Your former partner lives in England, you live in France with the children, and the monthly money has stopped arriving. Before Brexit, an English child maintenance order travelled into France almost automatically under the European Union Maintenance Regulation. That shortcut is gone. What replaces it is a two-track system that still works, but only if you knock on the right door with the right paper: the Hague Convention of 23 November 2007 on the international recovery of child support, operated in France by a small dedicated bureau in Paris, and the French courts’ exequatur procedure for recognising the English decision. This guide explains, for a British parent living in France, which English papers France enforces, how the Paris bureau sends your claim to the United Kingdom, what happens when the debtor still refuses to pay, and how the criminal law punishes a parent who lets more than two months of arrears build up. Every legal proposition below is anchored to the French statute or decided case quoted beside it, because in cross-border maintenance the exact wording of the title you hold decides everything.<\/p>\n
The urgency is practical. Rent in France does not wait for the Child Maintenance Service in Newcastle to answer a letter, and a French judge aux affaires familiales, the family court judge, cannot order a parent who lives in Leeds to pay unless the English title has been made enforceable in France first. Equally, many parents in your position hold something weaker than they think: a family-based arrangement by text message, or a Child Maintenance Service calculation letter, is not the same thing as a court order, and France treats the two very differently. Read Part I to identify exactly what you hold. Then follow Part II to turn it into money actually received in your French bank account, through the intermediation service, the commissaire de justice, the enforcement judge, or, where the behaviour is persistent, the criminal courts. Where the debtor has kept a bank account, property or income in France, a shortcut exists that avoids the international route altogether.<\/p>\n
French law starts from a simple principle that applies whatever passports the parents hold. Each parent contributes to the maintenance and upbringing of the children in proportion to their own resources, the resources of the other parent, and the needs of the child, and that duty does not end automatically when parental authority is withdrawn or when the child comes of age. That is the rule stated in article 371-2 of the Civil Code<\/a>: “Chacun des parents contribue \u00e0 l’entretien et \u00e0 l’\u00e9ducation des enfants \u00e0 proportion de ses ressources, de celles de l’autre parent, ainsi que des besoins de l’enfant. Cette obligation ne cesse de plein droit ni lorsque l’autorit\u00e9 parentale ou son exercice est retir\u00e9, ni lorsque l’enfant est majeur.” The English order or calculation you bring from across the Channel is therefore not a foreign curiosity in the French system. It is the same kind of contribution, called in France a pension alimentaire, a maintenance payment, or a contribution \u00e0 l’entretien et \u00e0 l’\u00e9ducation, a contribution to the child’s maintenance and upbringing. The difficulty is never the principle. It is always the procedure by which a paper signed in England becomes a paper a French commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly called huissier de justice, can act upon.<\/p>\n If an English court fixed the maintenance, whether after contested proceedings or by approving the parents’ agreement in a consent order, you hold the strongest kind of paper. Since the United Kingdom left the European Union, the European Union Maintenance Regulation no longer carries English maintenance decisions into France. The instrument that takes its place between the two countries is the Hague Convention of 23 November 2007 on the international recovery of child support and other forms of family maintenance, and the French administration says so openly. The official service-public.fr page on unpaid maintenance where the debtor lives abroad explains that a creditor in your position may start a procedure for the recovery of maintenance debts abroad for the recovery of maintenance debts abroad, adding that the claim aims to recover the sums due with the help of the bureau for the recovery of maintenance debts abroad (the RCA bureau), part of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. That page is the page service-public.fr F1004<\/a>, and it lists the three available tracks: debtors in a European Union country, debtors in a country that ratified the New York Convention of 20 June 1956, and debtors in a country that signed the Hague Convention, with a link to the Hague Convention text on the HCCH site<\/a>. For a debtor living in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, the Hague track is the one your file will follow.<\/p>\n Concretely, you send a complete application file by post or email to the RCA bureau at 27, rue de la Convention, CS 91 533, 75732 Paris Cedex 15, and the bureau transmits it to its British counterpart for enforcement in the United Kingdom. The British side mirrors this organisation: the United Kingdom operates Reciprocal Enforcement of Maintenance Orders units, and the official guidance on child maintenance where one parent lives abroad on gov.uk<\/a> confirms that courts in REMO countries can enforce child maintenance decisions made by United Kingdom courts. The system therefore works in both directions, from France to England and from England to France, which matters because many British families have members and assets on both sides. The RCA bureau can also help you put the file together if the English paperwork is incomplete, so a missing sealed copy or an unclear arrears schedule is a reason to ask for help, not a reason to give up. Keep every English order, every variation order, every Child Maintenance Service letter, and a precise schedule of what was paid and what was missed, because the bureau and later the judges will work only from dated, quantified documents.<\/p>\n Where the Hague route needs a French judge, the procedure is the exequatur, the declaration that a foreign judgment is enforceable in France. The Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court for civil matters, has restated the controlling test so clearly that it is worth quoting in full. In its judgment of 3 March 2021, published in its Bulletin, the First Civil Chamber held that “Pour accorder l’exequatur \u00e0 un jugement \u00e9tranger, le juge fran\u00e7ais doit, en l’absence de convention internationale, s’assurer que trois conditions sont remplies, \u00e0 savoir la comp\u00e9tence indirecte du juge \u00e9tranger fond\u00e9e sur le rattachement du litige au juge saisi, la conformit\u00e9 \u00e0 l’ordre public international de fond et de proc\u00e9dure ainsi que l’absence de fraude.” In plain English: outside a convention, the French judge grants exequatur only after checking three things, the indirect jurisdiction of the foreign court based on a genuine link between the dispute and that court, compatibility with French international public policy on substance and procedure, and the absence of fraud. That is Cour de cassation, First Civil Chamber, 3 March 2021, appeal no. 19-19.471<\/a>, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2021:C100182, and the same formula appears in the family context in Cour de cassation, First Civil Chamber, 2 December 2020, appeal no. 18-20.691<\/a>, ECLI:FR:CCASS:2020:C100747, where the Court restated that “En application de l’article 509 du code de proc\u00e9dure civile, pour accorder l’exequatur, hors toute convention internationale, le juge fran\u00e7ais doit v\u00e9rifier la r\u00e9gularit\u00e9 internationale de la d\u00e9cision \u00e9trang\u00e8re”, under article 509 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a>, outside any international convention, the French judge must verify the international regularity of the foreign decision. That 2020 case is directly on point for parents: the Court reviewed the exequatur of American decisions of 3 October 2003 and 9 January 2004 in their maintenance provisions alone, the pensions alimentaires dues to the wife and for the children’s maintenance and education, and rejected the challenge. The lesson for an English order is practical rather than theoretical. An English maintenance order pronounced by a court plainly connected to the family, after proceedings in which both parents were heard, with no fraud, passes the French test. What fails is not English justice but sloppy files: an order that is not final, a debtor who was never notified, or arrears nobody has totalled.<\/p>\n A recent Paris example shows the exequatur working exactly as described for a non-European maintenance order. On 10 June 2026 the tribunal judiciaire de Paris, the Paris judicial court, sitting as a single judge in exequatur proceedings under case number RG 25\/08336, declared enforceable an order of 11 February 2025 of the Regional Trial Court of Makati in the Philippines fixing the father’s maintenance at 1,318.33 euros per month after deduction of school fees. The Philippine order was agreed between the parents, covered parental authority, residence, contact and money together, and the Paris court gave it French enforceability through the standard exequatur application. An English consent order or contested maintenance order follows the same path into France. Once declared enforceable, the foreign decision joins the closed list of enforcement titles in article L111-3 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures<\/a>, which provides that “Les actes et les jugements \u00e9trangers ainsi que les sentences arbitrales d\u00e9clar\u00e9s ex\u00e9cutoires par une d\u00e9cision non susceptible d’un recours suspensif d’ex\u00e9cution” count as titres ex\u00e9cutoires, enforceable titles. From that moment the commissaire de justice can seize, attach and recover exactly as if a French judge aux affaires familiales had fixed the pension.<\/p>\n Many British parents arrive in France holding something other than a court order: a calculation letter from the Child Maintenance Service, or a family-based arrangement agreed over the kitchen table or by text message. France does not enforce either of these directly, and understanding why saves months. The Child Maintenance Service is an administrative body, not a court. Its calculation tells the paying parent what the statutory formula produces, and its Collect and Pay service can collect and pass on money inside the United Kingdom, but the letter itself is not a judgment. A family-based arrangement is weaker still: it is a private promise with no enforcement title at all. Neither appears in the French list of enforceable titles, and no commissaire de justice can act on a text message thread.<\/p>\n That does not mean these papers are worthless. They are evidence, and in some files they are the bridge to an enforceable title. Two conversions are available depending on what you hold. If the parents still speak to each other, the fastest route is often a fresh French title: a joint parental agreement given enforceability by the director of the family benefits body, the caisse d’allocations familiales, under article L582-2 of the Social Security Code<\/a>, which provides that “Sur demande conjointe des parents qui mettent fin \u00e0 leur vie en concubinage ou qui ont proc\u00e9d\u00e9 \u00e0 une dissolution du pacte civil de solidarit\u00e9 qui les liait, le directeur de l’organisme d\u00e9biteur des prestations familiales donne force ex\u00e9cutoire \u00e0 l’accord”, on the parents’ joint request the director gives enforceability to their agreement fixing the contribution. If the other parent will not cooperate, the route is judicial: ask the English court to turn the arrangement or the calculation into an order, or ask the French judge aux affaires familiales to fix a French pension directly, which is possible because the child’s habitual residence in France founds French jurisdiction for maintenance. The French statute expressly contemplates contributions fixed by a court decision, a court-approved agreement, a mutual-consent divorce agreement, a notarial deed, an agreement given enforceability by the family benefits body, or a lawyer-countersigned settlement made enforceable by the court registry. That catalogue is article 373-2-2, I of the Civil Code<\/a>: “En cas de s\u00e9paration entre les parents, ou entre ceux-ci et l’enfant, la contribution \u00e0 son entretien et \u00e0 son \u00e9ducation prend la forme d’une pension alimentaire vers\u00e9e, selon le cas, par l’un des parents \u00e0 l’autre, ou \u00e0 la personne \u00e0 laquelle l’enfant a \u00e9t\u00e9 confi\u00e9”, followed by the six kinds of title that may fix its terms and guarantees. Your English papers must be translated into one of these French-recognised forms before any seizure is possible, and the sooner you identify which conversion fits your file, the sooner the arrears clock is protected.<\/p>\n A warning belongs here about a confusion that ruins files. Parents sometimes assume that because the children live in France, the English order has lapsed, or conversely that the French caisse d’allocations familiales will simply take over collection of the English calculation. Neither is true. The English order remains valid until varied or discharged by a competent court, and the French family benefits body collects only a French title or a foreign title made enforceable in France. A further confusion concerns adult children. French law allows the parent who mainly bears the burden of an adult child who cannot support himself to claim a contribution from the other parent, since article 373-2-5 of the Civil Code<\/a> provides that “Le parent qui assume \u00e0 titre principal la charge d’un enfant majeur qui ne peut lui-m\u00eame subvenir \u00e0 ses besoins peut demander \u00e0 l’autre parent de lui verser une contribution \u00e0 son entretien et \u00e0 son \u00e9ducation.” An English order that runs to eighteen or through university does not automatically die at eighteen in the French enforcement file either: check the exact wording of the English order and, where needed, the French provision above, before writing off arrears for a nineteen-year-old student.<\/p>\n Once the title is enforceable in France, the system offers a ladder of remedies that rises from the administrative to the criminal. Most files settle on the lower rungs: the financial intermediation service collects the pension each month and pays it to you, so the money no longer depends on the debtor’s goodwill. Where intermediation has not been set up or has broken down, the commissaire de justice can use direct payment from wages and benefits, attach earnings, seize bank accounts, or seize and sell property. Where the debtor has kept attachable assets in France while living in England, you may not need the international route at all. And where the debtor simply refuses over months, French law treats persistent non-payment as the criminal offence of abandon de famille, family abandonment, punishable by two years’ imprisonment and a 15,000 euro fine. The paragraphs below walk up that ladder in order, because choosing the lowest effective rung gets money faster and cheaper than starting at the top.<\/p>\n The international claim starts with the RCA file described in Part I, and its contents decide its speed. Include the English title with proof that it is final and enforceable, proof that the debtor was notified of the English proceedings, a quantified arrears schedule with dates, your identity documents and proof of the children’s residence in France, and the debtor’s last known English address, employer and bank details where known. The RCA bureau checks completeness, transmits to the British authority, and follows the file. Because both countries apply the Hague Convention framework, the British authority locates the debtor, seeks voluntary payment, and where necessary brings the matter before the British courts for registration and enforcement. Time limits vary with the debtor’s traceability, and a debtor who moves, changes jobs or works cash-in-hand slows every system in the world, but a documented file with exact figures moves while a vague complaint stalls. Keep paying the children’s expenses in the meantime and keep every receipt, since French judges later compensate proven outlay when they rule on arrears and guarantees.<\/p>\n Inside France, the monthly collection mechanism deserves its own explanation because British parents often discover it late. France has generalised the interm\u00e9diation financi\u00e8re, financial intermediation, of maintenance payments through the family benefits bodies. Article L582-1 of the Social Security Code<\/a> states that “Les organismes d\u00e9biteurs des prestations familiales sont charg\u00e9s de l’interm\u00e9diation financi\u00e8re des pensions alimentaires mentionn\u00e9es \u00e0 l’ article 373-2-2 du code civil dans les conditions et selon les modalit\u00e9s suivantes”, and the Civil Code adds that once ordered in one of the recognised titles, payment of the cash share through the family benefits body to the creditor parent is put in place under the Social Security Code and the Code of Civil Procedure. In practice the agency for the recovery and intermediation of maintenance, the Aripa, Agence de recouvrement et d’interm\u00e9diation des pensions alimentaires, collects from the debtor and pays you, absorbing the monthly conflict. Parents can jointly refuse intermediation in the title itself, and a judge can exceptionally set it aside by specially reasoned decision, but the default now protects the receiving parent. If you already hold a French title and the English debtor pays irregularly, ask the caisse d’allocations familiales for intermediation before the arrears grow, and combine it with the RCA file for the cross-border dimension. The two mechanisms are complementary, not alternatives: intermediation secures the future monthly payments while the RCA and enforcement route recovers the arrears.<\/p>\n For arrears already owed, the enforcement chain runs through the commissaire de justice and, where needed, the enforcement judge. The official English-language guidance on unpaid maintenance on service-public.fr<\/a> lists the remedies in the order a creditor should try them: apply to Aripa for intermediation, instruct a commissaire de justice who can set up direct payment, saisie-attribution, attachment of a bank account, or saisie-vente, seizure and sale, obtain an attachment of earnings, and finally request recovery by the State Treasury through the public prosecutor where the earlier remedies have failed. Two details from that page change tactics. First, the direct payment procedure covers only the last six months of arrears, though it also secures future instalments, so for older arrears you need attachment or Treasury recovery rather than direct payment alone. Second, and most useful for British families, the French administration confirms that where the debtor lives abroad but has kept a bank account, property or income in France, forced recovery in France is available directly. If your former partner kept the old joint account, a livret, rental income, or wages from a French employer, give those details to the commissaire de justice immediately: attachment in France on the basis of your enforceable title is faster than any international procedure. Questions of where the children live and who decides for them belong to custody and contact law, on which the companion guide to child custody, residence and enforcement after Brexit<\/a> completes this maintenance guide.<\/p>\n Maintenance is never fixed for all time. Children grow, needs change, the debtor’s income rises or collapses, the creditor re-partners, and the euro-sterling exchange rate moves the real value of an English order paid into a French account. French law provides the revision mechanism in the same article that lists the titles: article 373-2-4 of the Civil Code<\/a> states that “L’attribution d’un compl\u00e9ment, notamment sous forme de pension alimentaire, peut, s’il y a lieu, \u00eatre demand\u00e9e ult\u00e9rieurement”, a supplement, notably in the form of maintenance, may be claimed later where appropriate. The general guidance on amount, payment and revision of child maintenance on service-public.fr<\/a> explains the familiar French practice: either parent may apply to the judge aux affaires familiales for an increase, a reduction or an end to the pension when circumstances have changed, and most French titles carry an annual indexation clause tied to the consumer price index or to salary movements. For a British family this has three consequences. First, if the children now live with you in France and their costs have risen, you can seek an increase from the French judge even though the original order is English, provided the title is enforceable here and the change is proven with bills, school certificates and tax notices. Second, if the debtor in England claims his income has fallen, he must apply for variation with evidence; a unilateral pay cut is not a variation, and the arrears keep running at the ordered rate until a judge says otherwise. Third, check whether the English order contains its own indexation or step-down provisions at ages and school stages, because the French enforcement judge applies the foreign order as written and will not rewrite its substance. Never agree by telephone to reduce the pension: without a varied title, the original figure remains due in full, and the extra you forgave becomes arrears you cannot easily reclaim.<\/p>\nA. English court orders and consent orders take the Hague Convention route<\/h3>\n
B. Child Maintenance Service calculations and family-based arrangements need converting first<\/h3>\n
II. How to get the money in France, revise the amount, and punish persistent non-payment<\/h2>\n
A. The RCA file, intermediation, and the enforcement chain in France<\/h3>\n
B. Revising the amount and prosecuting the parent who will not pay<\/h3>\n