Upon moving to France in 2005 - back in the days when solicitors could apply for registration in other EU member states under the Lawyers’ Establishment Directive - I immediately became involved in Franco-British estate planning and succession files. The fundamental principle underlying all such files was that an English will could not touch a French house. Immoveable property in France would be dealt with by French law, including the famous 'forced heirship' rules and the game was to help clients navigate around these.
French law has never recognised a testator’s right to disinherit a child. Under the réserve héréditaire, a fixed share of the estate belongs to any children of the deceased as of right — and under the old rule of scission, immovable property was always governed by the law of the country where it stood, regardless of the owner’s nationality or wishes. An English client could blithely leave 'my entire estate' to their spouse, French law would simply carve a slice off the house for the children anyway. This was the first, most disorienting, piece of advice to be given to every British property owner (or potential property owner) in France.
That situation lasted until August 2015, when the EU Succession Regulation (came into force, abolishing the old split rule entirely and replacing it with a far more ambitious regime: one law, chosen or applicable by default, governing the whole of an estate, wherever the estate’s assets may be located. The default factor determining applicable law became 'habitual residence' — an autonomous, fact-based EU concept, entirely distinct from English common-law 'domicile'.
Many English people have retired to France over the years, fully immersing themselves in French life and living here for a very long time, but never quite abandoning the thought of returning home to be nearer to their children in the event of infirmity or failing health. Such people, using the English domicile test, would almost certainly still have English domicile. Using the habitual residence test, though, their habitual residence would unquestionably be France. Since 2015, absent a valid choice of law, such people could see French law (including the forced heirship provisions) applying to their worldwide estate. Thus, the regulation’s professio juris, allowing a testator to elect the law of their own nationality to govern everything, turned overnight from a nicety into essential drafting.
For what it’s worth, Brexit changed none of this with regard to France: France having adopted the Regulation – unlike the UK, which was still an EU member at the time – it means that nationals of any country who own property in France can elect to apply their domestic legal regime to their property in France.
For a while, the professio juris looked like a clean answer, enabling a safe passage around the forced heirship constraints – English clients could dispose of their property in France in their English wills and the French notary would comply with the will. It should be noted that even if one may apply one’s national law as per matters of civil law, this does not stretch to tax law. Thus, while it became possible for English clients to leave French property to stepchildren and children, treating them all equally, as individual beneficiaries are taxed based on their relationship to the deceased, natural children would benefit from the tax-free threshold of €100,000 for their inheritance, whereas stepchildren would be levied at 60% over the miserly tax-free threshold of 1594 EUR.
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In view of the universal nature of the regulation, French notaries soon found themselves distributing estates in a manner that lawmakers regarded as offending the values of the French Republic. The most pressing examples were the laws of countries providing for estates to be left to the eldest son only, or to sons exclusively, to the detriment of all daughters.
As a result, the French legislature intervened in 2021, introducing a new third paragraph to Article 913 of the Civil Code: a prélèvement compensatoire, allowing a disinherited child to claim compensation from French-situated estate assets, where the applicable foreign law provides no mechanism at all protecting children. One could see why the legislature made this move to try and block blatantly discriminatory legal regimes, but the tricky question was whether or not the Anglo-Saxon countries that uphold the principle of testamentary freedom would be caught in the crossfire. In a nutshell, the question was whether or not the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 qualified as a 'mechanism for protecting children' such that the new French legal provision would not apply to English clients. Thus, for the past five years, legal practitioners on both sides of the Channel were left to guess whether an English will, valid and complete under English law, was totally secure with regard to the French estate.
I have spent a good part of the last year dealing with this point on a live file: a British client, universal legatee under her late husband’s will, facing a stepdaughter (her late husband’s child from an earlier marriage) with a theoretical claim under the new Article 913. Our argument was that English law, through the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, gives English courts a discretionary power to award family provision, and a discretionary mechanism is still a mechanism. If that argument was right, the new provision in Article 913 should not have any bearing on an English will.
A very recent development has now (largely) resolved this whole tricky issue. In June 2026, the European Commission closed a long-running complaint it had received from a number of British individuals living in France about Article 913’s compatibility with the Succession Regulation, publishing the French government’s own explanation of the provision. The French authorities confirmed in writing to the commission that (as we know), the new provision in Article 913 is meant to apply only where foreign law provides no protective mechanism whatsoever, and (here comes the clincher) English Family Provision law is, in the French authorities’ own words, a 'functional equivalent' of the réserve héréditaire. Accordingly, where English law governs a succession, the French compensatory levy should not apply at all.
This is not a court judgment, and is unlikely to be the last word — a French judge asked to apply the forced heirship rules on behalf of (for example) an English stepchild is not formally bound by a commission closure letter. But it is the clearest official statement yet, from the French state itself, that after years of navigating rough seas, we appear to be within the walls of a safe harbour.
For any adviser with a British client owning French property, the practical lesson has not really changed since 2015: make a clean, express choice of English law into the will, understand that your client’s domicile and their habitual residence may not be the same thing, and now, cite the commission’s letter with some confidence if the question of a potential challenge by a disappointed English heir comes up.
Tim Hughes is a solicitor and avocat, based in Lyon
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