You bought the house in the Dordogne fifteen years ago, when a British buyer needed little more than a passport and a cheque book. Since Brexit you have taken French residence, you pay your taxes in France, and now you want to take the obvious next step: give the house to your children while you are still alive to see them enjoy it. In England you would sign a transfer, send it to the Land Registry, and keep an eye on the seven-year inheritance tax clock. In France none of that works on its own. A gift of a French house only exists if a French notaire, a public officer appointed by the state, draws it up in a formal deed, keeps the original in the office records, and registers it at the land registry. A letter signed at the kitchen table, even witnessed, even validly executed under English law, transfers nothing. And the tax follows its own logic: each child has a 100,000 euro tax-free allowance that renews every fifteen years, the rates climb from 5 to 45 per cent, and a forgotten cash gift from a decade ago can push the new gift into a higher band. This article explains, in order, how to give the house properly, whether to divide it between the children now or give it to one of them, what the gift costs, which country taxes it when you live in France, and how to challenge the bill when the tax office gets it wrong.<\/p>\n
French gifts obey a simple starting rule that surprises most British owners: the law recognises only two ways of giving anything away for nothing, a lifetime gift and a will. Everything else, however generous the intention, is legally invisible. Once that is understood, the whole operation falls into place: the deed that makes the gift real, the choice between dividing the property now and giving it to one child, and the protection that French law reserves for children who receive less than their share.<\/p>\n
The Civil Code defines a gift in deliberately narrow terms. Article 893 provides, word for word:<\/p>\n
“La lib\u00e9ralit\u00e9 est l’acte par lequel une personne dispose \u00e0 titre gratuit de tout ou partie de ses biens ou de ses droits au profit d’une autre personne. Il ne peut \u00eatre fait de lib\u00e9ralit\u00e9 que par donation entre vifs ou par testament.” (official text of article 893 of the Civil Code<\/a>).<\/p>\n In plain terms: a gift is the act by which a person disposes of property gratuitously to another person, and it can only take the form of a lifetime gift, known as a donation entre vifs, or a will. For land, the lifetime gift must then pass through the notaire’s office. Article 931 states, again word for word:<\/p>\n “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.” (official text of article 931 of the Civil Code<\/a>).<\/p>\n Every deed of lifetime gift must be executed before notaires in the ordinary form of contracts, and the original must remain on file, on pain of nullity under the article cited above. The word minute means the original deed itself, which the notaire keeps permanently; the parties receive certified copies, called exp\u00e9ditions. A gift of a house signed privately, typed up by a solicitor in London, or recorded in an email, is void. It transfers nothing, and the donor remains the owner in the eyes of the French land registry, no matter what the family believes.<\/p>\n That formality is not a quirk. Land is governed by the law of the country where it sits, so a French house can only change hands in the French form, even between British nationals, even if everyone involved lives in England. An English transfer deed, a declaration of trust signed in the United Kingdom, or an entry made only at the English Land Registry has no effect on French land. The notarial deed must then be published at the French land registration service, the publicit\u00e9 fonci\u00e8re, which makes the new ownership enforceable against third parties and updates the title register that future buyers and the tax office consult.<\/p>\n The courts police the boundary between real gifts and disguised ones with equal strictness, and a recent decision of the Cour de cassation, the supreme court for civil matters, shows what is at stake for families. In its judgment of 10 June 2026, appeal no. 24-10.363, the First Civil Chamber recalled the two governing texts. On articles 893 and 894, the court quoted the definition of a lifetime gift word for word: “la donation entre vifs est un acte par lequel le donateur se d\u00e9pouille actuellement et irr\u00e9vocablement de la chose donn\u00e9e en faveur du donataire qui l’accepte”, meaning the donor strips himself presently and irrevocably of the thing given in favour of the donee who accepts it. The court drew the consequence in equally clear terms: “une lib\u00e9ralit\u00e9 suppose un appauvrissement du disposant dans l’intention de gratifier son b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaire”, meaning a gift presupposes that the person giving becomes poorer, with the intention of benefiting the recipient. The full decision is published here: Cass. 1re civ., 10 June 2026, no. 24-10.363<\/a>. In that case, a sale of company shares from mother to son, financed through a loan secured on property the mother had herself given, was treated as a disguised donation because the mother had indirectly impoverished herself to let her son pay. The lesson for a British family is direct: route money or property through an artificial sale to dodge the gift rules, and a French court can reclassify the whole arrangement as a donation, with the tax and succession consequences that follow.<\/p>\n Practically, the safe path has four steps. First, instruct a notaire in the area where the house sits and ask for a written estimate of fees and taxes before signing anything. Second, have the deed drawn up, signed and accepted in the notarial form, with the minute kept by the office. Third, check that the deed is published at the publicit\u00e9 fonci\u00e8re and that the title extract, the relev\u00e9 de propri\u00e9t\u00e9, shows the new owners. Fourth, keep the certified copy with your tax papers: the date of that deed starts every clock that matters, from the fifteen-year tax window to the valuation date used if the gift is ever brought back into account at death.<\/p>\n Once the form is settled, the real family decision arrives: do you divide the house between all the children now, or give it to one child and compensate the others later? French law offers a purpose-built tool for the first option, the donation-partage, a gift that both transfers and divides. Article 1075 of the Civil Code provides, word for word:<\/p>\n “Toute personne peut faire, entre ses h\u00e9ritiers pr\u00e9somptifs, la distribution et le partage de ses biens et de ses droits. Cet acte peut se faire sous forme de donation-partage ou de testament-partage. Il est soumis aux formalit\u00e9s, conditions et r\u00e8gles prescrites pour les donations entre vifs dans le premier cas et pour les testaments dans le second.” (official text of article 1075 of the Civil Code<\/a>).<\/p>\n Any person may distribute and share out property and rights among the presumed heirs, either as a donation-partage or as a testament-partage, subject to the formalities of lifetime gifts in the first case, as cited above. The advantage is considerable: values are frozen at the date of the deed, so if the Dordogne farmhouse doubles in value over the next twenty years, the increase belongs to the children and is not brought back into the succession arithmetic. A simple gift, by contrast, is revalued later, as explained below.<\/p>\n But the courts insist that a donation-partage must genuinely divide. In a judgment of 2 July 2025, appeal no. 23-16.329, the First Civil Chamber restated the rule word for word: “Selon l’article 1075 du code civil, toute personne peut faire, entre ses h\u00e9ritiers pr\u00e9somptifs, la distribution et le partage de ses biens et de ses droits sous forme de donation-partage.” It then drew the line, again word for word: “il n’y a de donation-partage que dans la mesure o\u00f9 l’ascendant effectue une r\u00e9partition mat\u00e9rielle de ses biens entre ses descendants, lesquels, hors le cas pr\u00e9vu \u00e0 l’article 1078-4 du code civil, ne peuvent \u00eatre allotis conjointement entre eux.” There is a donation-partage only where the parent makes a physical division of the property between the descendants, who, outside the case provided for by article 1078-4, cannot be allotted jointly. The decision is published here: Cass. 1re civ., 2 July 2025, no. 23-16.329<\/a>. In that case, parents had given each of three children plots of land plus, to each of them, a one-third undivided share of a dwelling house, with a cash equalisation payment, a soulte, to the fourth child. Because three children received undivided rights in the same house, there had been no genuine material division, and the court reclassified the deed as a simple gift subject to the ordinary accounting rules. For a British family, the warning is concrete: giving each child an undivided percentage of the same French house, which feels natural and fair, is exactly the arrangement that fails the test. If there is only one house and several children, the deed should allocate distinct assets or rights, use a soulte to balance the shares, or accept that the gift will be treated as a simple one.<\/p>\n The difference matters because of the reserved share, the r\u00e9serve h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire, the portion of the estate that French law guarantees to the children. Article 913 fixes the disposable portion, the quotit\u00e9 disponible that a parent may freely give away: one half where there is one child, one third where there are two, and one quarter where there are three or more. The official text, as amended to include the compensatory levy for children protected nowhere else, is here: article 913 of the Civil Code<\/a>. A gift that exceeds the disposable portion is not void, but it can be cut back, reduced, at death so that each child recovers the reserved share. The calculation works by fictitiously reuniting past gifts with the assets left at death. Article 922 states the method, and its opening words are worth quoting exactly: “La r\u00e9duction se d\u00e9termine en formant une masse de tous les biens existant au d\u00e9c\u00e8s du donateur ou testateur. Les biens dont il a \u00e9t\u00e9 dispos\u00e9 par donation entre vifs sont fictivement r\u00e9unis \u00e0 cette masse, d’apr\u00e8s leur \u00e9tat \u00e0 l’\u00e9poque de la donation et leur valeur \u00e0 l’ouverture de la succession, apr\u00e8s qu’en ont \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9duites les dettes ou les charges les grevant.” The reduction is computed by forming a mass of all property existing at the donor’s death, to which property given away during life is fictitiously reunited, in its condition at the date of the gift and at its value at the date of death, after deducting debts and charges: article 922 of the Civil Code<\/a>.<\/p>\n A simple gift is also subject to the return mechanism, the rapport, which equalises the children at the succession without any fault on anyone’s part. Article 860 sets the valuation rule, and its first sentence governs most cases: “Le rapport est d\u00fb de la valeur du bien donn\u00e9 \u00e0 l’\u00e9poque du partage, d’apr\u00e8s son \u00e9tat \u00e0 l’\u00e9poque de la donation.” The return is owed for the value of the property given at the time of the division, in its condition at the time of the gift: article 860 of the Civil Code<\/a>. Concretely, if you give the house to your eldest daughter in 2026 and die in 2040, she accounts to her siblings for the 2040 value of a house in its 2026 condition. A donation-partage avoids that revaluation by freezing values at the deed date, which is why notaires recommend it whenever there are two or more children.<\/p>\n One arrangement deserves special attention because it suits British donors particularly well: giving away the bare ownership, the nue-propri\u00e9t\u00e9, while keeping the lifetime usufruct, the usufruit, for yourselves. You continue to live in the house or receive the rent until the second death, and the children, who already own the walls, consolidate full ownership automatically, with no second round of tax on the usufruct. The tax code values each half by the age of the usufructuary on a fixed scale, and keeping the usufruct therefore shrinks the taxable base, as the worked example in Part II shows. Readers facing the mirror situation, where a parent has died still owning the house and nothing was given in advance, will find the probate route explained in our guide to what happens when a British parent dies owning a house in France, from probate to succession tax and unblocking the estate<\/a>.<\/p>\n French gift tax, the droits de mutation \u00e0 titre gratuit, is calculated per recipient, per donor, with its own allowances, its own fifteen-year memory, and its own rate scale. The mechanics reward planning and punish forgetfulness in equal measure: use each child’s allowance deliberately, space gifts across the fifteen-year boundary where possible, and declare every earlier gift, because the notaire’s deed and the tax return must list them. This part works through the calculation step by step, then explains which country taxes the gift when a British family lives in France, and how to fight an assessment that misapplies the rules.<\/p>\n Each child has a personal allowance, the abattement, of 100,000 euros on what each parent gives. Article 779 of the General Tax Code states, word for word: “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 par suite de pr\u00e9d\u00e9c\u00e8s ou de renonciation.” An allowance of 100,000 euros applies to the share of each ascendant and to the share of each living child, or of each child represented where a child has died first or renounced: article 779 of the General Tax Code<\/a>. Two parents giving together therefore shelter 200,000 euros per child, and the allowance is personal to each child, not a family pot to share out.<\/p>\n Above the allowance, the progressive scale of article 777 applies to the net taxable share of each recipient. In the direct line, parent to child, the bands run from 5 per cent on the slice up to 8,072 euros, 10 per cent from 8,072 to 12,109 euros, 15 per cent from 12,109 to 15,932 euros, 20 per cent from 15,932 to 552,324 euros, then 30, 40 and 45 per cent on the higher slices: article 777 of the General Tax Code<\/a>. A worked example makes the arithmetic tangible. Take a house worth 400,000 euros, given outright by one widowed parent to two children in equal shares. Each child receives 200,000 euros, deducts the 100,000 euro allowance, and pays tax on 100,000 euros: 5 per cent of 8,072 euros is 403.60 euros, 10 per cent of the 4,037 euros in the next band is 403.70 euros, 15 per cent of the 3,823 euros above that is 573.45 euros, and 20 per cent of the remaining 84,068 euros is 16,813.60 euros, giving a total of about 18,194 euros per child. The family pays roughly 36,389 euros to move a 400,000 euro house one generation down, before notaire’s fees and the land registration tax, the taxe de publicit\u00e9 fonci\u00e8re, which apply on top.<\/p>\n Now change one fact: the same parent, aged seventy-five, keeps the lifetime usufruct and gives only the bare ownership. The tax code values the two halves by age on a fixed scale: at seventy-five the usufruct counts for 40 per cent and the bare ownership for 60 per cent of full value. The official scale is here: article 669 of the General Tax Code<\/a>. Each child’s taxable base falls from 200,000 to 120,000 euros, the allowance absorbs 100,000, and only 20,000 euros is taxed: 403.60 plus 403.70 plus 573.45 plus 20 per cent of the 4,068 euros above 15,932, which is 813.60, giving about 2,194 euros per child. Retaining the usufruct cuts this family’s gift tax from roughly 36,389 euros to roughly 4,389 euros, while the parent keeps the right to live in the house for life. That is why the d\u00e9membrement, the splitting of ownership, dominates British-French estate planning.<\/p>\n The fifteen-year clock then decides how earlier gifts interact with the new one. Article 784 requires the parties to declare, in every deed of lifetime gift and every succession return, whether earlier gifts were made by the same donor to the same recipients and, if so, for what amounts, before which notaire, and when registered. Its operative sentence runs, word for word: “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 consenties \u00e0 un titre et sous une forme quelconque par le donateur ou le d\u00e9funt aux donataires, h\u00e9ritiers ou l\u00e9gataires et, dans l’affirmative, le montant de ces donations ainsi que, le cas \u00e9ch\u00e9ant, les noms, qualit\u00e9s et r\u00e9sidences des officiers minist\u00e9riels qui ont re\u00e7u les actes de donation, et la date de l’enregistrement de ces actes.” Gifts made more than fifteen years earlier are left out of the aggregation: article 784 of the General Tax Code<\/a>. The mechanism, the rappel fiscal, works like this: the value of gifts within the last fifteen years is added to the new gift to find the right rate band, the tax is computed on the total, and credit is given for tax already paid, while allowances already used stay used. A 50,000 euro cash gift in 2018 therefore still colours a gift of a house share in 2026, whereas a gift from 2005 has dropped out of sight. Tell the notaire about every earlier gift, including English cash gifts and school-fee payments large enough to count, and bring the old deeds: an undisclosed gift discovered later draws penalties on top of the duty.<\/p>\n Two final tax points complete the picture. First, the gift itself triggers no French capital gains tax for the donor: the transfer is made for no consideration, not a sale, so no gain is assessed at the time of giving. The children’s acquisition value for a future sale is the value stated in the gift deed, which is why an accurate, well-evidenced valuation in the deed protects them when they eventually sell. Second, territoriality follows the donor’s tax domicile. Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code makes worldwide property taxable in France where the donor is fiscally domiciled in France, and limits French tax to French-situated property, held directly or through a company, where the donor is domiciled abroad: the official text is here: article 750 ter of the General Tax Code<\/a>. A British parent living in France who gives the Dordogne house is therefore taxed in France on the gift, and a parent who has returned to England and gives the same house is taxed in France on it as French-situated property. The general state guidance on gifts is summarised on the official public service pages on gifts of property to children<\/a> and on the notaires’ national page on gifts<\/a>, and the procedure for a donation-partage is set out on the official page for making a donation-partage<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most British donors in France face two tax systems at once, and the two do not mirror each other. France taxes the gift immediately, at the notaire’s office, on the rules set out above, wherever the donor is domiciled so long as the house sits in France. Britain, by contrast, generally waits: lifetime gifts are treated as potentially exempt transfers, and the official British guidance states that that gifts made within seven years of death may be taxed according to the recipient and the relationship, the value of the gift and when it was given The full British rules are published here: British government guidance on the rules on giving gifts<\/a>. Where tax is due after death on a gift, the British scale runs from 40 per cent for gifts made within three years of death down through taper relief of 32, 24, 16 and 8 per cent to zero after seven years, with relief available only above the 325,000 pound threshold. The taper table is published on the same official page.<\/p>\n The trap for British families sits where the two systems overlap in daily life. A parent who gives the house but keeps living in it rent-free has made, in British eyes, a gift with reservation: the official guidance gives as its first example of such a gift the case of a parent who hands the home to a relative while continuing to live there, because the donor goes on benefiting from what was given. In French eyes the same arrangement, done through a retained usufruct in a notarial deed, is perfectly regular and tax-efficient, as shown above. The two characterisations coexist: the French deed is valid and the French tax is correctly reduced, while the British exposure on death within seven years remains, measured on the circumstances at death. The practical answer is not to choose one system over the other but to satisfy both: execute the French deed in the French form, keep living arrangements consistent with what the deed says, pay the French duty at once, and keep the deed, the valuation evidence and the tax receipt with the papers the family will need for the British account if death follows within seven years. Where both countries end up taxing the same transfer, relief against double taxation must be examined file by file, because the old Franco-British succession convention was written for estates on death rather than lifetime gifts, and its articles cannot simply be assumed to cover a donation.<\/p>\nB. Dividing the house now: donation-partage or simple gift, and the protection of the reserved share<\/h3>\n
II. What the gift costs in tax, and how to challenge the assessment<\/h2>\n
A. How France calculates the bill: the 100,000 euro allowance, the fifteen-year clock and the rate scale<\/h3>\n
B. Which country taxes the gift when you live in France, and how to challenge a wrong assessment<\/h3>\n