You own a house in France, you live there or you visit often, and your children live in England. You want them to have the house one day, preferably now rather than after a long succession, and preferably with as little French gift tax as possible. In England, a lifetime gift is usually simple: you sign a transfer, and if you survive seven years there is normally no inheritance tax on it. In France, the same gesture obeys a different logic. A gift of a French house is a donation entre vifs<\/i>, a lifetime gift, and it must pass before a French notaire<\/i>, a public officer with a monopoly on authentic instruments. It is taxed at the moment of the gift, it consumes a personal allowance that only renews every fifteen years, and it is later set against the protected share of your children when your estate is divided. Each of these French terms will be explained as we go, because each of them changes what your family will actually pay and what your children will actually receive.<\/p>\n
Since Brexit, British donors are third-country nationals in France, and two questions dominate every file this firm sees: first, does France tax the gift even when the parents and the children all live in England, and second, how does a lifetime gift interact with the forced share, the r\u00e9serve h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire<\/i>, that French law grants to children? This article answers both. The first part describes the instrument itself, the deed, the splitting of ownership over time, and the tax computation. The second part deals with what happens afterwards, the equalisation between children and the remedies when the tax office or a co-heir disputes the arrangement. Throughout, French rules are stated from the codes themselves, and the English comparison is drawn from the official guidance on the British side.<\/p>\nI. Giving a French house during your lifetime: the deed, the allowance and the tax bill<\/h2>\n
A. Which deed the French notaire prepares when British parents give to their children<\/h3>\n
French law defines a lifetime gift in broad terms. Article 893 of the Civil Code<\/a> provides that a gratuitous disposition can only take two forms, a lifetime gift or a will, and the lifetime gift is the only way to transfer the house now with immediate effect. The form is strict. Article 931 of the Civil Code<\/a> states, in language that has barely changed for two centuries: “Tous actes portant donation entre vifs seront pass\u00e9s devant notaires dans la forme ordinaire des contrats ; et il en restera minute, sous peine de nullit\u00e9.” In plain English, every lifetime gift must be received by a notaire in the ordinary form of contracts, and the notaire keeps the original, on pain of nullity. An English deed signed in a solicitor’s office in London cannot transfer a house in the Dordogne. An informal promise, a letter, even money paid towards the price by a parent, does not transfer ownership of French land. Only the notarial deed, published at the land registry, the service de publicit\u00e9 fonci\u00e8re<\/i>, transfers title against third parties.<\/p>\n British families most often choose between three instruments, and the vocabulary matters because each appears in the deed. The simple donation<\/i> transfers full ownership at once. The donation-partage<\/i>, the partition-gift, goes further: article 1075 of the Civil Code<\/a> states that “Toute personne peut faire, entre ses h\u00e9ritiers pr\u00e9somptifs, la distribution et le partage de ses biens et de ses droits”, which means any person may distribute and divide their property among their presumed heirs, either by partition-gift during lifetime or by partition-will. For parents with two or three children, the partition-gift has a decisive advantage: the values are fixed at the day of the gift for the equalisation between the children, so the child who receives the house does not owe compensation recalculated at the death on the appreciated value, except where the statutory exceptions apply. The third instrument is the gift with a split of ownership over time, the d\u00e9membrement de propri\u00e9t\u00e9<\/i>. The parents give away the nue-propri\u00e9t\u00e9<\/i>, the bare ownership, and keep the usufruit<\/i>, the right to use the house and take its income for life. The children become bare owners immediately but only take full enjoyment when the surviving parent dies, at which point the usufruct ends automatically and, crucially, without any further succession duty on that reunion. For a British couple who still spend half the year in the French house, this is usually the recommended structure: the parents keep the roof over their heads, the children are already in the title, and the taxable value of the gift is reduced by an age-based scale because bare ownership is worth less than full ownership while the parents are young.<\/p>\n Two points of English contrast must be understood early, because clients constantly project English assumptions onto the French deed. First, there is no equivalent in France of the English seven-year potentially exempt transfer that simply drops out of tax if the donor survives. A French gift is taxed when it is made, period, and it is then brought back into account, through the rapport<\/i>, the bringing back, and the rappel fiscal<\/i>, the fiscal recall, when later gifts or the succession are computed. Second, the French gift is irrevocable as a matter of principle from the moment the notaire reads the deed. A parent who gives the whole house outright and later quarrels with the child cannot take it back, except through narrow court-ordered revocation for serious misconduct or non-performance of conditions. That is why the deed often contains protective devices familiar to French practice but strange to English eyes: a droit de retour<\/i>, a right for the gift to return to the donor if the child dies first, an interdiction d’ali\u00e9ner<\/i>, a temporary prohibition on selling or mortgaging without the parents’ consent, and a charge<\/i>, an obligation such as paying the insurance or maintaining the roof. These clauses are enforceable because they sit inside the authentic instrument, and mortgage lenders in France read them before lending to the donee. The lesson is practical: never sign the French deed as if it were the short English transfer form. It allocates ownership, tax, protection and family peace for decades, and it deserves a full conference with the notaire before the appointment, with a sworn translation where a parent does not read French fluently.<\/p>\n Where the parents own the French house through an English will trust or hold it inside a family soci\u00e9t\u00e9 civile immobili\u00e8re<\/i>, the French property company, the gift takes a different object: instead of the bricks, the parents give company shares. The tax treatment then follows the shares, with a valuation dispute almost guaranteed about discounts for minority holdings and about the underlying property value. That company route, and the separate question of choosing English law for the succession itself, is examined in our companion analysis of British wills, French houses and the choice of English law<\/a>, which should be read alongside this article when the family already holds through a structure. For the ordinary case, the parents own the house directly and give it, in whole or in bare ownership, before the notaire of the place where the property lies.<\/p>\n The territorial question comes first, because many British families assume that a gift between two English residents escapes French tax. It does not, where the house stands in France. Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code<\/a> draws three concentric circles. Where the donor has a French tax domicile, France taxes worldwide gifts. Where the donor is not domiciled in France, France still taxes gifts of property situated in France, directly or indirectly held. Only where neither the donor nor the asset connects with France does French gift tax fall away. A house in France is therefore taxable in France even if the parents live in Kent and the children live in Yorkshire. The Franco-British double tax convention of 19 June 2008, as amended, covers succession and gifts, and its allocation rules generally leave taxing rights over immovable property to the state where the property sits, with a credit mechanism in the other state. In practice the family pays the French duty computed by the notaire and then claims relief in Britain where British tax also applies, rather than choosing one country. The precise credit arithmetic depends on domicile and on the nature of each levy, so the notarial computation and the British self-assessment must be kept consistent from the start.<\/p>\n The computation itself runs in three steps, and every figure below comes from the statute in force. First, the allowance, the abattement<\/i>. Article 779 of the General Tax Code<\/a> provides that “il est effectu\u00e9 un abattement de 100 000 \u20ac sur la part de chacun des ascendants et sur la part de chacun des enfants vivants ou repr\u00e9sent\u00e9s”, meaning an allowance of 100,000 euros applies on the share of each parent and on the share of each living child, or of grandchildren stepping into a predeceased child’s place by representation. Each child therefore receives 100,000 euros free of duty from each parent, so a couple giving jointly shelters 200,000 euros per child. The allowance renews only every fifteen years, which is the point most often missed: a gift of 100,000 euros today exhausts the allowance until 2041, and a second gift next year is fully taxable from the first euro. Second, the rate, the tarif<\/i>. Article 777 of the General Tax Code<\/a> sets the direct-line scale from 5 per cent on the slice below 8,072 euros up to 45 per cent beyond 1,805,677 euros, with the familiar 20 per cent band covering most family houses between about 16,000 and 552,000 euros of taxable share. A worked example helps: parents jointly give a house worth 400,000 euros in full ownership to their only child, 200,000 euros from each parent. Each 200,000-euro share minus the 100,000-euro allowance leaves 100,000 euros taxable, charged at the progressive bands, roughly 18,000 euros per parent at current rates, so about 36,000 euros of duty on the day of the deed, plus the notaire’s fees and the land registry tax which are distinct from the duty. Where the parents instead give only the bare ownership while keeping the usufruct, the taxable base is the bare ownership value from the statutory age scale, often 50 to 70 per cent of full value depending on the younger parent’s age, and the duty falls accordingly.<\/p>\n Third, the fiscal recall, the rappel fiscal des donations ant\u00e9rieures<\/i>. Article 784 of the General Tax Code<\/a> opens with the sentence “Les parties sont tenues de faire conna\u00eetre, dans tout acte constatant une transmission entre vifs \u00e0 titre gratuit et dans toute d\u00e9claration de succession, s’il existe ou non des donations ant\u00e9rieures”, which obliges the parties to declare in every lifetime gift and in every succession return whether earlier gifts were made, their amount, and the notaires who received them. The mechanism then adds the earlier gifts back to the current base so that the progressive rate applies to the running total, crediting duty already paid. Concretely, a father who gave 100,000 euros in 2030 and gives a 300,000-euro share of the house in 2038 is taxed on the second gift as if it completed a 400,000-euro total, then deducts the earlier duty. Gifts older than fifteen years drop out of the recall, which is why notaires diary the fifteen-year clock with such care. British readers should compare this with the official British position on the other side of the Channel: the gov.uk guidance on gifts and inheritance tax explains that a gift made more than seven years before death is normally exempt as a potentially exempt transfer, with taper relief only softening the charge in the intervening years. France has no equivalent disappearance after seven years. The French gift is taxed now, recalled for fifteen years, and then brought into the succession accounts for equality between children indefinitely. Families who plan a series of gifts, a cash gift this year and the house in five years, must therefore sequence them with the fifteen-year renewal in mind, and keep every deed, because the notaire who prepares the succession will ask for all of them and the tax office will check the declaration against its own records.<\/p>\n None of this is theoretical for British donors after Brexit. The notaire collects the duty at the signing appointment or within the month, the parties sign a tax return annexed to the deed, and an undervaluation of the house is adjusted by the tax office through a proposition de rectification<\/i>, a proposed reassessment, with penalties for bad faith where the administration proves it. Challenging that reassessment follows the standard French ladder, administrative claim then judicial appeal, which is detailed in the second part of this article. Before signing, British parents should therefore obtain an independent valuation, confirm who holds the valid energy and planning diagnostics for the sale-equivalent file, verify that no undeclared cash supplement sits alongside the deed, and confirm the exact allowance remaining for each child after earlier gifts. These checks cost far less than a reassessment three years later with interest running.<\/p>\n The most specifically French limit on a British parent’s freedom is the r\u00e9serve h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire<\/i>, the reserved share. Unlike English law, which gives a testator near-total freedom subject only to family provision claims, French law reserves a fraction of the estate to the children. Article 913 of the Civil Code<\/a> states that lifetime or testamentary gifts “ne pourront exc\u00e9der la moiti\u00e9 des biens du disposant, s’il ne laisse \u00e0 son d\u00e9c\u00e8s qu’un enfant ; le tiers, s’il laisse deux enfants ; le quart, s’il en laisse trois ou un plus grand nombre”, meaning gifts cannot exceed one half of the property with one child, one third with two children, one quarter with three or more. The balance is the quotit\u00e9 disponible<\/i>, the freely disposable share, the only part the parents may direct at will. A gift of the whole French house to one child out of two therefore exceeds the disposable third and exposes the donee to an action en r\u00e9duction<\/i>, an action for reduction, brought by the disappointed sibling at the succession. Article 924 of the Civil Code<\/a> answers what happens then: “Lorsque la lib\u00e9ralit\u00e9 exc\u00e8de la quotit\u00e9 disponible, le gratifi\u00e9, successible ou non successible, doit indemniser les h\u00e9ritiers r\u00e9servataires \u00e0 concurrence de la portion excessive de la lib\u00e9ralit\u00e9”, so the donee must compensate the protected heirs up to the excessive portion. Since the reform, reduction is normally paid in money rather than by returning the house itself, which means the child who received the house usually keeps it and pays compensation, but the compensation is indexed and can be heavy where the house has appreciated.<\/p>\n The courts apply these rules with rigour, and British families should read two holdings closely. In a widely followed judgment of 10 January 2018, the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation examined a family in which a daughter had renounced the successions of both parents yet faced a reduction claim over a 1968 advance gift. The question was whether her renunciation shielded her. The Court’s reasoning recalled that the lower court had ordered “la r\u00e9int\u00e9gration fictive des lib\u00e9ralit\u00e9s consenties par les d\u00e9funts \u00e0 la masse active des successions pour appr\u00e9cier les droits de chaque h\u00e9ritier”, the fictitious bringing back of the gifts into the estate mass in order to assess each heir’s rights, and it upheld the reduction logic: renunciation of the succession does not immunise an excessive advance gift from reduction where it eats into the reserve (Cass. 1re civ., 10 Jan. 2018, No. 16-27.894<\/a>). For a British parent, the message is direct: giving the house early to the child who loves France, while the other child renounces or is bought out informally, does not close the file. At the death, the mass is reconstituted, the reserve recomputed, and the donee pays the excess in money.<\/p>\n The companion question is proof. Where one child claims that the house, or money towards it, was really a disguised gift, a donation d\u00e9guis\u00e9e<\/i>, the claimant must prove the irrevocable stripping of the deceased. In a judgment of 24 January 2018 the Court of Cassation reviewed precisely such a dispute over 75,000 euros tied to a business fund, and the plea recalled the governing principle that “il appartient \u00e0 celui qui sollicite le rapport \u00e0 la succession d’une lib\u00e9ralit\u00e9 consentie par le de cujus de faire la preuve de cette lib\u00e9ralit\u00e9”, that it is for the person seeking the bringing back of a gift to prove it, by establishing an irrevocable divestment by the deceased (Cass. 1re civ., 24 Jan. 2018, Nos. 17-13.017 and 17-13.400<\/a>). Bank transfers alone, or a parent living rent-free in a child’s flat, do not automatically prove a gift. Conversely, a recorded notarial gift proves itself. And where the parents used a partition-gift to fix values at the date of the deed, the Court continues to police the boundary, as shown by the recent partition-gift litigation culminating in Cass. 1re civ., 30 Sept. 2026, No. 24-12.998<\/a>, where revocation for non-payment of the life annuity attached to the gift unwound part of the arrangement and sent the parties back to accounts, liquidation and partition. The thread across these decisions is consistent: French courts reconstruct the whole family economics at death, they enforce the reserve in money, and they demand strict proof of any alleged informal gift.<\/p>\nB. Whether France taxes the gift and how the 100,000-euro allowance works<\/h3>\n
II. Keeping the gift standing: the children’s reserved share and the remedies against the tax bill<\/h2>\n
A. How lifetime gifts fit with the reserved share, equalisation and the disappointed child<\/h3>\n