Your father lived his whole life in Manchester. You have lived in Lyon for nine years. One Tuesday morning the hospital calls, then the funeral director, then a solicitor in Didsbury tells you that you are the executor and the main beneficiary of an estate worth several hundred thousand pounds: a house, bank accounts, a private pension pot already in drawdown. You grieve, you fly over, you sign papers you barely read. Then, months later, a letter from the French tax office asks where the succession return is. Nobody in Manchester warned you that France might tax an English estate. Nobody in Lyon can tell you whether the English grant of probate is worth anything in France, which law governs the will, or how to stop both countries taxing the same house. This guide answers those three questions in order: which succession law applies when the deceased lived in England, which country taxes what when the heir lives in France, and how to file, pay and challenge the bill without being taxed twice.

The trap is structural. Since Brexit, England is a third State for the European Succession Regulation, while France still applies that Regulation to every succession opened before its courts, whatever the nationality of the deceased. At the same time, French tax law makes a French-resident heir taxable on worldwide assets once a precise residence threshold is crossed, and a 1963 Franco-British treaty allocates the taxing rights between London and Paris without removing the French filing duty. Each administration sees only its half of the file: HM Revenue and Customs collects inheritance tax on the English assets, the French tax office waits for a declaration covering everything, and the heir discovers the overlap a year later with interest running. The good news is that the system, read carefully, gives you the tools to coordinate both sides: probate first in England, a reasoned position on the applicable law, a French return filed within the twelve-month deadline for deaths abroad, the treaty credit claimed on the special form, and a formal complaint procedure if the assessment ignores the foreign tax paid.

I. An English estate inherited from France: which law governs the succession and which country taxes it

Two different questions are constantly confused, including by professionals who only practise on one side of the Channel. The first belongs to private international law: which country’s succession rules decide who gets what, whether the will is valid, and whether children can claim a reserved share. The second belongs to tax law: which country can charge inheritance duties on which assets. The answers do not necessarily point to the same country, and each answer has its own sources, its own deadlines and its own remedies. Take them one at a time.

A. Which succession law applies when your parent lived and died in England

Start with the basic rule that a French court will use. The European Succession Regulation of 4 July 2012, known as Regulation 650/2012, applies in France to successions with a cross-border element regardless of nationality, and it continues to do so after Brexit because its scope is universal: it designates the applicable law even when that law is the law of a State that does not apply the Regulation, which is exactly the position of England today. The central connecting factor is the habitual residence of the deceased at the time of death. A French judge seized of the succession will therefore ask where your parent actually lived, in fact, during the years before death and at the moment of death, looking at the duration and regularity of presence, its conditions and its reasons, and will only fall back on nationality or the location of the main assets where the factual picture is genuinely split between several countries.

That method is not academic theory; it is the constant reading of the French Cour de cassation. In a leading decision on the Regulation, the First Civil Chamber restated the test in these terms:

“Attendu qu’il résulte des considérants 23 et 24 du préambule de ce règlement qu’afin de déterminer la résidence habituelle, l’autorité chargée de la succession doit procéder à une évaluation d’ensemble des circonstances de la vie du défunt au cours des années précédant son décès et au moment de son décès, prenant en compte tous les éléments de fait pertinents, notamment la durée et la régularité de la présence du défunt dans l’État concerné ainsi que les conditions et les raisons de cette présence, la résidence habituelle ainsi déterminée devant révéler un lien étroit et stable avec l’État concerné, compte tenu des objectifs spécifiques du règlement ; que, dans les cas où il s’avère complexe de déterminer la résidence habituelle du défunt, par exemple lorsque celui-ci vivait de façon alternée dans plusieurs États ou voyageait d’un État à un autre sans s’être installé de façon permanente dans un État, sa nationalité ou le lieu de situation de ses principaux biens pourrait constituer un critère particulier pour l’appréciation globale de toutes les circonstances de fait” (Cass. civ. 1, 29 May 2019, No 18-13.383).

Apply that test to the standard case of this guide, and the answer is straightforward: a parent who lived year-round in Manchester, was treated there, voted there, banked there and died there was habitually resident in England, so English law governs the succession as a whole, including any French assets if there were any, under Article 21 of the Regulation. The same Chamber confirmed the jurisdictional side of the mechanism when it recalled that “sont compétentes pour statuer sur l’ensemble d’une succession les juridictions de l’État membre dans lequel le défunt avait sa résidence habituelle au moment de son décès” (Cass. civ. 1, 29 May 2019, No 18-13.383), and it referred the hard borderline cases on habitual residence to Luxembourg rather than guessing (Cass. civ. 1, 18 Nov 2020, No 19-15.438). Where the parent split life between countries, for example winters in Alicante, summers in the Dordogne house and medical life in London, expect the analysis to become genuinely difficult, and keep every piece of factual evidence: tenancy agreements, GP letters, travel records, tax residence notices.

Three practical consequences follow for British families. First, the deceased could have chosen the applicable law in the will: Article 22 of the Regulation allows anyone to submit the whole succession to the law of a State whose nationality they hold, so an English national can secure English law even while retiring in France, and that choice binds the French judge. Readers who own a house in France themselves should look at our companion guide on choosing English law for a French house and protecting children, because the mirror situation raises the reserved-share question this article does not need to solve. Second, English succession law knows no forced heirship: a will that leaves everything to one child, or to a new spouse, is in principle valid under English law, and a French court applying English law applies that freedom, subject only to French international public policy, which is interpreted narrowly and never assumed in advance. Third, the English courts will not apply the Regulation at all: England never adopted it, so an English judge seized of English land applies English conflicts rules, which point to English law for the Manchester house in any event. In the standard case both systems converge on English law, which is why the real battlefield of this guide is not the applicable law but the tax.

One document bridges the two legal worlds: the English grant of probate. Probate is the order by which the English court confirms the executor’s authority and the will’s validity; the grant is the sealed document the executor shows to banks, the Land Registry and buyers. In France the grant has no automatic executive force, but it is the factual proof the French notaire and the French tax office will ask for before doing anything: it proves who died, what the will says, who administers the estate and what the English assets are worth. Get the grant first, have it translated by a sworn translator, and consider an apostille under the Hague Convention so that no French office can question the authenticity of the English seal. On the English side, the official guidance sets the sequence strictly: the official English guidance requires the inheritance-tax account on form IHT400 within a year wherever tax is due, and no probate application can be made until that reporting is complete (GOV.UK, Applying for probate). That English timetable runs in parallel with the French twelve-month filing deadline examined below, so start both tracks at once rather than waiting for London to finish before thinking about Lyon.

B. Which country taxes what when the heir lives in France and the estate sits in England

French inheritance tax starts from a blunt principle codified at Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code: “Sont soumis aux droits de mutation à titre gratuit : 1° Les biens meubles et immeubles situés en France ou hors de France, et notamment les fonds publics, parts d’intérêts, biens ou droits composant un trust défini à l’article 792-0 bis et produits qui y sont capitalisés, créances et généralement toutes les valeurs mobilières françaises ou étrangères de quelque nature qu’elles soient, lorsque le donateur ou le défunt a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 B”. Where the deceased was fiscally domiciled in France, France taxes everything, wherever it sits. But our case is the reverse triangle: the deceased lived and died in England, and it is the heir who lives in France. That situation is governed by the third paragraph of the same article, the one British families in France must learn by heart: “Toutefois, cette disposition ne s’applique que lorsque l’héritier, le donataire ou le bénéficiaire d’un trust a eu son domicile fiscal en France pendant au moins six années au cours des dix dernières années précédant celle au cours de laquelle il reçoit les biens.”

In plain terms, France taxes the worldwide English estate only if you, the heir, were fiscally domiciled in France for at least six of the last ten years. Below that threshold, and assuming the deceased was not fiscally domiciled in France either, France can only tax assets situated in France, which in a purely English estate means nothing at all. Fiscal domicile itself is defined at Article 4 B of the General Tax Code: “Sont considérées comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 A : a. Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal”. If your home, your family life and your main presence are in Lyon, you are fiscally domiciled in France, and the only remaining question is the six-year count. Count back ten years from the year before the year of death, exclude the year of receipt itself as the text requires, and tally the years of French fiscal domicile. Nine years in Lyon means the worldwide rule applies to you; two years means it does not, and the Manchester house and the English accounts escape French tax entirely, though the English tax remains.

Where the worldwide rule does apply, the second instrument takes over: the Franco-British succession treaty signed in Paris on 21 June 1963. Its existence surprises even specialists, because the income-tax treaty of 2008 is far better known, yet the succession treaty never stopped applying and Brexit did not touch it. The French tax administration’s official commentary records a succession double-taxation treaty signed in Paris on 21 June 1963, in force since 30 June 1964 and applicable to the successions of persons who died on or after 21 June 1963 (BOI-INT-CVB-GBR-20). Any succession opened today is therefore covered.

The treaty’s architecture is a division of labour. As the same official commentary explains, double taxation is eliminated whatever the nationality of the parties, first through situs rules that tell the non-domicile State what it may tax (treaty Articles 3 to 5), and second through a credit granted by the domicile State for the tax levied by the other State (treaty Articles 6 and 7) (BOI-INT-CVB-GBR-20-20). Each State first taxes what the treaty lets it tax: the State where the deceased was domiciled taxes under its own domestic law without treaty limitation, while the other State may tax the assets situated on its territory plus any assets it taxes domestically that the domicile State leaves untaxed. Then the domicile State eliminates the overlap by granting a credit for the tax levied by the other State on the same assets, with one hard ceiling: the credit can never exceed the domicile State’s own tax on the same assets. The credit wipes out double taxation but never becomes a refund beyond the domestic tax.

Run the standard case through that machine. Your father was domiciled in the United Kingdom, so the United Kingdom taxes the English house, the English accounts and the English portfolio under its inheritance-tax rules, and France, as the State of the heir’s domicile under the worldwide rule, taxes the same assets under French succession duties, then credits the British tax pound for pound up to the amount of the French duty on those assets. If the British tax equals or exceeds the French duty, the French bill on the English assets falls to zero but no repayment follows; if the French duty is higher, you pay France only the difference. The mechanism is symmetrical and documented: heirs of a France-domiciled deceased claiming a credit for British tax must complete special form 2740 in duplicate, obtainable from the non-residents tax office in Noisy-le-Grand, and lodge it either when paying the duties or later in support of a repayment claim (BOI-INT-CVB-GBR-20-20). File the form with the return wherever possible; where the British assessment arrives after you have paid in France, the same form supports a repayment claim rather than a shrug.

Two boundary points deserve explicit warning because they generate most of the reassessments. First, the treaty allocates taxing rights; it does not remove filing duties. Even where the credit reduces the French bill to nothing, the French succession return must still be filed when the worldwide rule applies, with the English assets declared and the credit claimed on paper. An heir who files nothing because “everything was paid in England” commits exactly the omission the treaty credit was designed to reward on a proper return. Second, the treaty concept of domicile is treaty-defined and fact-driven, not a label the family chooses: a parent who kept a London address but spent the last three years in your Lyon annexe under your daily care may no longer be United Kingdom-domiciled for treaty purposes, which would move France into the unlimited-taxation seat and change every calculation. When the domicile analysis is doubtful, say so in the file, attach the evidence on both sides, and let the administration take a reasoned position you can then challenge, rather than asserting a domicile the facts cannot carry.

II. Filing, paying and challenging the French bill on a UK estate

Substance settled, procedure decides. French succession procedure is a calendar, a set of forms and a chain of offices, and every paragraph below corresponds to a mistake the author has seen real families make: the return filed at the wrong office, the English valuation taken at face value in euros at the wrong date, the earlier parental gift forgotten, the foreign accounts omitted, the treaty credit never claimed because nobody knew form 2740 existed. Work through the steps in order and the file becomes defensible; skip one and the file becomes a reassessment waiting to happen.

A. Deadlines, forms, valuations and the French tax computation step by step

The clock starts on the day of death, not on the day you learn about the estate and not on the day probate is granted. Article 641 of the General Tax Code sets two deadlines: “De six mois, à compter du jour du décès, lorsque celui dont on recueille la succession est décédé en France métropolitaine” for deaths in metropolitan France, and “D’une année, dans tous les autres cas.” A death in Manchester therefore gives twelve months, and the public service confirms the same operating rule for deaths abroad (service-public.fr, Droits de succession, Déclaration). Twelve months feels generous until you map the dependencies: English probate requires the inheritance-tax account first, the Land Registry and the banks move at their own pace, translations and the apostille take weeks, and the French notaire cannot finalise the return without the English valuations. Open the French file in the first month even if it cannot be closed for ten: instruct a notaire, warn the tax office of the foreign dimension, and diary the deadline with a two-month safety margin. Late filing triggers Article 1728 of the General Tax Code: “Le défaut de production dans les délais prescrits d’une déclaration ou d’un acte comportant l’indication d’éléments à retenir pour l’assiette ou la liquidation de l’impôt entraîne l’application, sur le montant des droits mis à la charge du contribuable ou résultant de la déclaration ou de l’acte déposé tardivement, d’une majoration de : a. 10 % en l’absence de mise en demeure ou en cas de dépôt de la déclaration ou de l’acte dans les trente jours suivant la réception d’une mise en demeure d’a”, with interest running on top and higher penalties where a formal notice has gone unanswered. The price of waiting for London to finish before starting Lyon is therefore a French surcharge on the whole bill.

The return itself is mandatory in content as well as in time. Article 800 of the General Tax Code states that “Les héritiers, légataires ou donataires, leurs tuteurs ou curateurs, sont tenus de souscrire une déclaration détaillée”, subject only to a narrow exemption for small direct-line estates below a low asset threshold, which a Manchester house will exceed on its own. The detailed return lists every asset, its value at the date of death, the debts deductible under French rules, the previous gifts to be added back, the applicable abatement and rate for each beneficiary, and, in our configuration, the treaty credit. Three valuation traps await. First, convert sterling values at the exchange rate of the date of death, keep the rate source in the file, and never use the probate-application date or the sale price six months later as the succession value: the taxable event is the death-day value. Second, deduct only debts that French law allows against the estate, with proof; English funeral costs, English solicitor fees and the English inheritance tax itself follow different deduction regimes on each side, so do not assume symmetry. Third, remember the add-back of earlier gifts: “La perception est effectuée en ajoutant à la valeur des biens compris dans la donation ou la déclaration de succession celle des biens qui ont fait l’objet de donations antérieures, à l’exception de celles passées depuis plus de quinze ans” (Article 784 of the General Tax Code). The file must therefore state “whether or not” earlier gifts exist, with the officiating notaries and amounts, and a father who gave you a cash gift for your Lyon flat deposit eight years ago has just increased the taxable base of today’s succession, with the gift’s own duties credited to avoid double-charging.

The French computation on the net share of each heir then follows the familiar direct-line scale, which is why the treaty credit matters so much in practice. Each child deducts a personal abatement: “il est effectué un abattement de 100 000 € sur la part de chacun des ascendants et sur la part de chacun des enfants vivants ou représentés par suite de prédécès ou de renonciation” (Article 779 of the General Tax Code). The balance is taxed at the progressive direct-line rates, which begin “N’excédant pas 8 072 € 5”, rise through 10, 15 and 20 per cent bands, and climb “Au-delà de 1 805” thousand euros to the top rate (Article 777 of the General Tax Code). On a net share of, say, 350,000 euros after the 100,000-euro abatement, the French duty before credit is roughly seventy thousand euros, and every pound of properly documented British inheritance tax attributable to the same assets reduces that figure euro for euro within the ceiling. That is the calculation to run before deciding whether France is a formality or a second bill: with a heavily taxed English estate the French return may show a large gross duty and a near-zero net payment, while with an estate below the British nil-rate band the French duty stands almost unreduced. Either way the return must show its workings, because an unclaimed credit is a lost credit until you file the restitution request.

Two satellite duties complete the filing picture and both are frequently missed. First, foreign bank and investment accounts: inheriting English accounts usually means you now hold, even briefly, accounts abroad that French law requires you to declare alongside the succession, through the annual foreign-account statement. The duty sits at Article 1649 A of the General Tax Code, and the practical form is the well-known statement 3916 attached to the income return; an heir who receives the proceeds of a closed Barclays account into a Lyon account and declares neither the account nor the interest has created a second file for the administration. Second, where to file: a succession with foreign assets or a deceased domiciled abroad does not go to the ordinary local desk like a purely domestic file. The treaty-credit form itself points to the non-residents tax office, the SIP-NR of the Directorate for residents abroad and general services, 10 rue du Centre, 93465 Noisy-le-Grand, and your notaire will confirm the competent registration office for the return in your configuration. Filing at the wrong office does not cancel the deadline, so have the notaire confirm competence in writing at the opening of the file.

B. Challenging double taxation, penalties and refusals without losing the file

Even a well-built file can come back with a notice you disagree with: the treaty credit refused or capped, the six-year residence count disputed, the domicile of the deceased recharacterised, a surcharge for late filing despite your diligence, or a request for documents that do not exist in the English system. The response is never a phone call and never silence; it is a written, dated, evidenced procedure, and French tax procedure gives you three levers that fit the situations of this guide. Use them in order, keep copies of everything, and never let a deadline pass while waiting for an informal answer.

The first lever is the treaty credit itself, claimed properly and on time. Where the British inheritance-tax assessment arrives after the French return has been filed and paid, the BOFiP procedure quoted above turns form 2740 into a repayment vehicle: the certificate from the British administration is treated as a restitution claim and examined through the standard repayment process. Build that claim as a standalone dossier rather than a one-line letter: the English inheritance-tax assessment with translation, proof of payment, the allocation of the British tax across the assets so the office can match tax to asset, the French return and assessment showing the duty computed on the same assets, and the arithmetic of the ceiling asset by asset. Offices refuse imputation most often for documentary reasons, because the British tax cannot be matched to the French base, or for timing reasons, because the claim arrives without the proof of effective payment. A claim that arrives complete, translated and reconciled is rarely the one that fails. And where no British tax was ever due, say so explicitly with the supporting British position, so the office does not treat the empty credit box as an oversight and issue an estimated assessment.

The second lever is the formal complaint, the réclamation contentieuse, which is the gateway to every judge. Article R*196-1 of the Tax Procedures Book sets the admissibility window: “Pour être recevables, les réclamations relatives aux impôts autres que les impôts directs locaux et les taxes annexes à ces impôts, doivent être présentées à l’administration au plus tard le 31 décembre de la deuxième année suivant celle, selon le cas : a) De la mise en recouvrement du rôle ou de la notification d’un avis de mise en recouvrement ; b) Du versement de l’impôt contesté lorsque cet impôt n’a pas donné lieu à l’établissement d’un rôle ou à la notification d’un avis de mise en recouvrement ; c) De la réalisation de l’événement qui motive la réclamation.” Succession duties assessed without a collection notice fall squarely within the payment-based branch: in practice, you have until 31 December of the second year after payment to contest. The complaint goes in writing to the office that assessed the duty, states the facts, the legal grounds and the amount claimed, lists the exhibits, and asks expressly for discharge or reduction with, where appropriate, a request for a payment stay on the contested supplement. If the administration rejects expressly or stays silent for six months, the way opens to the court, which for registration and succession duties is the tribunal judiciaire. Plead the file you built, not the file you wish you had built: the judge will read the return, the valuations, the residence evidence and the treaty-credit arithmetic, and a coherent paper trail from month one is worth more than the cleverest ground raised for the first time on appeal.

The third lever is corrective honesty before the administration moves. French procedure rewards the taxpayer who corrects a return spontaneously far more than the one who waits for the audit letter, and the difference shows in both surcharges and credibility. Discovered in month fourteen that the Barclays interest was omitted, that the exchange rate used was wrong, or that a 2019 parental gift was forgotten: file a corrective return now, pay the supplement with a reasoned letter, and ask for discretionary relief on the surcharge by documenting the good faith, the complexity of the cross-border file and the promptness of the correction. Correcting does not guarantee indulgence, but contesting a reassessment built on an error you knew about and left standing guarantees the opposite. The same logic applies to the residence and domicile counts: where the six-year tally is borderline or the parent’s late-life presence in France muddies the treaty domicile, commission the evidence early, tax-residence certificates, travel records, medical correspondence, utility bills, and present the analysis with its uncertainties rather than burying them. An administration that finds your file already contains the difficult document treats you as a declarant; one that finds it during an audit treats you as a target.

A final procedural warning concerns documents that cross the Channel in the wrong direction. English probate documents arrive in English, sometimes without the details French forms expect: no French-style inventory, valuations expressed as ranges, debts netted against assets, accounts described by institution rather than by nature. Never file a raw English schedule as the French annex without a reconciliation note explaining, line by line, how each English figure maps to the French declaration boxes, which rate was used for conversion, and which items were excluded and why. And never let anyone tell you that Brexit removed the need for legalisation steps: the apostille remains the cheap insurance that authenticates the grant, while a sworn translation remains the instrument that makes it readable to the French office. Files fail on authentication more often than families imagine, and a file that the office cannot read is a file the office assesses on its own estimates.

Conclusion

A British parent’s English estate does not stop at the Channel when the heir lives in France; it arrives in Lyon as a second file with its own law, its own calendar and its own arithmetic. English law will usually govern who inherits, under the habitual-residence rule of the Succession Regulation as interpreted by the Cour de cassation, with the English grant of probate as the key that unlocks the assets. French tax will reach the worldwide estate wherever the heir meets the six-years-in-ten test of Article 750 ter, and only the 1963 treaty credit, claimed on form 2740 within a properly filed return, prevents the same house from paying full duty twice. The twelve-month deadline for deaths abroad is the spine of the whole timetable: miss it and the surcharge of Article 1728 attaches to a bill the treaty might otherwise have reduced to little. Build the file in month one, reconcile every English figure to its French box, declare the accounts and the earlier gifts, claim the credit with proof of payment, and keep the complaint window of Article R*196-1 in reserve. Handled in that order, an English succession inherited from France is an administrative marathon rather than a double punishment; handled backwards, starting with Lyon after London has closed, it becomes the reassessment this guide was written to prevent.