Your father lived in Manchester all his life. You live in Lyon, pay tax in France, hold a Withdrawal Agreement residence card, and visit England twice a year. Then comes the telephone call every British family in France dreads: your father has died, leaving his house in Didsbury, two bank accounts with Halifax and NatWest, and a small portfolio of shares. The English solicitor tells you probate will take months. A friend warns you that France will tax the whole lot again. Both are right, and neither tells the full story. As a French tax resident, you can be taxed in France on UK assets you inherit, at French rates, while Britain taxes the same estate under its own Inheritance Tax \u2014 and a 1963 treaty decides how much credit you get so you do not pay twice on the same pound.<\/p>\n
This guide is written entirely for a British reader living in France after Brexit, in plain English with every French term explained the first time it appears. It covers when France taxes a UK inheritance and when it does not, what Britain takes through probate and Inheritance Tax, how the 1963 Franco-British estate treaty stops double taxation, how to declare the inheritance in France and which law governs the estate, what happens if you miss the filing deadline, and how to challenge a French tax bill or a refused treaty credit. Read it before you sign anything the English solicitor or the French notaire puts in front of you: the choices made in the first weeks \u2014 accepting or renouncing, choosing English law in a will, claiming the treaty credit on the right form \u2014 shape everything that follows.<\/p>\n
French succession law starts from a simple opening rule. Article 720<\/a> of the Civil Code (Code civil, the French civil statute) states: “Les successions s’ouvrent par la mort, au dernier domicile du d\u00e9funt.” The succession opens with death, at the last home of the person who died. That tells you where the estate opens. It does not tell you who taxes it. Tax follows a different statute, and the key text is Article 750 ter<\/a> of the General Tax Code (Code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts, the French tax code), which provides: “Sont soumis aux droits de mutation \u00e0 titre gratuit : 1\u00b0 Les biens meubles et immeubles situ\u00e9s en France ou hors de France, et notamment les fonds publics, parts d’int\u00e9r\u00eats, biens ou droits composant un trust d\u00e9fini \u00e0 l’article 792-0 bis et produits qui y sont capitalis\u00e9s, cr\u00e9ances et g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement toutes les valeurs mobili\u00e8res fran\u00e7aises ou \u00e9trang\u00e8res de quelque nature qu’elles soient, lorsque le donateur ou le d\u00e9funt a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 B”. In plain terms, where the person who died was a French tax resident, France taxes everything they leave, wherever it sits \u2014 including a house in Manchester and money in a London bank.<\/p>\n But your case is the mirror image: the person who died lived in England, and it is you, the heir, who lives in France. France still reaches the UK assets in that configuration. The Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation, the highest French civil court) confirmed the mechanism in a trust case that every British family with an English family trust should read, holding in its judgment of 18 November 2020, appeal number 18-14.242<\/a>, that: “sont soumis aux droits de mutation \u00e0 titre gratuit les biens meubles et immeubles situ\u00e9s en France ou hors de France lorsque le donateur ou le d\u00e9funt a son domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 B”. The same reasoning extends to assets received by an heir who is a French tax resident: where the heir has been French-resident for a sufficient period, France taxes the worldwide inheritance, subject only to the treaty credit explained in Part II. The practical lesson is blunt. Living in Lyon while your father lived in Manchester does not shelter the Didsbury house from the French droits de succession, the French inheritance duties. It brings it inside them.<\/p>\n Everything therefore turns on domicile fiscal, the French concept of tax residence. Article 4 B<\/a> of the General Tax Code treats as French tax residents, among others: “Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur s\u00e9jour principal”. If your home, your family life and your main place of stay are in France, you are French tax resident, even if you keep a British passport, receive correspondence at your late parent’s English address, or spend school holidays in Kent. The administration looks at facts \u2014 where you sleep most nights, where your children go to school, where you work \u2014 not at labels. If you moved to France only months ago and your centre of life is still genuinely in Britain, say so early and evidence it, because the domicile answer decides whether France taxes the UK accounts at all. Readers unsure of their residence position should start with the guide on when a British arrival becomes French tax resident and what happens when both countries claim you<\/a> before reading further.<\/p>\n Two British-specific traps deserve emphasis. The first is the English family trust. Many Manchester or Surrey parents settled their shares or the holiday cottage into a trust decades ago, assuming the trust wrapper removes the assets from any estate. French tax law disagrees: Article 750 ter expressly names assets and rights forming part of a trust defined at Article 792-0 bis, and the 18 November 2020 ruling treats the taxable transfer as occurring when the trust assets are distributed to the final beneficiary, which can be after the settlor’s death. Tell the French notaire (notaire, the French public officer who settles estates) about any trust immediately, with the trust deed and the trustee’s papers: hidden trusts discovered later produce penalties, not planning. The second trap is believing Brexit changed the tax answer. Brexit changed residence rights and visas; it did not rewrite the 1963 estate treaty or Article 750 ter. The tax machinery described here applies after Brexit exactly as before, which is why older advice claiming Britons in France escape French succession tax on UK assets should be binned.<\/p>\n What France then charges depends on who you are to the person who died. Spouses and civil partners pay nothing: Article 796-0 bis<\/a> of the General Tax Code states: “Sont exon\u00e9r\u00e9s de droits de mutation par d\u00e9c\u00e8s le conjoint survivant et le partenaire li\u00e9 au d\u00e9funt par un pacte civil de solidarit\u00e9.” A widow inheriting her husband’s Manchester house pays no French droits de succession on it, though she must still declare it. Children each get a personal allowance before rates bite. Article 779<\/a> of the General Tax Code grants, for inheritance duties: an abatement of 100,000 euros on each parent’s share and on each living child’s share. Above the allowance, Article 777<\/a> of the General Tax Code applies the direct-line scale, which runs: “N’exc\u00e9dant pas 8 072 \u20ac 5”, five per cent on the first slice, rising through 10, 15 and 20 per cent, to 30, 40 and finally 45 per cent beyond 1,805,677 euros. Siblings, nephews and unrelated legatees face far harsher scales with tiny allowances, which is why the exact family link must be established with birth and marriage certificates before any calculation starts. And France adds earlier gifts back into the pot: Article 784<\/a> of the General Tax Code requires the parties to disclose in every succession declaration whether earlier gifts were made by the deceased to the heirs, because the tax is computed by adding the earlier gifts to the inheritance. If your father gave you 50,000 euros five years ago for your Lyon flat deposit, that gift resurfaces in the arithmetic now.<\/p>\n While France calculates its droits, England runs its own machinery, and you cannot touch the UK assets until it has turned. Nothing in a UK bank account or share portfolio can be released until the executor (the person named in the will to administer the estate) or administrator obtains the grant of probate (the English court’s certificate confirming who may administer the estate). Banks freeze the accounts on notification of death, releasing only funeral costs and, sometimes, small balances under their own thresholds. The Halifax or NatWest branch will ask for the death certificate, the will, identification, and eventually the grant itself. Expect weeks at best and several months for larger or disputed estates. Do not promise the French notaire a completion date driven by the English side: the two timetables run independently, and the English one is slower than most Lyon families expect.<\/p>\n Britain then taxes the estate through Inheritance Tax, and the official gov.uk Inheritance Tax guide<\/a> states the essentials in three lines every heir should memorise. First, there is a tax-free threshold: there is no tax where the value of the estate is below the \u00a3325,000 threshold, or where everything above it passes to a spouse, civil partner, charity or amateur sports club. Second, the rate above the threshold is flat and heavy: the standard rate is 40 per cent, charged only on the slice of the estate above the threshold A \u00a3500,000 Manchester estate with a \u00a3325,000 threshold pays 40 per cent of \u00a3175,000. Third, lifetime gifts can boomerang: gifts made within seven years of death may be taxed after death, with taper relief potentially reducing the charge depending on timing. The gov.uk guide puts it plainly that people receiving gifts may have to pay Inheritance Tax where more than \u00a3325,000 was given away and death follows within seven years. If your father gave your sister a large sum two years before dying, the executor must report it and HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the British tax authority) may assess it.<\/p>\n Several British features surprise French residents. The UK has no forced heirship: a parent can in principle leave everything to one child or to charity, subject only to limited family-provision claims. That contrasts sharply with the French r\u00e9serve h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire, the forced share the law reserves to certain heirs, defined at Article 912<\/a> of the Civil Code: “La r\u00e9serve h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire est la part des biens et droits successoraux dont la loi assure la d\u00e9volution libre de charges \u00e0 certains h\u00e9ritiers dits r\u00e9servataires, s’ils sont appel\u00e9s \u00e0 la succession et s’ils l’acceptent.” Where French law governs the estate, children cannot simply be disinherited, and the Court of Cassation enforces the boundary strictly: in its judgment of 22 June 2022, appeal number 20-23.215<\/a>, it recalled that: “Il r\u00e9sulte du premier de ces textes qu’aucune disposition testamentaire ne peut modifier les droits que les h\u00e9ritiers r\u00e9servataires tiennent de la loi.” No will clause can rewrite what forced heirs take by law. The collision matters because the English will saying “everything to my eldest” may be partly ineffective if French law applies \u2014 which is exactly why the choice-of-law clause discussed in Part II decides real money.<\/p>\n British pensions and life cover add a further layer. UK pension pots and death-in-service payments often sit outside the taxable estate where they were written under suitable nominations, while French assurance-vie (assurance-vie, the French life-insurance savings wrapper) follows its own beneficiary and levy regime, explained in the guide on assurance-vie beneficiaries and the eight-year tax point<\/a>. Do not net these items off in your head against the house: each follows its own channel, and the executor, the notaire and the insurer each need separate notification with an original death certificate. Order several certified copies of the English death certificate at the outset \u2014 French offices keep originals and English registrars charge for every reissue. Finally, if the deceased owned UK land, the executor registers the transfer or sale at the Land Registry after probate; if you inherit and keep the Manchester house while living in Lyon, read the guide on declaring UK rental income as a French resident<\/a>, because keeping the house starts a yearly Franco-British tax routine of its own.<\/p>\n France taxes by declaration: the heirs file a d\u00e9claration de succession, the French inheritance tax return, through the notaire, and pay the droits calculated on it. The deadline is generous but absolute. Article 641<\/a> of the General Tax Code sets the filing time limits as follows: “Les d\u00e9lais pour l’enregistrement des d\u00e9clarations que les h\u00e9ritiers, donataires ou l\u00e9gataires ont \u00e0 souscrire des biens \u00e0 eux \u00e9chus ou transmis par d\u00e9c\u00e8s sont : De six mois, \u00e0 compter du jour du d\u00e9c\u00e8s, lorsque celui dont on recueille la succession est d\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9 en France m\u00e9tropolitaine; D’une ann\u00e9e, dans tous les autres cas.” Where the deceased died in England, the heirs have one year from death. Mark that date on the day you learn of the death, then work backwards: English probate regularly consumes six to nine months, valuations and translations take weeks, and the notaire cannot file what the English side has not yet evidenced. The official filing and payment steps are set out on the impots.gouv.fr succession declaration page<\/a> and the service-public.fr succession guide<\/a>. Late filing draws interest and penalties automatically, so a file that waits for the perfect English valuation and misses the French year-end pays for its perfection.<\/p>\n The treaty’s credit is the mechanism that stops you paying twice, and it must be claimed, not assumed. The 1963 Convention between Britain and France for the avoidance of double taxation on death duties, published in Britain as the Double Taxation Relief (Estate Duty) (France) Order 1963<\/a>, allocates taxing rights over different classes of assets and grants relief where both states tax the same property. In practice the French return must list the worldwide assets, compute the French droits, then impute (credit) the British Inheritance Tax actually paid on the same assets against the French bill, within the treaty’s limits. Three conditions decide the outcome, and each must be evidenced. First, the same person must have borne both taxes on the same assets: keep the HMRC assessment, the payment receipts and the executor’s accounts. Second, the British tax must be definitively paid and attributable to the assets concerned, not a provisional or estimated figure. Third, the credit cannot exceed the French tax on those assets: where French tax is lower, the surplus British tax is simply lost, and no refund comes from Paris. Files fail most often on proof \u2014 a bare assertion that “forty per cent was paid in England” with no HMRC closure papers. Ask the English solicitor at the start for a full tax-paid dossier expressly prepared for the French notaire, and have it translated by a sworn translator (traducteur asserment\u00e9, a translator officially sworn before a French court) so the tax office cannot reject it on form.<\/p>\n Alongside tax runs the question of which succession law governs the estate: English freedom or French forced shares. Since 17 August 2015 the European Succession Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 650\/2012) applies the law of the deceased’s habitual residence at death by default, but Article 22 lets anyone choose the law of their nationality in a will \u2014 the professio juris, the choice-of-law clause. Your father’s English will should therefore have contained, or should now be checked for, an express choice of English law, which keeps the “everything to my eldest” dispositions effective and sidesteps the r\u00e9serve. Without that clause, a father who spent his last years partly at your Lyon home could arguably have died habitually resident in France, dragging French forced heirship over the whole estate including the Manchester house. French courts take these residence fights seriously: in its judgment of 21 September 2022, appeal number 19-15.438<\/a>, the Court of Cassation recalled the subsidiary-jurisdiction rule that: “lorsque la r\u00e9sidence habituelle du d\u00e9funt au moment du d\u00e9c\u00e8s n’est pas situ\u00e9e dans un \u00c9tat membre, les juridictions de l’\u00c9tat membre dans lequel sont situ\u00e9s des biens successoraux sont n\u00e9anmoins comp\u00e9tentes pour statuer sur l’ensemble de la succession dans la mesure o\u00f9 le d\u00e9funt poss\u00e9dait la nationalit\u00e9 de cet \u00c9tat membre au moment du d\u00e9c\u00e8s.” In short, a French court can hear the whole succession where French property exists and the deceased held French nationality \u2014 a reminder that forum and applicable law are fought on residence and nationality evidence, not on assumptions. British readers with French property of their own should compare the companion guide on making an English will cover a French house by choosing English law<\/a>, and where the deceased left no valid choice, take advice before distributing a penny.<\/p>\n Practical sequencing keeps the file moving. First, secure the English position: register the death, locate the will, instruct the solicitor, and get the accounts frozen correctly rather than emptied informally \u2014 intermeddling with estate funds before probate creates personal liability. Second, open the French file: choose a notaire, ideally in Paris or your home department where Franco-British files are routine, hand over the death certificate with apostille and sworn translation, the will with its choice-of-law clause, the family record papers proving kinship, and full details of UK accounts, shares and any trust. Third, value everything at the date of death in both currencies with the day’s rate evidenced: the Manchester house needs a proper English valuation, not an estate-agent flyer, because both HMRC and the French office test valuations and reassess light ones. Fourth, file the French declaration within the one-year limit, claim the treaty credit with the HMRC proof attached, and pay or arrange payment. Where cash is locked in England pending probate, ask the notaire about payment facilities rather than simply defaulting: organised delay costs less than silent delay. Readers dealing with a blocked account \u2014 will find the unlocking routine in the guide on getting a blocked French bank account released after a death<\/a>, and the same paper-chase logic applies to English banks.<\/p>\n The commonest expensive error is the calendar confusion. Families who have previously inherited in France remember six months and apply it to an English death, panicking and filing an incomplete return \u2014 or, conversely, hear “one year” and drift past it while probate crawls. The rule quoted above is mechanical: death in metropolitan France means six months, every other case means one year, and a Manchester death means one year. Interest for late filing and penalties for late payment run without any reminder letter, and the notaire’s workload is no excuse the tax office accepts. Diary three dates on day one: the one-year French filing deadline, the British payment timetable the solicitor gives you, and a personal checkpoint two months before the French deadline at which an incomplete-but-protective filing is prepared if England has not delivered. A return filed on time and corrected later almost always costs less than a perfect return filed late. Where the estate includes a parent who died in France but owned UK assets \u2014 the reverse configuration \u2014 the six-month clock runs instead, and the guide on what to do when a British parent dies in France<\/a> walks through that timetable.<\/p>\n The second expensive error is accepting the first calculation. French offices misapply treaty credits more often than anyone admits: credit refused for want of proof, credit capped wrongly, UK house valued differently on each side of the Channel, earlier gifts double-counted, allowances forgotten where representation applies. Recompute the return yourself against the statutes quoted in this guide before paying: check the domicile analysis, the allowance arithmetic, the rate bands, and the credit cap asset by asset. If the assessment (avis de mise en recouvrement, the formal demand for payment) has already arrived, read its appeal box first \u2014 the voies et d\u00e9lais de recours, the stated appeal routes and time limits \u2014 and follow it to the day, because tax challenges die on missed deadlines, not on weak merits. The standard route is a written r\u00e9clamation contentieuse, the formal disputed claim sent to the tax office that issued the bill, setting out each grievance with its evidence: HMRC receipts for the credit, valuations for the house, birth certificates for the allowances, the will’s choice-of-law clause where the office has applied the wrong law to who takes what. Write it in French, number each head of claim, attach everything, and send it by a method that proves the date. If the office rejects the claim or stays silent, the dispute moves to the tribunal judiciaire (tribunal judiciaire, the French civil court that hears registration-duty cases), where the same bundle, properly ordered, becomes your court file. Interest continues while you argue, so ask for a stay of payment (sursis de paiement) with guarantees where the sums are large rather than letting enforcement run.<\/p>\n Brexit adds friction at the margins but no new tax wall. English grants of probate, valuations and solicitor letters need apostilles and sworn translations to be received in a French file; English notarised copies are not automatically accepted. UK-based executors may struggle to open estate accounts in France or to deal with French banks from abroad, and French notaires may ask for certificates of English law (certificats de coutume, statements of foreign law by a qualified lawyer) on points like the effect of joint tenancy or the nature of an English trust. None of this changes the tax answer, but all of it changes the timetable \u2014 build translation and legalisation time into the one-year plan. For families in Paris and the Paris region, the practical pinch is capacity: Franco-British successions concentrate in a handful of Paris notaire offices and the competent tax services, so instruct early and keep every original in one folder with a dated index. And where the file turns adversarial \u2014 a sibling contesting the English will’s effect in France, a French office denying the treaty credit, a valuation reassessment with penalties \u2014 treat it as litigation from that moment: stop telephoning, put everything in writing, and bring the complete file to an avocat before the next deadline expires rather than after.<\/p>\n A British resident in France who inherits English assets lives under two tax roofs at once. France taxes the worldwide inheritance where the domicile conditions of Article 750 ter and Article 4 B are met, spouses take free under Article 796-0 bis, children deduct 100,000 euros each under Article 779 before the Article 777 scale climbs to 45 per cent, earlier gifts resurface under Article 784, and the declaration must be filed within the Article 641 year where death occurred in England. Britain independently freezes the assets until probate, then taxes above \u00a3325,000 at 40 per cent with seven-year gifts in scope. The 1963 treaty bridges the two systems with a credit, claimed with HMRC proof, capped at the French tax on the same assets. The estate’s governing law turns on habitual residence unless the will’s professio juris chose English law, French courts can hear the whole succession in the subsidiary cases the Court of Cassation described on 21 September 2022, no will defeats the r\u00e9serve as the 22 June 2022 ruling recalled, and trust assets are taxed on distribution as the 18 November 2020 ruling held. Work the file in that order \u2014 domicile, valuation, declaration, credit, challenge \u2014 keep every paper, and meet the French year even if England is still probating.<\/p>\n Bring the English death certificate, the will, the grant of probate or solicitor’s letters, the HMRC assessment and payment receipts, valuations of the UK house and accounts, and any French tax bill or credit refusal to an avocat before the filing or appeal deadline passes. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with an avocat of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22<\/a> (Ma\u00eetre Reda Kohen), or reach us through our contact page<\/a>. We assist British residents and heirs in Paris and across the Paris region as well as throughout France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your parent died in England and you live in France: when France taxes the UK house and accounts, what Britain takes at 40 per cent, how the 1963 treaty credit stops double tax, and how to challenge the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251031309,"featured_media":16350,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kj_source_type":"","_kj_official_id":"","_kj_official_url":"","_kj_judilibre_id":"","_kj_jur":"","_kj_lieu":"","_kj_chambre":"","_kj_rg":"","_kj_date":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[80312,80314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2126640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-british-desk","category-decryptage"],"yoast_head":"\nB. What Britain still takes: probate, Inheritance Tax at 40% and the \u00a3325,000 threshold<\/h3>\n
II. How to declare, pay once and challenge the bill<\/h2>\n
A. Declaring in France, claiming the 1963 treaty credit and choosing English law for the estate<\/h3>\n
B. Missing the six-month confusion, paying too much and how to challenge after Brexit<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
Need a quick opinion on your case<\/h2>\n