Your relationship has broken down, your children go to school in France, and the two of you cannot agree on where they should live. One parent talks about returning to England with them. The other insists they stay. Every conversation ends at the same question: who actually decides, and on what basis? For British parents living in France after Brexit, the answer runs through three layers that fit together: the European and international rules that say whether the French or the English court decides, the French family judge (the juge aux affaires familiales, usually shortened to JAF) who fixes where the children live and how each parent sees them, and the cross-Channel machinery that makes an order made on one side recognised on the other.

This article covers ordinary separations only: married or unmarried British parents, living in France, disagreeing about residence, contact and money for children who live here. It does not cover a parent taking a child abroad without the other’s agreement, which follows the separate international child-abduction procedure and different emergency remedies. It assumes the children are habitually resident in France, the most common situation for settled British families, and explains what changes when England is in the picture. French legal terms are explained the first time they appear. All statutory quotations below were read in their version in force on 18 October 2026, and every decisive court ruling cited was read in full during the preparation of this article.

French parental authority (autorité parentale) is the set of rights and duties parents hold over the person and property of their minor child: deciding where the child lives, consenting to medical treatment, choosing schooling, administering property. The starting point of French law is reassuring for a parent who fears that separation means losing a say: “La séparation des parents est sans incidence sur les règles de dévolution de l’exercice de l’autorité parentale.” In the official wording, separation changes nothing to who exercises parental authority; both parents keep it jointly, and each must maintain a personal relationship with the child and respect the child’s ties with the other parent (article 373-2 of the Civil Code). That principle shapes everything that follows: the judge organises, but the starting presumption is that both parents remain fully parents.

I. Which court decides where the children live when British parents split in France

Before any judge can fix residence or contact, one question has to be answered: is it the French court or the English court that has the power to decide? Lawyers call this jurisdiction. Get it wrong and months of proceedings can collapse, because a court that lacks jurisdiction must decline the case. For a British family in France, three instruments share the work, and Brexit changed which one applies between France and England.

A. The habitual residence test that sends the case to France or to England

The key concept is habitual residence (résidence habituelle): the place where the child actually lives day to day, goes to school, has friends and routines. It is a question of fact, not of passports or visas. British children settled in France with their parents are habitually resident in France even though they hold British passports, and that single fact normally gives the French courts jurisdiction over parental responsibility for them.

Within the European Union, that rule comes from the Brussels II ter Regulation, whose general jurisdiction rule gives cases over parental responsibility to the courts of the Member State where the child is habitually resident when the court is seised (Article 7(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1111). The phrase “at the time the court is seised” matters: jurisdiction is assessed on the day proceedings start, so a parent who moves the children to England and only then issues proceedings may find the English court seised second, after habitual residence has already shifted, or facing an argument that the move itself was wrongful. Timing is therefore strategic, and a parent contemplating a move should take advice before acting rather than after.

Between France and England, however, Brussels II ter no longer operates, because the United Kingdom is no longer a Member State. The British government’s own guidance for legal professionals states the position bluntly: Brussels IIa has been revoked, and for cases starting after the end of the transition period the English courts apply the 1996 Hague Protection of Children Convention (UK government guidance on family law disputes involving the EU). That switch is the central Brexit change in children cases. Where two EU courts used to coordinate through Brussels rules on jurisdiction, recognition and the return of abducted children, a Franco-British case now runs on the 1996 Hague Convention on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children, to give it its full name. Both France and the United Kingdom are contracting states to that Convention, as its official status table confirms (HCCH status table for the 1996 Convention).

Fortunately, the Convention uses the same compass as Brussels II ter. Its jurisdictional cornerstone gives the authorities of the contracting state where the child is habitually resident the power to take measures protecting the child’s person or property (Article 5(1) of the 1996 Hague Convention). In practice, then, the Brexit change alters the legal plumbing much more than the outcome: children settled in France are still subject to the French courts, and children settled in England to the English courts. What has changed is the surrounding machinery — no more direct EU certificate system for recognition, no more EU override in abduction cases, and English orders reaching France through Convention channels rather than EU ones, as Part II explains.

One refinement deserves attention because it traps unwary parents. If a child moves lawfully from one country to another and acquires a new habitual residence, jurisdiction follows the child, but the Brussels II ter system keeps a short tail of continuing jurisdiction for the former court to vary access (contact) decisions where the parent with contact rights stayed behind. The lesson for a British parent in France is symmetrical: once your children are genuinely settled here, the French judge is your judge, and an English court seised later will normally have to yield. Conversely, if you agree — even informally — to the children relocating to England and they settle there, the centre of gravity of any future dispute moves with them. Informal agreements about trial periods in England should therefore be put in writing with dates, school arrangements and a clear statement of what happens at the end, because six months of English schooling creates facts that are hard to unpick.

Once France has jurisdiction internationally, French domestic law allocates the case territorially. The rule for the family judge is practical: the competent court is the judge of the place where the family lived, or, where the parents live apart, the judge of the place where the parent with whom the minor children habitually live resides (Article 1070 of the Code of Civil Procedure). That same article fixes the reference date, which answers a frequent tactical question: “La compétence territoriale est déterminée par la résidence au jour de la demande.” A parent cannot manufacture a convenient forum by moving the week before filing, because competence is assessed at the date of the application. For a British family in Paris or elsewhere in Ile-de-France, this means the judicial court (tribunal judiciaire) of the place where the children actually live with one parent hears the case, with its family chamber applying the same national law as everywhere else in France; Paris adds no separate family-law regime, only the practical reality of a large court with dedicated family divisions and, often, longer waiting times that make interim applications more valuable.

Divorce jurisdiction follows a parallel but separate track. Where a divorce accompanies the dispute about the children, the Brussels II ter Regulation lists the courts that may hear the divorce itself, starting with the courts of the Member State where the spouses are habitually resident (Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1111). A British couple habitually resident in France can therefore divorce in France. But the divorce and the children can, in cross-Channel cases, end up before different courts: the divorce governed by one set of rules, parental responsibility by another. That split is manageable — French judges routinely decide the children’s arrangements within or alongside divorce proceedings — yet it explains why a British couple should never assume that an English divorce petition automatically carries the children’s future with it. The broader divorce mechanics, from applicable law to the family home, are covered in the firm’s general guide to divorcing in France after Brexit; this article stays with the children.

B. What the French family judge weighs before fixing residence and contact

The French judge does not award children to a winner. The judge organises the exercise of joint parental authority around the child’s best interests (intérêt de l’enfant), choosing between shared residence (résidence en alternance, where the child lives alternately with each parent, often week about) and primary residence with one parent plus contact rights (droit de visite et d’hébergement, literally a right of visit and overnight stays) for the other. The statute puts both options on exactly the same footing: “la résidence de l’enfant peut être fixée en alternance au domicile de chacun des parents ou au domicile de l’un d’eux” (Article 373-2-9 of the Civil Code). Neither parent starts with a legal advantage, including in cases where one parent argues that a British child should be with the British parent or that the French-speaking parent offers better schooling. The judge looks at facts, not passports.

Those facts are listed by law. When ruling on the exercise of parental authority, the judge considers in particular: previous parenting practice and any agreements already reached, the feelings expressed by the child heard under the statutory hearing procedure, each parent’s ability to assume duties and respect the other’s rights, expert assessments, social enquiry reports, and any physical or psychological pressure or violence by one parent against the other (Article 373-2-11 of the Civil Code). Three of these criteria decide most Franco-British cases in practice. First, previous practice: the parent who actually did school runs, medical appointments and homework help carries weight, and a family where the mother managed daily life while the father travelled for work will see that reflected — not as a rule favouring mothers, but as continuity for the child. Second, the capacity to respect the other parent’s rights: a parent who blocks phone calls, badmouths the other parent, or withholds school reports damages their own case, because the statute rewards the parent who keeps the child connected to both homes. Third, the child’s own voice, which French law takes seriously through a formal hearing procedure with teeth, as the next paragraphs show.

A child capable of discernment (un mineur capable de discernement, meaning a child old enough to form and express a view — there is no fixed statutory age, and judges routinely hear children from around seven or eight upwards) may be heard by the judge in any proceedings concerning them. The hearing is a right when the child asks: “Cette audition est de droit lorsque le mineur en fait la demande.” (Article 388-1 of the Civil Code). The child is not a party to the case and does not decide the outcome; the judge listens, then decides in the child’s interests. But recent decisions of the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court for civil matters) show how strictly judges must handle this right, and British parents should know these rulings because they shape what happens when a child says they want to live with mum or dad.

In a judgment of 12 June 2025, the First Civil Chamber quashed an appeal court’s decision that had refused to hear a seven-year-old girl at her mother’s request, on the grounds that the child’s handwritten note concerned events that could not justify a hearing at such a young age and that the request had not been made at first instance. The Court of Cassation held: “En se déterminant ainsi, par des motifs impropres à justifier le refus de procéder à l’audition de l’enfant demandée par la mère, la cour d’appel a privé sa décision de base légale.” (Cass. civ. 1re, 12 June 2025, appeal no. 23-13.900, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:C100418; official record on Légifrance). In plain terms, youth alone and lateness alone are not lawful reasons to refuse a requested hearing; the refusal must fit one of the reasons the procedural code allows, such as the judge finding the hearing unnecessary to resolve the dispute or contrary to the child’s interests.

A second ruling tightens the screw further. Where a child personally requests a hearing, the hearing is a matter of right, and if the request is refused, the child and the parties must be notified and the reasons for refusal must appear in the judgment itself: the Court recalled that “les motifs du refus sont mentionnés dans la décision au fond” and quashed an appeal decision where a refusal sent by simple email never made it into the judgment, leaving the supreme court unable to review it (Cass. civ. 1re, 16 February 2022, appeal no. 21-23.087, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2022:C100264; official record on Légifrance). And a third decision protects the other side of the process: where a child has been heard, a written account of the hearing must be disclosed to the parties so they can respond, because adversarial debate (le contradictoire, the rule that each side must see and be able to challenge the material the judge uses) applies in all circumstances. The Court quashed a residence ruling where nothing showed that any account of the child’s hearing had been communicated to the parents (Cass. civ. 1re, 12 July 2023, appeal no. 21-19.362, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2023:C100488; official record on Légifrance). Together, these three rulings give British parents a practical checklist: if your child asks to be heard, insist the request is recorded; if the judge refuses, require written reasons in the judgment; if your child is heard, demand disclosure of the account and exercise your right to reply to it.

Sole exercise of parental authority remains the exception, available only where the child’s interests command it, and even then contact can be refused to the other parent only for serious reasons: “L’exercice du droit de visite et d’hébergement ne peut être refusé à l’autre parent que pour des motifs graves.” (Article 373-2-1 of the Civil Code). A parent who simply prefers it, or who distrusts the other’s new partner, does not meet that threshold. Where safety genuinely requires it, the judge can organise contact in a supervised meeting place (espace de rencontre) or with a trusted third person present, rather than cutting contact altogether. And where one parent threatens to leave France with the children, the judge has a targeted weapon: “Il peut notamment ordonner l’interdiction de sortie de l’enfant du territoire français sans l’autorisation des deux parents.” (Article 373-2-6 of the Civil Code). That exit ban (interdiction de sortie du territoire), registered on the wanted-persons file by the public prosecutor, is the standard protective response when a Franco-British separation carries a flight risk — far more useful than holding onto a child’s passport, which the other parent can have replaced.

One more provision governs daily life after separation and surprises many British parents: a parent who moves home must warn the other in advance whenever the move affects how parental authority works. The statute requires: “Tout changement de résidence de l’un des parents, dès lors qu’il modifie les modalités d’exercice de l’autorité parentale, doit faire l’objet d’une information préalable et en temps utile de l’autre parent.” (Article 373-2 of the Civil Code). Moving from Paris to Lyon, or from France back to London, without prior notice is therefore not merely discourteous; it is a breach the judge can sanction by reallocating travel costs and adjusting maintenance, and in a contested case it colours the judge’s view of that parent’s respect for the other’s rights — the very criterion Article 373-2-11 lists. If disagreement follows the announcement, the more diligent parent seises the family judge, who rules according to the child’s interests.

II. Making the order work across the Channel and when it breaks down

An order that works perfectly while everyone lives in France can face its real test the day one parent relocates to England, or the day a parent who never accepted the French decision asks an English court to decide differently. This second part explains how orders cross the Channel in each direction after Brexit, then turns to money, enforcement and the time limits that govern challenges.

A. How an English child arrangements order is recognised in France after Brexit

Start with the good news. Under the 1996 Hague Convention, a child-protection measure taken by the authorities of one contracting state is recognised automatically, by operation of law, in all the other contracting states (Article 23(1) of the 1996 Hague Convention). Recognition by operation of law (de plein droit) means no prior French court approval is needed for an English child arrangements order — the order deciding where the child lives and when they spend time with each parent — to count as valid in France. A school, a doctor or a French administrative body shown the English order should treat it as effective. That automatic recognition is the Convention’s substitute for the EU certificate system that Brexit removed, and in calm cases it is all a family ever needs.

Recognition can nevertheless be refused on limited grounds, and one of them connects directly to the hearing rulings discussed in Part I: recognition may be refused where the measure was taken without giving the child an opportunity to be heard, in breach of the fundamental procedural principles of the state where recognition is sought. An English order made with no regard for the child’s voice is therefore more fragile in France than one that records how the children were heard. Parents litigating in England who know the children may later live in France have an interest in ensuring the English proceedings document the children’s views properly — a point to raise with the English solicitor, not something the French system can fix afterwards.

Where recognition alone is not enough and the order must actually be enforced — the other parent will not hand the children over, or blocks the holidays the order grants — the Convention provides for enforcement, in France through a declaration of enforceability applied for before the judicial court. The application must show that the English authority had jurisdiction on a Convention ground (normally the children’s habitual residence in England when the order was made), and the French court checks the refusal grounds without reviewing the merits: it does not re-decide where the children should live. In genuinely urgent situations, French authorities can also take provisional protective measures on French territory regardless of which country’s courts have substantive jurisdiction, which covers the school-holiday crisis where children present in France need immediate protection.

The mirror image — a French JAF order invoked in England — runs through the same Convention in reverse, implemented in England and Wales by post-Brexit regulations that allow English courts to recognise and enforce orders from EU Member States under the 1996 Convention. Here British parents encounter a practical asymmetry worth knowing: England applies the Convention through its own procedural rules, with its own forms and its own central authority (the English Central Authority for international children cases), so the French order should travel with a complete file — the judgment, proof it was served, and where relevant the certificate of enforceability — and, for any official use, a certified English translation. Orders drafted in French with clear operative provisions (who lives where, exact contact dates, who pays for travel) cross the Channel far more smoothly than vague agreements to “share holidays reasonably”. Precision at the drafting stage in France is therefore an investment in enforceability in England.

One scenario needs explicit warning because it recurs in British separations in France: parallel proceedings. Mum issues in Paris; dad issues in London; each hopes their court decides first. Under the old EU system, a strict first-seised rule coordinated the two courts. Under the Hague Convention, the coordination mechanism is thinner: each authority assesses its own jurisdiction, and the Convention’s provisions on conflicting measures and on declining jurisdiction in favour of the better-placed authority require careful handling by lawyers on both sides. The practical advice is blunt. Do not start a race to issue. Proceedings begun in the wrong country waste the most precious resource in children cases — time — and a court that considers itself second seised or ill-placed may stay its hand while months pass. Agree jurisdiction early, in writing, with advice from lawyers in both countries; if agreement is impossible, issue promptly in the country of the children’s habitual residence and nowhere else.

B. Maintenance, enforcement and the appeals that reset the clock

Money for the children follows a simple statutory principle: “Chacun des parents contribue à l’entretien et à l’éducation des enfants à proportion de ses ressources, de celles de l’autre parent, ainsi que des besoins de l’enfant.” (Article 371-2 of the Civil Code). Each parent contributes to the children’s maintenance and education in proportion to their resources, the other parent’s resources, and the child’s needs. The obligation survives the loss of parental authority and continues past eighteen where the child still needs support — for a student, for example. French judges normally fix a monthly payment (pension alimentaire, usually translated as child maintenance) indexed each year, plus a split of exceptional costs such as school fees, medical extras and holiday camps. British parents should note two differences from the English system: there is no Child Maintenance Service calculation imposed from outside — the JAF fixes the amount judicially, weighing the French cost of living where the children reside — and the parent with shared residence can still owe maintenance where incomes are unequal, because the test is proportionality, not arithmetic equality of time.

Unpaid maintenance has its own time limit, and it is one of the few hard deadlines in this field. Personal and movable claims prescribe in five years running from the day the holder of the right knew or should have known the facts enabling them to act: “Les actions personnelles ou mobilières se prescrivent par cinq ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant de l’exercer.” (Article 2224 of the Civil Code). Concretely, a parent owed three years of arrears can still recover them, but arrears older than five years are lost unless an act interrupting prescription — a court claim, an enforcement measure, or the debtor’s acknowledgement — reset the clock. The lesson is not to let arrears sleep: a maintenance debt left unclaimed for years shrinks by itself, while prompt enforcement preserves every euro. Cross-Channel recovery adds a layer — where the debtor parent lives in England, the French creditor uses the international maintenance recovery channels, with the French central authority transmitting the claim — but the five-year French prescription frames the strategy from day one, so the file should be opened early even if the debtor’s exact English address is still being traced.

Where contact breaks down rather than money, French law offers a graduated ladder. The judge can attach a financial penalty for non-compliance to the decision itself: “Il peut, même d’office, ordonner une astreinte pour assurer l’exécution de sa décision.” (Article 373-2-6 of the Civil Code). An astreinte is a periodic penalty payment, accruing per day or per missed visit, that the obstructing parent owes — a remedy English readers can compare to a penal sum backing an order. For grave or repeated deliberate obstruction, the same article allows the judge to impose a civil fine of up to 10,000 euros. And blocking contact can cross into criminal law: “Le fait de refuser indûment de représenter un enfant mineur à la personne qui a le droit de le réclamer est puni d’un an d’emprisonnement et de 15 000 euros d’amende.” (Article 227-5 of the Criminal Code). That offence, non-representation of a minor (non-représentation d’enfant), is the criminal backstop behind every contact order: a parent who withholds the children at the school gates on Friday evening risks not only the civil penalties but a criminal complaint. In practice, judges escalate gradually — reminder, mediation referral, astreinte, fine, criminal referral — and the parent who documents each missed visit in writing climbs that ladder fastest. Keep every message, every school record, every witness name.

Finally, no order about children is ever set in stone. The statute says so directly: decisions on the exercise of parental authority “peuvent être modifiées ou complétées à tout moment par le juge, à la demande des ou d’un parent ou du ministère public” (Article 373-2-13 of the Civil Code). They may be varied or supplemented at any time by the judge at a parent’s request. A parent who loses today can return tomorrow on genuinely new facts — a relocation, a teenager’s settled wishes, a job loss that reshapes maintenance — without any waiting period. But variation must be distinguished from appeal. An appeal (appel) against the JAF judgment re-examines the same facts before the court of appeal, and the ordinary appeal period in contentious matters is one month: “Le délai de recours par une voie ordinaire est d’un mois en matière contentieuse ; il est de quinze jours en matière gracieuse.” (Article 538 of the Code of Civil Procedure). Family residence and maintenance rulings are contentious matters, so the one-month rule applies, running from service of the judgment. Miss it and the judgment becomes final, leaving only variation on new facts. The two routes therefore answer different questions: appeal says the judge got it wrong on the facts as they were; variation says the facts have since changed. A British parent served with a JAF judgment in France should diary the one-month appeal deadline immediately and separately assess whether new facts justify a fresh application — running both analyses in parallel, within the month, is the only safe approach.

Conclusion

A Franco-British separation in France is decided where the children actually live, organised around their interests rather than their passports, and increasingly shaped by whether their own voice has been heard and recorded. Habitual residence gives the French courts jurisdiction over children settled here, the 1996 Hague Convention carries orders across a post-Brexit Channel in both directions, and the French family judge disposes of a complete toolkit — shared or primary residence, supervised contact, exit bans, penalty payments, maintenance calibrated to resources — to fit the order to the family. The three Court of Cassation rulings on the child’s hearing carry the article’s central practical message: process wins cases. Record the hearing request, require written reasons for any refusal, demand disclosure of the hearing account, document every missed visit, diary the one-month appeal period, and never let maintenance arrears approach the five-year prescription. Parents who master that discipline give their lawyer — in France and, where needed, in England — the material from which enforceable orders are built, and give their children the stability the whole procedure exists to protect.