You married in England, moved to France after Brexit, bought or rented a home, perhaps had children at a French school, and now the marriage is ending. The questions arrive all at once: can a French court divorce two British nationals, or must you go back to England? Will the judge apply French law or English law? What happens to the house, to the equalising payment French law calls the prestation compensatoire, to a UK pension, and to the children? And once the French divorce is pronounced, will England recognise it? This guide answers each of those questions in order, with the exact legal texts, so that you can act rather than guess. It assumes you live in France — the position is different if one of you has already returned to Britain, a situation examined at the end of each section.
Two preliminary points shape everything that follows. First, since Brexit the United Kingdom is a third country for the European Union’s family-law instruments: your French judge still applies the European rules on jurisdiction and applicable law, because those rules bind the French court, but English courts no longer apply them in return. Second, French divorce procedure was transformed in 2017: most couples who agree on everything now divorce without ever seeing a judge, through an agreement deposited with a notaire. If you are just arriving in France and still sorting out residence papers, the arrival formalities for British newcomers are explained separately; this article deals with the end of the marriage itself.
I. Divorcing without leaving France: the court that hears you and the procedure you follow
A. A British couple living in France can petition the French family court
The short answer is yes. If you and your spouse are habitually resident in France — that is, if France is the country where your daily life is actually centred, where you work, pay tax, send the children to school and keep your home — the French family court has jurisdiction over your divorce, even though you both hold only British nationality. Since Brexit you have lost nothing on this point: jurisdiction in the French court does not depend on holding an EU passport.
The French judge takes jurisdiction under the European jurisdiction rules that still bind France, the recast Brussels II Regulation of 2019 (Regulation (EU) 2019/1111). Its Article 3 offers a set of alternative grounds, and the principal ones turn on habitual residence: the courts of the country where both spouses live together, where they last lived together if one of them still lives there, where the respondent lives, or — for a joint application — where either spouse lives. In plain terms: a couple settled in France divorces in France; a couple where one spouse has gone back to England while the other stayed in France can still, in most configurations, petition in France; and a joint application can be filed wherever either of you lives. Your British nationality is not an obstacle — the spouses’ common nationality is itself one of the grounds the regulation provides — but neither is it the ground you will normally need, because habitual residence in France is enough on its own.
Once France has jurisdiction, the territorial question — which French court, exactly — is answered by Article 1070 of the Code of Civil Procedure: “Le juge aux affaires familiales territorialement compétent est : – le juge du lieu où se trouve la résidence de la famille” (the competent family court judge is the judge of the place where the family home is situated). The official text of Article 1070 then works through the separated situations: where the parents live apart, the court of the children’s habitual residence, and otherwise the court of the spouse who did not start the proceedings. And it adds a practical sentence for couples who agree: “En cas de demande conjointe, le juge compétent est, selon le choix des parties, celui du lieu où réside l’une ou l’autre” (in the case of a joint application, the competent court is, at the parties’ choice, the court of the place where either of them resides). The judge aux affaires familiales — the JAF, the specialist family judge who sits at each tribunal judiciaire — is therefore your judge: in Paris, that means the family chamber of the tribunal judiciaire de Paris; in the Île-de-France departments, the tribunal of your place of residence. If you live in Paris and your spouse has moved to London, you can still normally file in Paris, because the family home was there and the children, if any, are still schooled there.
One strategic warning before any filing. Do not start divorce proceedings in two countries at once. Within the European Union, an automatic stay mechanism protects the court first seised: the court seised second stays its case on its own motion until the first court’s jurisdiction is established. England, however, is no longer part of that system. Parallel proceedings in Paris and London can therefore run to contradictory decisions, with each side then fighting over recognition. File once, in the country where the case genuinely belongs — for a family settled in France, that is France — and state in your petition, through your lawyer, that no competing proceedings exist elsewhere. If your spouse has already filed in England before you file in France, tell your French lawyer immediately: the French court will examine the English case under French private international law rather than under an automatic stay, and the analysis is technical.
B. The no-judge divorce, step by step, and when a judge becomes compulsory
French law offers four grounds for divorce, listed in Article 229 of the Civil Code: “Le divorce peut être prononcé en cas : -soit de consentement mutuel, dans le cas prévu au 1° de l’article 229-2 ; -soit d’acceptation du principe de la rupture du mariage ; -soit d’altération définitive du lien conjugal ; -soit de faute.” Mutual consent, acceptance of the breakdown, definitive alteration of the bond (in practice, two years of separation), or fault. The full official text of Article 229 has read this way since the 2017 reform, and that reform is what makes the French divorce of an agreeing British couple fast and entirely out of court.
Since 1 January 2017, spouses who agree on the divorce and on all its effects — the house, the money, the children — no longer go before a judge at all. Article 229-1 of the Civil Code provides that where the spouses agree on the divorce and all its effects, “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” — they record their agreement, each assisted by their own lawyer, in a private deed countersigned by counsel. Each spouse must therefore have a different lawyer; the two lawyers draft the convention, the written agreement settling every consequence of the divorce. Read the official text of Article 229-1: it is the deposit of that convention with a notaire that gives it legal force — “Ce dépôt donne ses effets à la convention en lui conférant date certaine et force exécutoire” (the deposit gives effect to the convention by conferring on it a certified date and enforceability).
The official service-public.fr guide to divorce by mutual consent describes the timetable, and every deadline in it is mandatory. First, each lawyer sends the draft convention to the spouse they assist by recorded delivery. Then comes a 15-day cooling-off period running from receipt of the draft: the convention cannot be signed before that period expires. The signing brings together both spouses and both lawyers at the same time, in at least three originals. Next, within seven days of signature, one of the lawyers must send the third original to the notaire the couple has chosen. The notaire checks the mandatory contents and that the 15-day reflection period was respected, then registers the convention among their official records within fifteen days of receiving it. The deposit itself requires no appointment with the notaire. From the deposit, the convention has a certified date and is directly enforceable — it can be enforced like a judgment, for example for the payment of the equalising sum or the transfer of the house, without any court order.
Two situations force you back before a judge even when you agree on everything, and both are listed in Article 229-2 of the Civil Code, which bars spouses from “consentir mutuellement à leur divorce par acte sous signature privée contresigné par avocats” outside the cases it allows. The official text of Article 229-2 then gives the two cases where the no-judge route is closed: a minor child who, informed of the right to be heard, asks to speak to the judge, or either spouse placed under a legal protection regime such as guardianship or curatorship. British parents should take the child’s hearing right seriously: French law requires the parents to inform the minor of it, the child can change their mind and request a hearing even after initially declining, and a single such request sends the whole divorce onto the judicial track — a consentement mutuel judiciaire before the family judge, under Articles 250 to 250-3 of the Civil Code. If you disagree on anything at all — the house, the money, the children’s residence — the divorce is judicial from the start, on one of the other three grounds, through the contested divorce procedure before the same family judge.
A final procedural point for the no-judge divorce: because there is no judgment, there is no appeal. That is the price of speed. If the convention was signed under pressure, if the 15-day reflection period was cut short, if a child who asked to be heard was ignored, or if a mandatory clause is missing, the remedy is an action before the courts to attack the validity of the convention — slower, costlier, and uncertain. Check each step as it happens: keep the recorded-delivery letters proving the reflection period, confirm the deposit attestation the notaire sends you, and never sign a convention whose financial annexes you have not read. Challenging a defective procedure afterwards is possible, but preventing the defect is incomparably easier.
II. What the divorce decides: the law that applies, the money and the children
A. French law or English law: choosing and predicting the applicable law
The court having been identified, the next question is which country’s substantive law it applies to the divorce itself. Your French judge answers that question under an EU instrument called the Rome III Regulation — Council Regulation (EU) No 1259/2010 of 20 December 2010 on the law applicable to divorce and legal separation, known as Rome III. Because it binds the French court, it governs your case even though England uses different conflict rules: your French judge determines the applicable law under Rome III, whatever an English court might have done.
Rome III starts from party autonomy: within limits, spouses may choose the law that governs their divorce. The permitted options are listed in Article 5 of the regulation, and the Cour de cassation reproduces them in a leading decision: “1. Les époux peuvent convenir de désigner la loi applicable au divorce et à la séparation de corps, pour autant qu’il s’agisse de l’une des lois suivantes : a) la loi de l’État de la résidence habituelle des époux au moment de la conclusion de la convention ; ou b) la loi de l’État de la dernière résidence habituelle des époux, pour autant que l’un d’eux y réside encore au moment de la conclusion de la convention ; ou c) la loi de l’État de la nationalité de l’un des époux au moment de la conclusion de la convention ; ou d) la loi du for” — the law of the spouses’ habitual residence when the agreement is made, of their last habitual residence if one still lives there, of the country of either spouse’s nationality, or the law of the court seised, as the Cour de cassation itself reproduces Article 5 in its decision linked here (Cass., 26 January 2022, no. 20-21.542). For two British spouses living in France, three doors stand open at once: French law as the law of your habitual residence, English law as the law of your common nationality, and French law again as the law of the court that will hear the case.
The Cour de cassation gave that choice its full practical meaning on 26 January 2022, in a decision every Franco-foreign divorce lawyer knows (First Civil Chamber, appeal no. 20-21.542). A couple had signed a notarial deed choosing French law for any future divorce; one spouse later argued the choice was invalid because it detached the applicable law from the court that would hear the case. The Court disagreed, and its reasoning is worth quoting exactly: “Il en résulte que, lorsque des époux, dont la situation présente un élément d’extranéité, désignent, dans une convention de choix de la loi applicable au divorce, la loi d’un Etat déterminé, qui n’est pas l’une de celles qu’énumèrent les points a) à c), ce choix est valide, au titre du point d), lorsqu’elle est celle du juge qui a été ultérieurement saisi de la demande en divorce.” A designated law that matches none of the first three options is still valid under the fourth, the law of the forum, when it turns out to be the law of the court later seised. The Court concluded: “Elle en a déduit à bon droit que la loi française choisie par les époux était applicable en tant que loi de la juridiction saisie de la demande en divorce” — the appeal court had rightly held the chosen French law applicable as the law of the court hearing the case. Read the full decision of 26 January 2022, no. 20-21.542, on the Cour de cassation website. The lesson for British couples is direct: a clear, written choice of law, recorded in a notarial deed before any dispute, will be honoured by the French court. If you want French law, say so now; if you want English law — available to you through your common British nationality — say that instead, expressly and in writing, before positions harden.
If you choose nothing, Rome III designates the applicable law through a cascade that starts with your common habitual residence and works down through the last common residence, the common nationality, and finally the law of the court seised — which, for a couple settled in France petitioning in France, converges on French law in the great majority of cases. Assume French law will govern unless you have affirmatively chosen otherwise. One caution about choosing English law: a French judge who must apply English law needs that law to be proved to them, typically through expert evidence of English law (the certificat de coutume practice), and English financial remedies on divorce work very differently from French ones — needs-based orders, property adjustment, maintenance over time. Choosing English law without English advice is choosing blind. Whatever you choose, coordinate the French and English advice before the convention is signed, because the applicable law also colours the money — which is the next subject.
B. The equalising payment, the home and the children: money, property and parental responsibility
French divorce money starts with an institution English law does not have in the same form: the prestation compensatoire, the lump-sum payment that compensates, as far as possible, the disparity in living standards the divorce creates. Article 270 of the Civil Code states the principle: “Le divorce met fin au devoir de secours entre époux. L’un des époux peut être tenu de verser à l’autre une prestation destinée à compenser, autant qu’il est possible, la disparité que la rupture du mariage crée dans les conditions de vie respectives. Cette prestation a un caractère forfaitaire. Elle prend la forme d’un capital dont le montant est fixé par le juge.” Divorce ends the duty of support; one spouse may owe the other a lump-sum payment, fixed by the judge, to compensate the disparity the breakdown creates. The official text of Article 270 adds that the judge may refuse it where fairness so requires. How the amount is fixed is governed by Article 271: “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” — needs of the recipient, resources of the payer, situation at the time of the divorce and its foreseeable development. The official text of Article 271 then lists what the judge weighs: duration of the marriage, age and health, professional qualifications and positions, career sacrifices made for the children or for the other spouse’s career, the parties’ existing and foreseeable capital and income, pension rights, and more.
The Cour de cassation polices that assessment strictly, and a very recent decision shows how. On 10 December 2025 (First Civil Chamber, appeal no. 24-13.557), an appeal court had refused any equalising payment to a wife although a disparity in living standards existed, reasoning that the disparity predated the marriage — the spouses’ incomes, ages and established careers already differed at the outset — and that the wife had not sacrificed her career. The Cour de cassation quashed that reasoning. It recalled: “Il résulte du premier de ces textes que l’un des époux peut être tenu de verser à l’autre une prestation destinée à compenser, autant qu’il est possible, la disparité que la rupture du mariage crée dans les conditions de vie respectives. Selon le second, 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.” And it drew the consequence: “Il s’en déduit, d’une part, que la différence de situation professionnelle ou de rémunération patrimoniale existant entre les époux antérieurement au mariage ne peut être un critère de refus d’octroi de la prestation compensatoire puisque celle-ci vise à maintenir la parité qu’assurait l’union matrimoniale, et, d’autre part, que c’est au moment du prononcé du divorce, qui met fin au devoir de secours, que le juge doit se placer pour la fixer.” A gap that existed before the wedding cannot justify refusing the payment, because the payment exists to preserve the parity the marriage itself provided — and the judge must assess the picture at the date of the divorce, not at the date of the wedding. Read the full decision of 10 December 2025, no. 24-13.557. For the British spouse who gave up an English career to follow the family to France, this is the decisive protection: what matters is the disparity the divorce creates now, measured now — not who earned what before the marriage.
The house is governed by a different set of rules from the divorce itself: your matrimonial property regime. Couples married in England without a contract are usually treated in France as married under a community-type regime for the French analysis, with everything that implies for a French home bought during the marriage — a question examined in detail in the companion guide on which matrimonial regime owns your French house. Settle the regime question before drafting the divorce convention, because the convention must say who keeps or sells the house, who pays the mortgage in the meantime, and how the price or the buy-out is divided. Relatedly, think about the will you may have signed when you bought: a divorce does not automatically rewrite your British will covering a French house, so update it once the divorce is final.
English pensions deserve a specific checkpoint before anything is signed. The orders that divide a pension fund on divorce — what England calls pension sharing — are made by courts in England and Wales against the pension scheme. A French divorce convention, even one with full enforceability in France, does not automatically do that work against a UK scheme. Ask your English solicitor, before the French convention is deposited, how the French settlement interacts with each pension: whether an English order is still needed, whether it can still be obtained after a French divorce, and what the French convention should say — or carefully refrain from saying — in the meantime. The official starting point on the English side is gov.uk’s divorce guidance. The same coordination applies in reverse: if an English financial order already exists, its enforcement in France requires the French exequatur procedure, because Article 509 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that “Les jugements rendus par les tribunaux étrangers et les actes reçus par les officiers étrangers sont exécutoires sur le territoire de la République de la manière et dans les cas prévus par la loi” — foreign judgments are enforceable in France in the manner and cases provided by law, which for an English post-Brexit order means exequatur. The official text of Article 509 is the gateway provision your lawyer will use.
The children are the part of the case where French and English instincts most closely converge, and the part where delay does the most harm. Divorce does not end joint parental authority (autorité parentale): both parents normally keep it, and the convention or the judgment organises its exercise — where the children live (résidence habituelle), contact calendars across the Channel, school choices, passports, and each parent’s financial contribution to maintenance and education. Fix school-holiday travel practically: who books, who pays, what happens if a flight is missed. If the children are to move to England with one parent, say so expressly and organise the other parent’s contact in the same document; vague clauses generate litigation. And remember the hearing right described above: inform a child who can understand of the right to be heard by the judge, record that you did so, and if the child asks to speak, the case goes judicial. A consent convention signed while ignoring such a request is built on sand.
Challenging the outcome depends on which track you took. A judicial divorce — contested, or by judicial mutual consent — is a judgment: it can be appealed, but the time limits run from formal service of the judgment and are short, so have the signification checked by your lawyer the day it arrives rather than the week after. A no-judge divorce has no judgment to appeal: the convention, once deposited, is enforceable as it stands. What can still be attacked is its validity — duress, a skipped reflection period, a child unheard, a missing mandatory clause — before the courts, with the burden on the challenger. In both tracks, the recognition question closes the file: a French divorce decree should be shown to your English solicitor to confirm nothing further is needed in England — for capacity to remarry, for the children’s status, for pensions — because since Brexit nothing about recognition is automatic in either direction. Keep every paper: the convention, the notaire’s deposit attestation, the judgment with its proof of service. The French file is your title deed to being divorced; England will want to see it.
Conclusion
A British couple settled in France divorces in France, before the family judge of the family home — in Paris, the tribunal judiciaire de Paris — under jurisdiction rules whose first ground is simply where the couple habitually live together. If you agree on everything, you can divorce without a judge through a lawyers’ convention deposited with a notaire, provided the 15-day reflection, the seven-day transmission and the notarial deposit are observed, no minor child asks to be heard, and neither spouse is under protection; otherwise the family judge decides, on mutual consent, accepted breakdown, definitive alteration or fault. The law the court applies is chosen under Rome III — French law by residence, English law by your common nationality, French law again as the law of the court — and a written choice recorded early will be honoured, as the Cour de cassation confirmed in January 2022. The money follows the disparity the divorce creates now, measured now, through the lump-sum equalising payment, as the Court recalled in December 2025; the house follows your matrimonial regime; the children keep two parents with joint authority and an expressly organised life between two countries. Coordinate the English side before signing — recognition, pensions, any English order needing exequatur — because Brexit removed the automatic bridges. Done in that order, a Franco-British divorce is not a jurisdictional gamble but a planned procedure, and the plan starts with the first filing in the right court.