You divorced in England, the English court made a pension sharing order that takes a percentage of your ex-spouse’s pension and gives it to you, and now you live in France — or the pension, the paying scheme and the flat you still own are in France. The English order says one thing, the French pension fund or the French bank says another, and nobody seems able to move the money. This is one of the most painful aftershocks of Brexit for British families: before 2021, an English matrimonial order circulated in France under European regulations; since 2021, it does not. It must be recognised through a French court procedure called exequatur (a court order declaring a foreign judgment enforceable in France), while France applies its own, very different logic to compensate a spouse for pension loss — the prestation compensatoire (a lump-sum compensatory payment fixed by the judge). The two systems do not speak the same language, and that gap is where files get stuck.

This guide explains, for a British reader living in France or holding French assets after an English divorce, how an English pension sharing order is treated in France after Brexit, what the French judge looks at instead, how to get the English order declared enforceable, how the resulting sums are taxed under the France-United Kingdom double tax treaty of 19 June 2008, and how to challenge a refusal or a blockage. Every French term is explained at first use. The legal references are the Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure, the General Tax Code and published decisions of the Cour de cassation (France’s supreme court for civil matters), each linked to its official text. A related general guide on how a British couple divorces in France, which court decides and which law applies covers jurisdiction and the house and children; this article deals only with the pension piece, which deserves its own treatment. The companion analysis of how British pensions, lump sums and Crown pensions are taxed in France completes the tax picture.

Start with the practical picture. An English pension sharing order typically creates a pension debit against one spouse’s arrangement — often a SIPP (self-invested personal pension, a UK individual pension wrapper), an occupational scheme or a personal pension — and a matching pension credit for the other spouse, implemented by the scheme administrator on receipt of the order. In France, there is no equivalent power to split pension rights directly between ex-spouses. The French judge compensates pension disparity indirectly, through a capital sum. When the English order meets a French pension body — the Agirc-Arrco supplementary scheme, a French basic caisse (pension fund), or a French branch asked to enforce against French property — the English mechanism has no direct handle to grip. The French body will ask for a French enforceable title. The English scheme administrator may refuse to act on a French judgment for the same reason in reverse. Each side waits for the other. Understanding this structural mismatch is the first step to unblocking the file, because the remedy is procedural: obtain the missing French title through exequatur, then use French enforcement tools — the juge de l’exécution (enforcement judge) and third-party attachment — while keeping the tax position straight from day one.

I. Can an English pension sharing order be enforced in France after Brexit?

A. Why your English pension sharing order no longer travels automatically to France

Before Brexit, matrimonial decisions moved between the United Kingdom and France under Council Regulation (EC) No 2201/2003, known as Brussels IIa, and for maintenance under Regulation (EC) No 4/2009. An English divorce order, including its financial provisions, could be registered and enforced in France with a light procedure. Since the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020, those regulations no longer apply between the United Kingdom and France. The recast Regulation (EU) 2019/1111, known as Brussels IIter, binds France but not the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom’s application to rejoin the Lugano Convention of 30 October 2007 was not accepted, so that route is closed as well. The consequence is blunt: an English pension sharing order made after 2020 is a third-country judgment in France. It has no direct effect until a French court declares it enforceable.

The governing French text is short and strict. Article 509 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides: “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.” In plain English: foreign judgments become enforceable in France only in the manner and cases provided by law. For a British judgment, that manner is the ordinary exequatur action before the tribunal judiciaire (the general civil court), because no treaty or European regulation now provides a shortcut for English matrimonial property orders. The official guidance on recognition of foreign decisions published on service-public.fr confirms that outside European instruments, enforcement requires a French court decision, and the English guidance on family orders after Brexit published on gov.uk warns practitioners that Brussels IIa no longer governs recognition between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

What the French exequatur judge checks is settled case law, restated with unusual clarity in a recent decision. In its judgment of 7 May 2025, appeal No 23-18.558, the First Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation recalled the three conditions in its published decision of 7 May 2025: “Pour accorder l’exequatur, le juge français doit, en l’absence de convention internationale et en dehors du champ d’application des règlements européens, 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.” In English: to grant enforcement, the French judge must verify the indirect jurisdiction of the foreign court based on the link between the dispute and that court, compatibility with French international public policy on substance and procedure, and the absence of fraud. The court added that fraud control is not limited to evasion of the applicable law. For a British pension sharing order, this means the French court will examine whether the English court had a genuine link to the case — habitual residence or domicile of the parties in England and Wales — whether the order shocks French conceptions of fairness, and whether either party manipulated jurisdiction or concealed assets to obtain it. Most genuine English divorces between British spouses pass the first test without difficulty; disputes concentrate on the second and third.

The public-policy test is where pension sharing meets French resistance. French law does not know pension splitting. A French judge will not refuse exequatur merely because the foreign remedy is unknown in France — foreign law routinely differs — but will refuse if the result offends core French principles: a decision obtained without the other party being heard, a punitive confiscation disguised as sharing, or an order that contradicts a prior French decision between the same parties. An English pension sharing order that divides accrued rights accrued during the marriage, after both parties participated and disclosed, normally survives this test. An order made while a French divorce was already pending between the same spouses, or one that purports to divide French public-sector pension rights that French statute declares strictly personal and inalienable, faces a harder reception. The preparation of the file must therefore anticipate the objection: produce the sealed English order with proof of service, the certificate that it is final and enforceable in England, evidence that both parties took part, and a clear explanation by a family solicitor of what the pension debit and credit actually do under Part IV of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999. The French judge cannot assess compatibility with public policy without understanding the foreign mechanism, and the burden of that explanation falls on the applicant.

Jurisdiction within France follows Article 509-2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which sends applications for recognition or enforcement of foreign enforceable titles to the directeur de greffe (chief clerk) and the court system it designates under the applicable instrument — and, outside any instrument, to the tribunal judiciaire by ordinary writ. In practice, the applicant issues an assignation (a formal summons served by a commissaire de justice, formerly huissier, the enforcement officer) against the ex-spouse before the tribunal judiciaire of the place where enforcement will occur — where the French property sits, where the French pension body is established, or where the debtor lives. For British residents of Paris and the Île-de-France region, that is the Paris tribunal judiciaire, whose dedicated enforcement and exequatur chamber handles a large volume of post-Brexit English orders. Allow real time: service on a party resident in England must go through the Hague Service Convention channels, which adds weeks, and the first hearing is typically a case-management hearing before any decision on the merits. Representation by a French avocat (a lawyer admitted to a French Bar) is compulsory.

One common trap must be avoided. Some applicants try to short-circuit exequatur by asking a French notaire or pension fund to “take note” of the English order voluntarily. A notaire (a public officer who authenticates transactions and settles successions) can record a foreign decision in a French deed, but that record does not make the English order enforceable against a reluctant debtor or a third party holding funds. Only the court’s declaration does. Money spent on creative workarounds before exequatur is usually wasted. The correct sequence is: sealed English order, French translation by a sworn translator, writ for exequatur, judgment granting enforcement, service of that judgment with the English order appended, then enforcement measures. Any attachment attempted before the French judgment — a saisie-attribution (a third-party debt attachment) served on a French bank — will be discharged on challenge, with costs against the creditor.

B. How France compensates pension loss instead: the prestation compensatoire and retraite rights

To understand what the French court does with pensions, forget splitting. French divorce law compensates the living-standards gap created by the breakdown of the marriage through a single mechanism, the prestation compensatoire. Article 270 of the Civil Code states the principle: “Le divorce met fin au devoir de secours entre époux.” The duty of support between spouses ends with divorce. It continues: one spouse may be required to pay the other a payment designed to compensate, as far as possible, the disparity in living conditions created by the breakdown, and “Cette prestation a un caractère forfaitaire. Elle prend la forme d’un capital dont le montant est fixé par le juge.” The payment is a fixed lump sum, in capital form, fixed by the judge. The judge may refuse it on fairness grounds, taking into account the statutory criteria or where divorce is granted on the exclusive fault of the claimant in the particular circumstances of the breakdown.

Pension rights sit at the heart of those criteria. Article 271 of the Civil Code directs the judge to fix the payment according to the needs of the recipient and the resources of the other, considering the situation at the divorce and its foreseeable development, and provides: “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.” The article then lists what the judge must consider, including the duration of the marriage, age and health, professional qualifications and situation, career sacrifices made for the children or for the other spouse’s career, the estimated or foreseeable estate and income of each spouse after liquidation of the matrimonial regime, existing and foreseeable rights — and, expressly, each spouse’s pension position, estimating as far as possible the reduction in retirement rights the claiming spouse may have suffered because of those family choices. For a British family where one spouse paused work to raise children while the other built a SIPP and a full National Insurance record, this paragraph is the entire case: the French judge quantifies the pension gap and folds it into the capital sum, rather than ordering the pension itself to be divided.

The procedure forces transparency. Article 272 of the Civil Code requires that, when the judge or the parties fix the payment, or on an application for revision, “les parties fournissent au juge une déclaration certifiant sur l’honneur l’exactitude de leurs ressources, revenus, patrimoine et conditions de vie.” Each party must file a sworn statement certifying the accuracy of their resources, income, estate and living conditions. A British litigant accustomed to English Form E financial disclosure will recognise the logic but should not confuse the documents: the French declaration is shorter and standardised, yet a false statement carries criminal as well as civil consequences, and the judge draws adverse inferences from silence. Attach the English pension valuations — the cash equivalent values — the French relevé de situation individuelle (the individual pension statement showing accrued basic and supplementary rights), and any actuarial report. Without those, the judge cannot estimate the pension diminution that Article 271 requires, and the resulting capital will reflect guesswork rather than arithmetic.

Payment follows Article 274 of the Civil Code: “Le juge décide des modalités selon lesquelles s’exécutera la prestation compensatoire en capital parmi les formes suivantes” — the judge chooses how the capital is executed among statutory forms, including payment of a sum of money, possibly secured by guarantees, or the transfer of property or of a temporary or life interest such as use, residence or usufruit (a life interest entitling the holder to use the property and take its income), the judgment itself operating as a forced transfer to the creditor. The debtor spouse’s agreement is required for a transfer in ownership of property received by inheritance or gift. In a Franco-British case, this flexibility matters: the French judge can order that the compensatory capital be paid by transferring a share of the French holiday home, by granting the wife a life interest in it, or by staggered payments secured by a charge, achieving economically what pension sharing achieves in England — rebalancing retirement resources — through different legal tools.

The contrast with England is sharpest on timing and revision. In England and Wales, a pension sharing order, once implemented, is final; variation applies to periodical payments, not to the implemented share. In France, a prestation compensatoire fixed as capital is also final in principle, but a pension paid as a life annuity (rente viagère) under the old law can be revised, suspended or converted. The Cour de cassation polices the boundary between pension benefits and compensation strictly. In its judgment of 5 December 2018, appeal No 17-27.518, the First Civil Chamber, ruling on the substitution of capital for an annuity after the debtor’s death, held by reference to Article 280-2 of the Civil Code that where a survivor’s pension (pension de réversion, the share of a deceased spouse’s pension paid to the widow or widower) is paid to the creditor, its gross amount is deducted from the substituted capital, as published in the decision of 5 December 2018. The lesson for British families is practical: French compensation and French survivor benefits interact arithmetically, and double recovery is refused. If the English pension sharing credit already gives the ex-spouse a survivor benefit under the English scheme, the French judge setting a prestation compensatoire in parallel proceedings must be told, or the total will be excessive — and vulnerable on appeal.

The most difficult configuration is the parallel divorce: one spouse petitions in England, the other in France. Since Brexit, there is no European lis pendens (pending-case priority) rule obliging the second court to stand back. Each court applies its own jurisdictional rules, and two divorces can proceed simultaneously, each with financial orders that overlap. The recent judgment of the Cour de cassation of 10 December 2025, appeal No 23-22.356, illustrates the French approach when English matrimonial property law meets a French compensation claim: ruling on a wife’s claim where the liquidation of the regime was governed by English law, the court examined whether the English sharing and needs-based mechanisms already compensated the imbalance, as reported in the decision of 10 December 2025. The reasoning confirms that the French judge does not ignore the English settlement; the judge analyses whether the English division, combining compensation, sharing and needs, has already repaired the disparity, and refuses a French top-up where it has. For British couples, the message is organisational: coordinate the two proceedings from the start, disclose each order in the other court, and avoid inviting contradictory decisions that will then need to be reconciled through exequatur refusals and appeals.

II. Getting the English order through, paying the right tax and challenging a blockage

A. How to get your English pension order recognised and enforced by a French court

The route to enforcement has four stages, and each has its documentary logic. First, assemble the English file. You need the sealed final order containing the pension sharing annex, the court certificate that the order is enforceable in England and no longer subject to an ordinary appeal, proof that the respondent was duly served and participated or was given the opportunity to do so, and a sworn French translation of every page. Ask the English solicitor for a short explanatory note on the scheme: its name, its administrator, whether it is an occupational scheme, a SIPP or a state pension share (note that the UK State Pension itself cannot be shared by a pension sharing order — only additional or protected payments in narrow cases — so an order purporting to share the basic State Pension will puzzle the French judge and should be clarified before filing). If the order includes a maintenance component alongside the pension share, identify it separately, because maintenance follows a different treaty route — the Hague Convention of 23 November 2007 on child support and family maintenance, to which both the United Kingdom and France are parties — while the pension share itself travels by exequatur.

Second, choose the right French court and issue the writ. As noted, the tribunal judiciaire of the place of enforcement has jurisdiction. The writ must name the ex-spouse as defendant, set out the English proceedings, explain the pension mechanism, and request that the court declare the English decision enforceable in France, in whole or for the pension provisions severed from the rest. Severability matters: if one paragraph of the English order offends French public policy but the pension share itself does not, the court can grant partial exequatur limited to the unobjectionable part. Ask for it expressly as an alternative plea. Join as background the French pension bodies concerned so that the resulting judgment is opposable to them, and request that costs follow the event. The defendant will be served in England under the Hague Service Convention; budget two to four months for service and the first directions hearing.

Third, win the triple test. On indirect jurisdiction, show the English court’s link: marriage in England, habitual residence of one or both spouses there, domicile, submission to the jurisdiction. On public policy, demonstrate due process — service, representation, reasoned decision — and proportionality: the share reflects accrual during cohabitation, not confiscation. Produce the English disclosure and valuations to prove the figure is reasoned. On fraud, disclose everything, including any French proceedings and any French assets omitted from the English schedule. The 7 May 2025 decision recalled that fraud control extends beyond evasion of the applicable law to procedural manoeuvres, so a file that hides a parallel French case invites refusal. Where the English order divides a French property to fund the compensation, confirm that the transfer mechanics respect French land registration: the French judgment will need publication at the service de publicité foncière (the land registry), with the notaire preparing the deposit.

Fourth, enforce. Once the exequatur judgment is final — after the one-month appeal period for a party served in person in France, extended for service abroad — have it served with the English order by a commissaire de justice and proceed. Against a French bank account holding a lump sum paid under the English order, a saisie-attribution attaches the debt directly. Against salary or a French pension in payment, a saisie des rémunérations (earnings attachment) or pension attachment applies within statutory protected minima. Against French immovable property, a saisie immobilière (forced sale) is the last resort, slow and costly, usually preceded by a judicial mortgage (hypothèque judiciaire) registered on the strength of the exequatur judgment to secure the claim while negotiating. Where the English scheme administrator still holds the pension in England and refuses to implement the French-declared order, the practical lever reverses: return to the English court with the French exequatur judgment and ask for enforcement directions against the scheme under the English Pension Sharing (Implementation and Discharge of Liability) Regulations 2000, which oblige the person responsible for the arrangement to implement a valid credit within four months of the operative date. The two enforcement systems must be worked in tandem, not in isolation.

Consensual divorce deserves a special note. Since the reform of 1 January 2017, an uncontested French divorce by mutual consent is recorded in a private agreement countersigned by lawyers and deposited with a notaire, without a judge. Article 229-1 of the Civil Code provides: “Lorsque les époux s’entendent sur la rupture du mariage et ses effets, ils constatent, assistés chacun par un avocat, leur accord dans une convention prenant la forme d’un acte sous signature privée contresigné par leurs avocats” — spouses who agree on the breakdown and its effects record their agreement, each assisted by a lawyer, in a private deed countersigned by counsel. Deposit with the notaire gives the agreement a fixed date and enforceability. An English consent order approved by the English court is a judicial decision and can seek exequatur in the same way as a contested order; a purely contractual English separation agreement cannot — it must be sued upon in France as a contract. British couples who settle in England while holding French property should therefore insist on a court-approved consent order, not a solicitor’s agreement alone, if French enforcement may be needed.

B. What tax France puts on the English pension credit and how to challenge a refusal or a bill

Tax is where many British divorcees receive their second shock. The pension credit, once received, is not exempt from tax in France merely because it came from a divorce. French domestic law taxes pensions broadly. Article 79 of the General Tax Code provides: “Les traitements, indemnités, émoluments, salaires, pensions et rentes viagères concourent à la formation du revenu global servant de base à l’impôt sur le revenu.” Salaries, pensions and life annuities form part of global taxable income, and the same article adds that retirement benefits paid as capital are included as well. An English pension credit paid as a pension is therefore, in principle, within French taxable income if the recipient is French tax resident; a credit paid as a capital sum is within the capital rules. The 10 per cent allowance on pensions, capped annually, applies to the resulting pension income under Article 158 of the General Tax Code, which governs the computation of net global income including foreign-source income. Declare the credit on the supplementary foreign-income return No 2047 and carry it to the main return No 2042; the country-by-country detail on form 2047 is what allows the treaty mechanism to operate.

The France-United Kingdom double tax treaty signed on 19 June 2008 in London allocates the taxing right. Its Article 18 on private pensions gives the exclusive right to tax to the state of residence of the recipient: a British divorcee resident in France receiving a private-occupation or personal pension credit pays tax in France, not in the United Kingdom, and claims exemption or repayment in the United Kingdom through the HMRC double-taxation claim process. Its Article 19 reserves government-service pensions — civil service, armed forces, police, teachers in public schemes — to the paying state, so a pension credit carved from a Crown pension paid for past government service may remain taxable only in the United Kingdom even if the recipient lives in France, with France granting exemption under Article 24 with progression. The distinction between a private SIPP credit and a Crown scheme credit is therefore the single most valuable classification in the file: get it wrong and the household pays in both countries or claims the wrong relief. The official treaty text is published by impots.gouv.fr and the English commentary on residence and pension taxation by gov.uk on tax if you live abroad and receive a UK pension; both should be cited in any challenge to a duplicate assessment. Social charges follow residence and scheme: a British divorcee affiliated to the French health system on pension income may face the 7.1 to 8.3 per cent contribution sociale généralisée (general social contribution) unless a posted-worker certificate or an S1 healthcare certificate places the social-charge burden in the United Kingdom.

A practical sequencing point saves money. English schemes usually implement the credit gross, deducting UK tax at source only where the payment itself is taxable in the United Kingdom. If the recipient is already French resident when the credit is paid, the scheme should be told before implementation so that it applies the correct personal-allowance and double-taxation-treaty coding, rather than emergency-taxing a lump sum that must later be reclaimed from HMRC. Keep the decree absolute, the pension sharing annex with its percentage and cash equivalent value, the implementation notice from the scheme, and the French exequatur judgment together: the French tax office (service des impôts des particuliers, the local personal tax office) will ask for all four when it queries the first 2047 showing an unfamiliar English pension entry. Where the English order provides that the transferor pays the implementation charges, keep those invoices as well; they support the argument that the credit received is net of costs already borne.

Challenging a refusal or an excessive bill follows three distinct tracks that must not be confused. Against a refusal of exequatur by the tribunal judiciaire, the remedy is an appeal (appel) to the cour d’appel (appeal court) within one month of service of the judgment, or longer where service was effected abroad, followed by a final appeal on points of law (pourvoi en cassation) to the Cour de cassation — the route taken in each of the decisions cited in this article. New evidence of English enforceability or of participation can be filed on appeal; a bare repetition of the first-instance file cannot. Against a French pension body that refuses to split or to pay on the strength of the exequatur judgment, the remedy is execution proceedings before the juge de l’exécution, who can order release under penalty (astreinte, a daily fine for delay) and authorise attachment. Against a French tax assessment that taxes the credit twice or denies the treaty exemption, the remedy is the standard tax challenge: first a written claim (réclamation contentieuse) to the tax office within the statutory deadline, then an appeal to the administrative court (tribunal administratif), with suspension of enforced recovery on request where guarantees are offered. Each track has its own time limits measured in weeks, not years; diary them from the date of service, not from the date of the underlying English order.

Document discipline decides these challenges. Maintain a single bundle: English petition and decree nisi and absolute or final order, pension valuations and Form P1 information, scheme implementation correspondence, sworn translations, French writ and exequatur judgment with proof of service, French pension statements and tax notices, and a chronology cross-referencing each document to the triple test or the treaty article it supports. When instructing valuers, ask for both the English cash equivalent and an estimate of the French capitalised equivalent, because the French judge thinks in capital while the English scheme thinks in percentage share; a report that speaks both languages shortens the hearing. When corresponding with HMRC and the French tax office, quote the treaty article numbers expressly — Article 18 for private pensions, Article 19 for government service, Article 24 for relief — and attach the residence certificate. Generic letters invoking “the treaty” without articles are routinely set aside.

Conclusion

An English pension sharing order does not cross the Channel by itself after Brexit, but it is far from worthless in France. Treated as what it is — a reasoned third-country judgment about pension rights accrued during the marriage — it can be declared enforceable by the French tribunal judiciaire where the English court had a genuine link, due process was respected and no fraud tainted the result. France will not divide the pension itself; the French judge compensates pension disparity through a capital prestation compensatoire calibrated on needs, resources and the estimated loss of retirement rights, executed as money, property or a secured life interest. The resulting credit is then taxed where the treaty says it is taxed — in France for private pensions of French residents, in the United Kingdom for Crown service pensions — and declared accordingly. Families who sequence the work correctly — sealed English order, sworn translation, targeted exequatur with partial enforcement as a fallback, coordinated enforcement on both sides of the Channel, and treaty-precise tax returns — unblock files that look hopeless when each institution is approached in isolation. Where a court refuses enforcement, a pension body refuses to pay, or the tax office taxes twice, the remedies exist and the time limits are short: appeal, enforcement judge, and tax claim each have their role. The pension earned over a married life in England can still fund retirement in France; it simply needs a French title to travel on.