You made a will in England, or California, or New South Wales, leaving everything to your spouse. You own a flat in Paris or a farmhouse in the Dordogne. You have not done anything specific about the French property because your adviser said it was fine, or because you were busy, or because inheritance law is not the most compelling dinner table conversation.
Here is what you need to know: your will does not work the way you think it does.
Under French law, your children have a legal right to a fixed portion of your estate that your will cannot override. A €700,000 Parisian apartment means your child may be entitled to €350,000 regardless of what your will says. Three children means €525,000. Your surviving spouse gets what is left — which may be very little, or nothing at all.
This is the réserve héréditaire — French forced heirship. It applies to assets situated in France regardless of your nationality, your domicile, or what your will says. Understanding it is not optional if you own French property.
How forced heirship works
France operates on the opposite logic from the UK, the US, and most common law countries. In England and Wales, you can leave your estate to whoever you choose. Your children have no automatic right to inherit. In France, the réserve héréditaire is a portion of your estate that is locked by law for your direct descendants. It cannot be removed by your will. It cannot be given away during your lifetime without triggering a mechanism that brings those gifts back into the calculation when you die.
The reserved portion depends on how many children you have:
| Number of children | Reserved share (réserve) | Freely disposable share (quotité disponible) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 child | 50% | 50% |
| 2 children | 66.6% | 33.4% |
| 3 or more | 75% | 25% |
Two points that consistently come as a shock to foreign owners.
First, your spouse is not a reserved heir. They have no automatic entitlement to any fixed share of your French estate. If you die leaving children — including children from a previous relationship — your surviving spouse may find themselves co-owning your French property with those children. Co-ownership between a widow and her stepchildren is not a theoretical risk. It is a fact pattern that litigation lawyers see regularly, and it is rarely resolved quickly or cheaply.
Second, all children are treated equally — children from your current marriage, previous marriages, relationships outside marriage, and adoptions. French law makes no distinction. A child you have not spoken to in twenty years has the same reserved rights as your youngest.
The Brussels IV promise — and its limits
The situation for foreign property owners improved significantly in August 2015, when EU Regulation n° 650/2012 — known as Brussels IV — came into force. Under Brussels IV, any person can elect in their will for the succession law of their nationality to apply to their entire estate. A British national living in France could choose English law, under which children have no forced heirship rights. On paper, a simple clause in a will could sidestep the entire réserve mechanism.
Many UK advisers sold this as a clean solution. In some respects it was. But it came with conditions that were often glossed over.
Brussels IV only applies if you are habitually resident in an EU member state at the time of death. If you move back to the UK, the election may not save you — the default position reverts to the law of habitual residence, which would be English law, but English conflict of laws rules then send French real estate back to French law anyway. The practical effect is that many British nationals who retire to France and then return to the UK have neither a valid Brussels IV election (because they are no longer EU residents) nor adequate French planning. They fall between two systems.
More seriously: in 2021, France legislated to undercut Brussels IV.
The 2021 law that changed everything
Before November 2021, it was genuinely possible — as confirmed by the Cour de cassation in two decisions of 27 September 2017 (Cass. 1re civ., n° 16-17.198 and n° 16-13.151) — to elect a foreign law ignoring forced heirship and have that election respected in France. The cases involved French composers domiciled in California: the court upheld Californian law and refused to protect the children’s reserved shares. The Brussels IV election worked.
France’s legislature decided this was unacceptable and enacted Law n° 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021, inserting a new paragraph into Article 913 of the Civil Code. Under this provision, if the deceased or at least one of their children is, at the time of death, a national of an EU member state or habitually resident in one, and the foreign law governing the succession does not protect children’s reserved shares, each child can claim compensation from French assets in the estate — up to the amount they would have received under French forced heirship rules.
In plain terms: a British testator living in France who elected English law in their will, believing their children had no forced heirship claim, may now find that their children can nonetheless claim against the French flat or house. The Brussels IV election still governs the global succession, but French assets are exposed to this compensatory claim.
The 2021 law is widely criticised as incompatible with Brussels IV, which is EU law and should take precedence. Several UK law firms and French practitioners share this view. The European Commission is aware of the tension. But French notaires are currently applying Article 913 as amended, and no court has yet definitively ruled on its validity. The challenge will come — but it may take years. In the interim, the law is applied.
One further nuance post-Brexit: the mechanism under Article 913 al. 3 only triggers where the deceased or at least one child is an EU national or EU habitually resident. A British national who died in the UK, with children who also live in the UK, may fall entirely outside the 2021 provision. Whether this is the case remains genuinely uncertain — no definitive judicial ruling exists. There is also an open question about whether the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 constitutes a « mechanism protecting children » for purposes of Article 913, which would mean the provision does not apply to English successions at all. Nobody knows yet.
This is the state of the law: clear in some scenarios, genuinely unclear in others, and in active evolution.
The SCI was not the solution you were sold
For at least fifteen years, British property owners in France were routinely advised to hold their French property through a Société Civile Immobilière — a French property holding company. The logic was straightforward: instead of owning French real estate directly, you own shares in a French company, and shares are moveable assets governed by your domicile law rather than French succession law. If you are domiciled in the UK, English law governs the shares. English law has no forced heirship. Problem solved.
This advice was given at scale. It generated fees — for the notaires who set up the SCIs, for the accountants who handled the annual filing requirements, and for the lawyers who advised on the structure.
Since the 2021 law, SCI shares held by an EU-resident testator are treated as French assets for purposes of the compensatory levy under Article 913. The structure that was sold as a shield against forced heirship no longer works as advertised for EU-resident owners. What remains is a corporate vehicle that requires annual accounts, management decisions, and ongoing administration — at a cost — without the succession planning benefit it was created to provide.
If you hold French property through an SCI and your adviser has not contacted you since November 2021 to discuss this change, that conversation is overdue.
What you can actually do
Draft a French will — and coordinate it with your existing will. A holographic will (handwritten, dated, signed) is valid in France but vulnerable to challenge. A testament authentique drafted by a French notaire before two witnesses is more robust. Your French will should expressly include a Brussels IV election, and it should be coordinated with any will you have in your home country to avoid conflicts, particularly over French real estate.
Review your marital regime. British couples who married in the UK and own French property together default, under French private international law, to séparation des biens — each spouse owns their share independently, without community property protection. Switching to communauté universelle with an attribution clause to the surviving spouse means all jointly-owned property passes to the survivor outside the estate on first death. This is a meaningful protection against forced heirship claims on first death. The downside is real: under communauté universelle, children do not benefit from the €100,000 per-child inheritance tax allowance on the first death, which can substantially increase the overall tax bill when the surviving spouse eventually dies. The regime also requires notarial formality and adult children must be notified. It is not a universal solution — it depends heavily on your family structure and tax exposure.
Consider a tontine clause if you are buying together. Inserting a clause de tontine in the purchase deed at the time of acquisition means the surviving co-owner automatically takes the full property on the first death, outside the estate entirely. It must be in the purchase deed — it cannot be added later. The age and health gap between co-owners must not be too great. Unmarried couples face 60% succession tax on the tontine transfer unless there is a specific tax exemption. For married couples without children from previous relationships, it remains one of the cleaner solutions.
Use assurance vie. Life insurance contracts (assurance vie) in France sit entirely outside the estate. The capital paid to beneficiaries on death is not subject to forced heirship rules and benefits from a favourable tax regime up to certain thresholds. This is the planning tool that French practitioners use most heavily and that foreign owners use least. For those with significant liquid assets, it deserves serious attention.
Act now, not later. The réserve héréditaire cannot be waived in advance by the testator. But it can be renounced in advance by the children themselves, through a formal notarial act called a renonciation anticipée à l’action en réduction — requiring two notaires, one designated by the president of the Chambre des notaires. This instrument is rarely used but genuinely useful in some complex family situations, particularly where a disabled child is involved and siblings are willing to waive their reduction claims in their favour.
The thing nobody tells you about the notaire
Most foreign property owners who take any planning steps at all consult the notaire who handled their purchase. The notaire explains the réserve héréditaire, mentions Brussels IV, perhaps drafts a will or suggests a regime change. The conversation feels reassuring.
What is almost never said is this: the notaire appointed to settle your estate does not work for you. They are appointed to administer the estate for all heirs collectively. Their fees are set by law as a percentage of the estate’s value. They have no financial interest in reducing the estate through lifetime planning — indeed, every euro that leaves the estate through a donation or goes to a beneficiary via assurance vie is a euro that does not pass through their hands on death.
This is not a criticism of any individual notaire. It is a structural reality. The notaire who settled your purchase is an excellent choice for conveyancing. For succession planning designed to protect your surviving spouse from your children, or to protect your preferred beneficiary from forced heirship claims, you need independent legal advice from someone who is specifically retained to act in your interest.
And if a dispute arises after death — if a child makes a claim under Article 913, or contests a will, or challenges a donation as reductible — the notaire’s role is to manage the process. It is your avocat’s role to fight for your position or your client’s position.
What the law actually turns on in practice
After years of handling contested French successions, one observation stands out that textbooks rarely make explicit: the legal analysis of forced heirship is, in most cases, secondary to the family dynamic.
The 2021 law requires notaires to notify all « known » children of their right to make a compensatory claim. If a child is informed and chooses not to claim — because they respect their parent’s wishes, because they have a good relationship with their stepparent, because they simply do not need the money — the forced heirship rules produce no litigation. The law exists on paper. Nobody triggers it.
The cases that generate years of proceedings are those where a child is estranged, where a second marriage produced resentment, where a sibling was perceived to have been favoured during the deceased’s lifetime. In those cases, the child who feels wronged has every incentive to pursue whatever legal rights they have — including under Article 913.
This means the most important succession planning question is not « what does the law require » but « what is the state of my family relationships, and who is likely to make a claim after I die? »
No legal instrument resolves a damaged family relationship. But proper planning — clear wills, coordinated structures, transparent lifetime decisions — gives families fewer things to fight about. That is the most reliable protection against forced heirship litigation.
If a dispute has already arisen
If a family member has died leaving French assets and you are involved in a contested succession — whether as a child asserting your reserved rights or as a surviving spouse facing a claim — proceedings take place before the Tribunal judiciaire of the last domicile of the deceased.
The action en réduction — the claim to restore a reserved heir’s share — must be brought within five years of the opening of the succession, or two years from the date the reserved heir became aware of the infringement of their rights, subject in all cases to an absolute limit of ten years from the date of death. These time limits run regardless of ongoing negotiations or notarial proceedings. Waiting is never neutral.
These proceedings involve French succession law, private international law, and asset valuation. They cannot be navigated without a French avocat.
Valentin Simonnet is an English-speaking member of the Paris Bar, trained at University College London. He represents international clients before French courts.
