You married in England, built a life in France, and now the marriage is over. Since Brexit, that sentence raises three hard questions that did not exist a few years ago: can a French court even hear your divorce, will it apply French law or English law, and what happens if one of you files in London while the other files in France. The answers decide where you live during the case, which rules divide your home and savings, who decides the arrangements for your children, and whether the final order works on both sides of the Channel. This guide explains each step for a British reader, with the exact legal texts a French judge will use, and shows how to challenge a decision that goes wrong.

Two points of vocabulary first, because every French document in your file will use them. The juge aux affaires familiales, usually shortened to JAF, is the family judge who sits in each French tribunal judiciaire (the main civil court) and decides divorces, parental authority and maintenance. An exequatur is the court order that makes a foreign judgment enforceable in France, for example so bailiffs can seize assets or wages. Keep those two terms in mind; they return in every part of this guide.

Brexit changed the plumbing of cross-border divorce. While the United Kingdom was in the European Union, one set of European rules decided jurisdiction and recognition automatically between London and Paris. Since 1 January 2021 the United Kingdom is a third state for these instruments. France still applies the European regulations because France is a Member State; the English courts apply their own domestic conflict rules. The result is an asymmetrical system: your case can be perfectly well founded in France and still face a parallel case in England, and an English decree no longer circulates in France the way it used to. Understanding that asymmetry early is what protects your position.

I. Which court can hear your divorce in France after Brexit

A. When the French family court takes your case and when England keeps it

If you live in France, the starting point is reassuring: the French courts can almost always hear your divorce. Jurisdiction in divorce inside the European Union is governed by Regulation (EU) 2019/1111, known as Brussels II ter, which France applies in full. Its Article 3 gives jurisdiction to the courts of the Member State on whose territory the spouses are habitually resident, or were last habitually resident where one of them still lives, or where the respondent lives, or, for a joint application, where either spouse lives. The regulation adds two applicant-based grounds that protect the spouse who moved to France alone: a spouse who has lived in France for at least a year before filing can bring the case there even if the other spouse stayed in England, with a shorter six-month period where the applicant also holds French nationality. A couple living together in France plainly qualifies under the first ground of all, common habitual residence.

British nationality on its own changes nothing here, in either direction. There is a nationality ground in Article 3, but it points to the courts of the Member State of the spouses’ common nationality, and the United Kingdom is no longer a Member State. In practice that means two British spouses living in France rely on habitual residence, which is straightforward, while two British spouses living in England with no French residence cannot ask a French court to divorce them simply because they own a holiday home in the Dordogne. Property in France does not create divorce jurisdiction; residence does. If neither spouse lives in France and no European ground bites, Article 6 of the same regulation sends the question back to national law: jurisdiction is then determined, in each Member State, by the laws of that State, with a shield that says a spouse who lives in a Member State, or holds a Member State nationality, may be sued in another Member State only in accordance with the regulation’s own grounds.

Once jurisdiction exists, the case goes to the family judge. Inside France, the territorial allocation between courts follows 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 ; – si les parents vivent séparément, le juge du lieu de résidence du parent avec lequel résident habituellement les enfants mineurs en cas d’exercice en commun de l’autorité parentale, ou du lieu de résidence du parent qui exerce seul cette autorité ; – dans les autres cas, le juge du lieu où réside celui qui n’a pas pris l’initiative de la procédure.” In plain terms, you file where the family lives, or where the children live if you have separated, or otherwise where your spouse lives. For a joint application, the spouses may choose between either spouse’s court. Your assignation, the writ that starts a contested divorce, or your joint request must therefore be directed to the right tribunal judiciaire, or months can be lost on a transfer.

Note that France offers a route England does not: divorce by mutual consent without any judge at all. Article 229 of the Civil Code provides that “Les époux peuvent consentir mutuellement à leur divorce par acte sous signature privée contresigné par avocats, déposé au rang des minutes d’un notaire.” Each spouse has a lawyer, both sign a private agreement settling every consequence of the divorce, and a notary registers it. The official service-public.fr guidance on divorce by mutual consent before a notary walks through the stages. For a British couple in full agreement, including on the children and the French house, this is usually the fastest and cheapest exit, and it works even though you are foreign nationals, because jurisdiction rests on your French residence. And if you start down the court route but later agree on everything, Article 247 lets you switch tracks at any moment of the proceedings and finish by consent, before the judge or before the notary. Do not assume, however, that an English financial clean-break order will slot neatly into this process: property consequences have their own applicable-law analysis, and the Cour de cassation has already quashed appeal decisions that reasoned loosely on that front, as this guide explains below.

B. What happens when divorce cases run in both France and England

Before Brexit, the spouse who filed first won the race: the court seised second had to stay its proceedings while the first court decided jurisdiction. That automatic lis pendens mechanism applied between Paris and London because both applied the same European regulation. It no longer applies. The United Kingdom does not apply Brussels II ter, and nothing in the regulation obliges a French court to defer to proceedings in a non-Member State the way it defers to a court in, say, Ireland or Spain. Parallel proceedings are therefore genuinely possible: your husband files a divorce petition in London in March, you file an assignation in Paris in April, and both cases can move forward at the same time.

That prospect sounds alarming, and it can be expensive, but it also creates a strategic question you must answer in the first weeks: in which country should the divorce be fought. The answer turns on where the children live, where the assets sit, which law each court would apply to money claims, and how easily each future order enforces abroad. A French divorce that keeps the children in their French school and divides a French house under rules you understand may be worth defending even if an English petition exists, while an English petition may suit the spouse with English pension assets and English debts. There is no universal right answer, and filing first in the wrong country purely to win a race that no longer exists is a classic and costly mistake. Take advice in both countries before either spouse issues, if you still can.

If both cases do proceed, each court decides its own jurisdiction under its own rules and each judgment has effects only where it is recognised. A French divorce dissolves the marriage for France and every European Union Member State that recognises French decisions under Brussels II ter, but it needs recognition in England under English domestic law to bite there, and the mirror applies to an English decree in France, as Part II explains. Provisional measures add a further layer: the French family judge routinely orders interim residence of the children, interim maintenance and exclusive use of the home while the case runs, and those orders govern daily life in France regardless of what a London court says about the same family. If you are served with English proceedings after filing in France, do not ignore them and do not assume the French filing kills them; show both sets of papers to both lawyers immediately, because deadlines run in parallel and a default judgment in either country will haunt you for years.

II. Which law governs your divorce, your children and your money, and how to challenge the outcome

A. Can you choose English law, and what happens if you choose nothing

Here is the point most British spouses miss: the French court hearing your divorce does not automatically apply French divorce law. The applicable law is decided by a separate European instrument, Regulation (EU) No 1259/2010, called Rome III, which France applies and which lets spouses choose the governing law within limits. Article 5 of that regulation, as recited by the Cour de cassation, lets spouses designate the governing law provided it is one of four candidates: the law of their common habitual residence when the agreement is concluded, the law of their last common residence if one of them still lives there, the law of either spouse’s nationality, or the law of the forum hearing the case. For a British spouse, option (c) is the open door: even living in France, you and your husband or wife can designate English law, the law of your nationality, to govern the divorce itself.

That choice must be made properly or it fails. The regulation requires the agreement to be written, dated and signed by both spouses, with electronic messages that leave a durable record counting as writing, and the spouses’ home state can impose extra formalities on top. A vague line in a separation email will not do; a properly drafted clause in a marriage settlement or a standalone choice-of-law agreement, signed and dated by both of you with legal advice on each side, will. And the choice has real teeth only if it matches the court: the leading French decision on this mechanism, decided by the First Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation on 26 January 2022 (appeal No D 20-21.542, decision No 78 FS-B, published at courdecassation.fr), holds that “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.” In that case the spouses had chosen French law and the French court was seised, so the choice held as the law of the forum. The lesson for a British couple is symmetrical: choose English law by nationality and make sure the court seised will honour it, or choose the law of the forum you actually intend to use, and do it in writing before positions harden.

If you choose nothing, Article 8 of Rome III supplies a cascade, also worth reading in the official text: Without a choice under Article 5, the divorce obeys the law of the state where the spouses live when the court is seised; failing that, the state where they last lived together if that residence ended less than a year earlier and one of them still lives there; failing that, the state of their common nationality; and only as a last resort, the law of the court hearing the case. A British couple habitually resident in France at the date of filing therefore gets French divorce law by default, which in most cases is exactly what both spouses expect. Only where the family has recently moved, or the spouses live apart across the Channel, do the lower rungs of the cascade matter, and that is precisely when an express choice under Article 5 pays for itself.

French divorce law itself then offers four routes, listed in Article 229 of the Civil Code: consent by private deed, consent before the judge, acceptance of the principle of the breakdown, permanent alteration of the marriage bond, and fault. Two deserve detail for British readers because they differ most from English practice. Divorce for accepted breakdown, under Article 233, lets both spouses, each assisted by a lawyer, accept the principle of the rupture in a signed deed without ever alleging what went wrong; the official guidance on divorce for acceptance of the principle of marriage breakdown explains the steps. Divorce for permanent alteration, under Article 238, requires only that “L’altération définitive du lien conjugal résulte de la cessation de la communauté de vie entre les époux, lorsqu’ils vivent séparés depuis un an lors de la demande en divorce”, one year of separation, far shorter than the old two-year rule and with no need to prove anyone’s misconduct; the official page on divorce for permanent alteration of the conjugal relationship confirms the current position. Fault divorce survives under Article 242: “Le divorce peut être demandé par l’un des époux lorsque des faits constitutifs d’une violation grave ou renouvelée des devoirs et obligations du mariage sont imputables à son conjoint et rendent intolérable le maintien de la vie commune.” Adultery, violence and abandonment are the classic examples, but fault must be proved with admissible evidence, private detectives and bailiff-recorded findings included, and it colours the financial outcome, so it should never be pleaded lightly or for pure tactics.

A final warning on applicable law, and it is an important one. The divorce itself, the children and the matrimonial property can each obey a different law. The Cour de cassation decision of 26 January 2022 just cited is a partial quashing: the Court approved the reasoning on the law applicable to the divorce and then quashed the appeal court’s reasoning on the law applicable to identifying and dividing the matrimonial property. Couples who assume that one choice of law settles everything, or that the French house will obviously be divided under French rules because it stands in France, are the ones who discover the error on appeal. If you own property in both countries, or if either of you brought significant premarital assets into the marriage, the property analysis needs its own advice, and your estate planning needs revisiting too: our guide to British wills and French houses after Brexit explains why a divorce should trigger a fresh look at your will. Readers who married in France may also want to revisit our guide to getting married in France after Brexit, which many couples first read at the start of the story this article finishes.

B. Children, money, recognition of an English divorce and challenging a French judgment

Children come first in every French divorce file, and separation changes nothing about the starting rule. Article 373-2 of the Civil Code states the principle that parental separation leaves joint parental authority intact, with each parent maintaining personal relations with the child and respecting the child’s bonds with the other parent. In practice the family judge fixes the children’s habitual residence, sets a contact calendar that must work across school terms and Channel crossings, allocates holiday time, and orders each parent to contribute to maintenance in proportion to resources. For a British family, insist that the judgment spells out travel documents, who holds the children’s passports, who pays for the Eurostar or the flights, and what happens if one parent later wants to relocate to England: vague orders breed enforcement litigation, precise orders prevent it. If relocation is already on the table, the parent who stays should seek safeguards in the judgment itself rather than hoping to block a later move, because courts on both sides of the Channel weigh the child’s settled life heavily once it exists.

Money divides into three layers, and British spouses regularly confuse them. The duty of support during the proceedings produces interim maintenance fixed by the judge in provisional orders. The divorce itself can produce a prestation compensatoire, a compensatory payment that has no equivalent in English law and surprises many British payers. Article 270 of the Civil Code defines it: “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.” It is a lump sum, normally paid as capital, calibrated under Article 271 on the length of the marriage, the spouses’ age, health, qualifications and careers, the professional sacrifices made for the family, and each side’s resources and needs. A British wife who paused her career for fifteen years in France to raise the children is the textbook recipient; a short childless marriage between two earners typically yields nothing. The third layer is child maintenance, fixed as a monthly indexed contribution, plus the division of the matrimonial property under its own applicable law. If either spouse may leave France, say so on day one: the wording of maintenance and capital orders affects how they are recovered abroad, and a judgment drafted only for French enforcement can lose much of its value the day the debtor moves back to Manchester. For readers whose proceedings run in England instead, the official Get a divorce: step by step guidance and its money and property pages set out the English-side process from the United Kingdom government’s own portal.

Recognition is where Brexit bites hardest for decrees made in England. An English divorce is no longer an intra-European judgment with automatic circulation; it is a third-state judgment whose effects in France depend on French private international law. The good news is that recognition of the status itself does not require a full enforcement procedure: where the foreign decision is internationally regular, it is recognised as of right. The Cour de cassation confirmed the mechanics in a decision of 21 May 2025 (appeal No H 23-17.532, decision No 343 F-B, at courdecassation.fr), concerning an American divorce but stating a general rule: “La procédure de divorce engagée en France est privée d’objet et les mesures provisoires ordonnées pour la durée de la procédure deviennent caduques lorsque le divorce a été prononcé à l’étranger par une décision passée en force de chose jugée remplissant les conditions de sa reconnaissance en France.” The Court added the essential qualification on timing: “Sauf disposition contraire, la caducité d’un titre exécutoire ne le prive pas de son efficacité pour la période antérieure à la caducité”, so that “la caducité affectant les mesures provisoires prises en application de l’article 255 du code civil à raison de la reconnaissance d’un jugement étranger de divorce ne les prive d’efficacité qu’à compter de la date à laquelle cette décision est passée en force de chose jugée.” Translate that to a Franco-British case: once your English decree absolute is final and meets France’s recognition conditions, any French divorce case between the same spouses loses its object, but the French interim orders keep producing effects until that finality date, and the appeal court was right to rule on the money for the earlier period. Do not stop paying French-ordered maintenance because a foreign decree exists; stop it when the foreign decree is final and recognised, and get the French court to say so.

Enforcement is the second half of recognition and the stricter one. A foreign order that needs coercive execution in France, seizing a French bank account or forcing the sale of the French house, requires a declaration of enforceability under the exequatur mechanism, 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.” In practice that means applying to the tribunal judiciaire for exequatur of the English financial order, proving the foreign court’s indirect jurisdiction, respect for due process and compatibility with French international public policy, before any bailiff can act. English consent orders and clean-break provisions should therefore be drafted from the start with French exequatur in mind if assets sit in France, or the victorious spouse can win in London and find the French assets untouchable.

Challenging a French divorce judgment follows standard French procedural routes, but the deadlines are unforgiving and Brexit lengthens some of them. The ordinary appeal window is short: Article 538 of the Code of Civil Procedure states that “Le délai de recours par une voie ordinaire est d’un mois en matière contentieuse ; il est de quinze jours en matière gracieuse.” A contested divorce judgment therefore gives you one month from service to appeal, and the appeal re-examines facts and law, including the choice-of-law analysis and the financial orders. If you live in England when the French judgment is served, Article 643 extends the procedural deadlines, providing “Deux mois pour celles qui demeurent à l’étranger”, two extra months for persons living abroad, on top of the standard period. That extension has saved many British respondents who learned of a French judgment weeks after it was pronounced, but it does not forgive indefinite sleep: instruct a French appellate lawyer the day you receive the papers. Beyond appeal, an error of law in the appeal court’s decision, for example a misapplication of Rome III or a contradiction between the reasoning on property and the operative part, opens a pourvoi to the Cour de cassation, the very route that produced the two decisions quoted in this guide.

One consequence of divorce deserves its own warning because it destroys residence rights silently. A British spouse whose French residence card depended on the marriage, typically a vie privée et familiale card as the spouse of a French national or an Withdrawal Agreement card built around family life, can face refusal at renewal once divorced. Our companion guide on residence renewal for divorced British spouses after Brexit explains which cards survive divorce, which do not, and how to challenge a refusal or an removal order. Raise the immigration point with your divorce lawyer before the decree, not after: undertakings on residence, timing of the application and evidence of violence or long marriage can all affect the outcome, and none can be rebuilt retrospectively.

Conclusion

A British divorce in France after Brexit is entirely possible and routinely done well, provided the file is built in the right order. Confirm that a French court has jurisdiction under Brussels II ter, normally through habitual residence, and file before the right family judge. Decide consciously whether to designate English law under Rome III or accept the default cascade that usually leads to French law, and put any choice in a written, dated agreement signed by both spouses. Use the French routes that fit your situation, from the notarial consent divorce to the one-year-separation ground, and draft the children and money orders with cross-Channel enforcement in mind from the first hearing. If an English decree already exists, secure its recognition in France and respect French interim orders until it is final; if a French judgment harms you, appeal within one month, extended by two if you live abroad, and consider the Cour de cassation for errors of law. And treat the divorce as the start of a second file, not the end of the first: your will, your residence card and your property ownership all need updating the day the marriage ends.