately.

The partition scale is the expensive one, and it is often the one a file does not need. Article A444-121 applies to a voluntary or judicial partage. A British heir who is the sole heir, and who is not dividing the house with a brother or a surviving spouse, is not in a partage. Charging the 4.837 per cent first band, and the 0.998 per cent top band, on a file that contains only an attestation and a déclaration, is a charge for an act that was not drawn. Where a partage is drawn, only particular legacies come off the base. Debts do not. The same article also adds a non-degressive 0.484 per cent “sur les reprises en nature”, on retakings in kind. A reprise is the taking back of an asset that was not part of the mass being shared, often a spouse’s own property or a prior gift returning to its owner. It is not a second name for the UK assets. If a line on the bill is labelled as a reprise, the deed should show an asset being taken back, not an asset being inherited.

Two smaller fixed fees are worth knowing so that they are not confused with a percentage. Article A444-66’s €56.60 for the post-death notoriété has already been mentioned. Article A444-60 sets €26.41 for the procès-verbal d’ouverture et de description of a testament olographe, the minute of opening and describing a French handwritten will, and €113.19 for certain French wills in authentic or mystic form. An English will is not, by being English, either of those French forms. The fee for using an English will in a French succession is not invented by applying the holographic-opening figure to a will signed before two witnesses in London. The use of that English will, and the choice-of-law problems it raises, belong with the succession deeds and with the note on English probate and the notaire, getting English probate past the French notaire. The fee question, once the will is being used, remains the one in articles A444-54 and A444-63: what capital is stated in the French act, and what valuation was used for the taxes.

Article A444-63 has one express exclusion that heirs with furniture sometimes miss. Where the notaire draws a déclaration that includes movables which have been the subject of a prisée, a formal valuation, giving rise to an émolument under section 1 of the same chapter, “aucun émolument ne peut être perçu par le notaire sur la partie de l’actif brut correspondant à la valeur prisée de ces meubles”: no émolument may be taken by the notaire on the part of the gross assets corresponding to the valued amount of those movables. The exclusion is narrow. It concerns movables that have already attracted a valuation émolument under that section. It is not a general discount for UK chattels, and it is not a reason to omit a French house. If the bill charges both a valuation émolument on French furniture and the déclaration percentage on the same furniture value, the sentence is the ground of challenge. If the furniture was never the subject of that prisée, the sentence does not apply.

II. How to challenge a succession invoice, and what the April 2026 judgment decides

A. The written complaint, the mediator’s one-year clock, and the fee agreement the office must already hold

A challenge starts on paper, and it starts with the notaire, not with a court. Service-public’s dispute page, verified on 17 August 2026, says the heir must first send a written complaint. The letter should set out the dates and the deeds, say what is contested, ask for a reasoned explanation, and propose a solution, such as a recalculation or a repayment. The page recommends recorded delivery. The Notaires de France page Différend avec un notaire: quels recours?, updated on 5 August 2026, says the same thing in shorter form: write to the notaire, and state clearly what is not understood and what is asked. Neither page works the bands. A useful letter does. It asks for the detailed statement service-public describes, deed by deed. It asks which figure is the capital stated in each act, which figure is the tax valuation, and which of the two was used under article A444-54. It asks whether any UK asset appears in either figure. It asks whether a communauté, a participation or a société d’acquêts was included under article A444-63, and on what deed that regime was found. It asks whether a partage was actually drawn, and whether any value has been charged twice inside one liquidation deed contrary to article A444-121. It asks for the written convention d’honoraires if any line is not an émolument.

The consumer-mediation route is statutory, and it has a clock. Article L612-1 of the Consumer Code provides: “Tout consommateur a le droit de recourir gratuitement à un médiateur de la consommation en vue de la résolution amiable du litige qui l’oppose à un professionnel.” Every consumer has the right to refer, without charge to that consumer, to a consumer mediator for the amicable resolution of the dispute with a professional. The word in the statute describes the mediator’s process. It does not describe any service of a law firm, and it is not a promise about the notaire’s own bill. Article L612-2 then lists the cases in which the mediator does not examine the dispute. One of them is that the consumer does not show a prior written complaint to the professional. Another is that the consumer referred the file to the mediator “dans un délai supérieur à un an à compter de sa réclamation écrite auprès du professionnel”: more than one year after the written complaint to the professional. A third is that the dispute has already been examined, or is being examined, by another mediator or by a court. Sending the complaint, and diarising one year from the day it was sent, is therefore not a courtesy. It is the condition of this route. Service-public adds, as a practical step verified on 17 August 2026, that the mediator may be seized if the notaire has not replied within two months, or if the reply is unsatisfactory, and that the heir may skip mediation and write to the regional or interdepartmental council instead. The two-month figure is that page’s practical instruction. The one-year figure is the statute.

The professional body’s page says the notaire is free to refuse mediation, that the mediator rules on whether the request can be examined, and that the parties may be represented. Article L612-1 is the consumer’s right to refer the dispute. Article L612-2 is the mediator’s power to reject a file in the listed cases. This note does not turn the professional body’s sentence into a rule that the heir cannot file. It records the difference. A refusal to take part, if it happens, does not erase the written complaint, and it does not stop the one-year clock from having been started by that complaint. If no agreement is reached, both the professional body’s page and service-public point on to the disciplinary bodies or to the courts. Those are different claims. A disciplinary complaint asks whether professional rules were broken. A civil claim asks for compensation for a fault. A taxation claim, discussed below, asks for the regulated fee to be set at the lawful figure. Choosing one does not automatically do the work of the others. Article L612-2 also closes the mediator’s door if a court is already seized. The order of the steps is therefore a choice with a consequence, not a menu that can be eaten all at once.

The regional or interdepartmental complaint is the step both official pages describe after, or instead of, mediation. Notaires de France, citing the law of 22 December 2021 and the ordinance of 13 April 2022 on the ethics and discipline of notaires, says any person may lodge a complaint with the regional council or the interdepartmental chamber of the place where the notaire practises, and that the complaint must set out the facts in detail. Service-public’s page of 17 August 2026 says the same, and adds the disciplinary chamber as a further step, then the ordinary courts for a civil fault or a criminal offence. A fee that is too high is not, by itself, a criminal matter. It becomes a disciplinary or civil matter if the facts support a breach or a fault, for example a refusal to provide the detailed statement, a fee taken without the written agreement article L444-1 requires, or advice so far below the duty of a notaire that a loss follows. The recalculation of a regulated émolument has its own judge, named in the tariff itself. That route should not be confused with a claim for damages, and it should not be delayed while a disciplinary file wanders.

The written fee agreement is the document to demand whenever the bill leaves the scale. Article L444-1 does not allow an untariffed prestation to be priced by habit. The agreement must state the amount, or the method, for the foreseeable work, and the expenses and disbursements envisaged. An agreement signed after the work, or a percentage “of the estate” with no method, is not what the sentence describes. Article R444-2’s definition of a prestation also cuts the other way. Advice given in connection with the tariffed act is part of that prestation. A line called “advice on the déclaration”, charged on top of the article A444-63 émolument for drawing the déclaration, is a line that has to be justified as something other than the advice the definition already includes. Correspondence with an English solicitor about a London flat that is not in the French deed is different. It is not advice in connection with an act that does not mention the flat. If it was done, it needed the written agreement. If it was not done, it cannot be billed at all.

The provision under article R444-61 should be reconciled at the end, not treated as a non-refundable engagement fee. The article calls it a sufficient provision to cover the corresponding émolument and, where relevant, the expenses and disbursements. Once the deeds are signed and the detailed statement exists, any excess of the provision over the lawful émoluments, the proven disbursements and any honoraires covered by a written agreement is money to be returned. A provision calculated on a base that included UK assets which never entered the deed is too high by the band arithmetic set out above. The letter should ask for that reconciliation in figures, not in adjectives. Service-public’s tariff page and the economy ministry page both tell the client that a written estimate can be asked for. An estimate is not the tariff. It is useful because a later bill that departs from it, without a change in the deeds, is easier to contest. It does not bind the Treasury’s tax, and it does not authorise a base the code does not allow.

B. The judge who taxes the fee, the Paris route, and the grounds that move the bill

When the argument is about the amount of a regulated émolument, the Commercial Code already names the judge. Article A444-54, after dealing with the capital stated in the act and the tax valuation, provides a fallback: if that method cannot be applied, the émoluments are taken on the estimated value declared in the act. “A défaut d’accord entre les parties et le notaire sur cette valeur estimative, les émoluments sont perçus sur la valeur vénale déterminée par le juge chargé de la taxation.” In the absence of agreement between the parties and the notaire on that estimated value, the émoluments are taken on the market value set by the judge in charge of taxation. The judge chargé de la taxation is the judge whose function is to tax, in the old sense of the word: to fix the lawful amount of the fee. He is not the tax inspector who assesses inheritance tax. A letter that asks the French tax office to reduce the notaire’s émolument is in the wrong place. A letter that asks the notaire to reduce the inheritance tax, because the fee seems high, is equally in the wrong place. The two challenges have different addressees, different clocks and different evidence.

The path of that taxation procedure, as it stood in a decided case, is now in a published judgment of the Court of Cassation. On 2 April 2026 the Second Civil Chamber, in appeal no. 24-12.467, published in the Bulletin, quashed an order of the first president of the Paris court of appeal. The official report of the judgment is the Court of Cassation decision of 2 April 2026, no. 24-12.467. The holding is that the first president misapplied article A444-121 by excluding from the proportional émolument values which he had himself treated as part of the gross estate, those values being sums an heiress had to restore after concealment of assets. The operative reasoning uses these words. The Court held that the first president, “alors qu’il retenait que l’actif brut de succession de 2 641 064,92 euros comprenait les valeurs à restituer à la succession par l’héritière qui a commis le recel successoral”, although he found that the gross estate of €2,641,064.92 included the values to be restored by the heiress who had concealed assets, had not drawn the legal consequence of his own findings, and had breached the texts. The order of 28 November 2023 was quashed in full and the case sent back to the first president of the Paris court of appeal, differently composed.

The judgment has to be read for what it decides, and for what it does not. It decides that a judge who has found a sum to be part of the gross estate cannot then drop that sum out of the partition émolument in order to produce a lower fee. Concealment, the recel successoral, does not shrink the fee base once the values to be restored are in the gross estate the judge has accepted. It does not decide that a notaire may add any asset he has heard of. It does not decide that a UK bank account is always in the French gross estate. It does not decide that a debt, a mortgage or a particular legacy stays in the partition base. Article A444-121, which the Court applied, still deducts particular legacies, and only particular legacies. Article A444-54, which the Court also had in its visa, still ties the ordinary proportional émolument to the capital stated in the act, or to the higher tax valuation. The two rules work together. What the deed, or the judge, has treated as part of the gross estate stays in the base, even if an heir would prefer to treat it as worthless or as uncollectable. What has not been stated in the act, and was not the valuation used for the taxes, is not put into the base by this judgment. A British heir who wants UK assets out must show that they are not in the capital stated in the act and not in the tax valuation. A British heir who wants concealed or disputed values out, after a judge has found that they are in the gross estate, will meet this judgment.

The same judgment shows the procedural ladder actually used. A directeur des services de greffe judiciaires, the director of the judicial registry services, had issued a certificat de vérification, a verification certificate, on 15 January 2021. The heirs and the notaire contested it. The president of a tribunal judiciaire taxed the émoluments. The first president of the court of appeal reviewed that taxation. The Court of Cassation then reviewed the first president. That is the ladder for a regulated fee, as this Bulletin judgment records it. It is distinct from the mediator, from the regional council, and from a damages claim. A reader who has only written to the tax office, or only written to the chamber, has not yet taken this ladder. The judgment does not, in the passages read for this note, state a short statutory time limit for seizing the judge in charge of taxation. This note will not invent one. The one-year period in article L612-2 is the mediator’s period, measured from the written complaint. It is not, on the texts read here, the period for the taxation judge. Waiting for the chamber to finish, while a taxation claim is left unfiled, is a risk only if some other period, outside these texts, is running. The safe course on the texts that have been verified is to write the complaint at once, to keep the proof of sending, and to take advice on the taxation claim’s own timing before assuming that the mediator’s year is the only clock.

For an office in Paris or the inner suburbs, the 2026 judgment is also a map of the court. The order under appeal was an order of the first president of the Paris court of appeal, and the Court sent the case back to that same first president, differently composed. A fee dispute about a notaire who practises in Paris was, in this file, a Paris file. Service-public and Notaires de France both send the professional complaint to the regional council or the interdepartmental chamber of the place where the notaire practises, not to a national body in the abstract and not to the heir’s home address in England. An heir living in Kent, whose parents’ notaire is in Paris, writes to that Paris office, complains to the chamber of that place of practice, and, if the taxation ladder is used, should expect the Paris court structure the judgment records, rather than a court in England. An office in another département uses the court of that office’s seat. This note does not turn the Paris judgment into a rule that every French succession bill is heard in Paris. It does mean that a Paris office’s regulated-fee dispute is not started by a letter to a UK probate registry. The pieces to have ready, whether the hearing is in Paris or elsewhere, are the invoice, the provision receipt, the draft and signed deeds, the tax computation showing the valuation used, the written complaint and proof of sending, any fee agreement, and a one-page reconciliation that applies the bands to the capital actually stated. The Court in the 2026 case worked from a projet d’état liquidatif, a draft liquidation statement, that distinguished a mass to be shared from a larger gross estate. A British heir who can produce the same distinction, in his own figures, is speaking the language the taxation judge used.

The grounds that move a bill are therefore concrete, and they are few. The UK asset, or the survivor’s separate asset, is in the fee base although it is not stated in the act and was not the tax valuation. A community, a participation or a société d’acquêts has been included although no such regime exists, or has been omitted although the deed establishing it is in the file. A partage scale has been charged although no partage was drawn, or has been charged twice on the same values inside one liquidation deed. Particular legacies have not been deducted from a partition base, or debts have been refused as a deduction from a base that is gross and from which the fee articles do not deduct them. Movables already charged under a prisée émolument have been charged again inside the déclaration, contrary to the closing sentence of article A444-63. An honoraire has been taken for advice that article R444-2 already includes in the tariffed prestation, or for work outside the deed without the written agreement article L444-1 requires. VAT has been added to a line with no explanation of why French VAT applies, or has been added after 1 January 2027 without checking the text that replaces article 278. None of these grounds is made out by the adjective “excessive”. The regulated fee on a valuable house is often large and still lawful. The €400,000 illustration above is lawful if the deeds match it. It becomes contestable if the office has added the €500,000 and cannot point to the line that justifies the addition.

A damages claim is the other court route, and it is not a shortcut to a lower scale. Service-public and Notaires de France both say that a civil fault, a delay, a breach of the duty of advice, or a lack of impartiality can be brought before the ordinary courts. That claim asks whether the notaire committed a fault and whether a loss flowed from it. It is the right claim if the office refused the detailed statement, missed a deed, or gave advice that caused a tax or a title to be lost. It is the wrong claim if the only complaint is that a lawful band was applied to a lawful base. The taxation judge exists for that second complaint. Mixing them in one angry letter, without separating the figures from the fault, produces a file neither judge can decide cleanly. The 2026 judgment is itself an illustration of the difference. The heirs there were not accused of having invented a loss. They had persuaded the first president to leave a found asset out of the base. The Court of Cassation restored the base. A British heir who wants a reduction must fit one of the statutory grounds, not the hope that a court will think the bill feels high for a family in mourning.

What the three public pages do not do is apply this test to a cross-border estate. Service-public’s tariff page gives the bands and the composition of the bill, and it stops. The economy ministry page of 30 September 2024 explains when a notaire is required, including where there is real property, and it gives the same bands, and it stops at the written estimate. The Notaires de France page of 5 August 2026 explains the mediator, the chamber and the court, and it does not contain a single band. None of them cites the 2 April 2026 judgment. None of them tells a heir in Britain to compare the invoice with the capital stated in the act and with the tax valuation, line by line, before paying a provision calculated on worldwide assets. That comparison is the whole of the practical protection. It can be done from Kent with the PDF of the deed. It does not require a second visit to the office. It does require the deed, the tax computation and the invoice to be read together, which is exactly what a single total on a provision request is designed, by its form if not by anyone’s intention, to prevent.

Conclusion

A French succession bill sent to a British heir is lawful when each regulated line matches a prestation that was drawn, and when the base of that line is the capital stated in the act or, if higher, the valuation used for the taxes. Article A444-63 puts the total gross assets into the déclaration, including assets that depend on a community, a participation or a société d’acquêts where such a regime exists. Article A444-121 puts the gross assets into a partition, deducting only particular legacies, and takes that émolument only once on the same values inside one liquidation deed. Article A444-54 is the gate for assets in the United Kingdom. They raise the fee if they are stated in the deed or used in the higher tax valuation. They do not raise it because they exist. The bands applied above, which article A444-53 keeps until 29 February 2028, turn a €500,000 wrongful inclusion into €2,130 on the déclaration and €4,990 on a partition, before VAT. The 2 April 2026 judgment, published in the Bulletin, confirms the other edge of the same rule: a judge who has found a value to be in the gross estate cannot cut it out of the fee to be kind. The written complaint starts both the mediator’s one-year period under article L612-2 and the request for the detailed statement. The judge in charge of taxation, not the tax inspector and not an English probate registry, fixes a disputed regulated fee. The deeds and the tax computation decide the base. The judge decides the dispute.