An English solicitor’s guide to the French estate on your desk

What your English grant does — and does not — do in France

An English grant proves title over the English estate; France gives it no direct effect and has no resealing procedure. Where the grant helps at all, it is as supporting evidence — with a certified French translation and, in practice, an apostille. One structural difference from the other countries we practise in: a French estate with real property must pass through a French notaire — a public officer whose involvement is not optional. Our role is what it always is: the lawyer for the family, driving the file, preparing the cross-border analysis the notaire needs, and answering to you in plain English — while the notaire performs the public-officer acts. Nothing in France waits for your grant; the two legs run in parallel.

The French sequence, in one paragraph each

Acte de notoriété. The notaire’s deed establishing who the heirs are — France’s answer to your grant — prepared from the death certificate, the civil-status documents and the will (yours, translated, if it governs; France also checks its central register of wills). It can be requested by any one of the heirs, and it proves status, not acceptance — the heirs’ decision to accept the estate is a separate step. Executed through powers of attorney — and here is the one step that happens at your end, not ours: the heirs sign before a notary public in England, with the FCDO apostille, on a bilingual power we draft to French standards and send ready to sign — or, where the notaire prefers to draw the procuration in her own form and language (a preference some notaires hold, and a legitimate one — including folding the powers into her own instrument, in French only), on the notaire’s own text, which we review, translate and explain to the family in plain English, and approve before anyone signs. Either way your office (or the family’s local notary) oversees the signing. In practice no heir needs to travel to France.

The succession tax return (déclaration de succession). Due within six months of the death where the deceased died in metropolitan France — twelve months where the death occurred abroad (the common case for your files). And here France differs sharply from Portugal and Spain-with-allowances: French inheritance tax is real money for many families. The surviving spouse (and PACS partner) is wholly exempt; each child has a €100,000 allowance and then pays on a progressive scale rising to 45%; siblings, nephews and unrelated beneficiaries face far harsher rates — up to 60% for non-relatives. But note: exemption from tax is not exemption from filing — above a modest €50,000 gross estate, the return is due even where the spouse takes everything tax-free. Late filing draws interest and penalties. Where the estate also pays UK inheritance tax, the 1963 UK–France estate double-taxation convention gives credit relief — the two taxes do not simply stack. If you take one date from this page, take the right one of the two — and note which clock your file is on.

The attestation immobilière and release. For French real estate the notaire draws the attestation immobilière (the deed of transmission) and has it published at the land registry, putting the property into the heirs’ names — and the notaire should be instructed within six months of the death, another reason not to hold the file. The banks release the accounts against the acte de notoriété and tax clearance — the money moves from the bank to the heirs directly. (We never hold client or estate money.) Only then can the family sell — and if a sale is the plan, flag early that a non-resident seller can meet French capital-gains tax on the gain since the death, with taper relief over time — confirmed at sale time.

Where the law of succession itself crosses the border — and the 2021 statute, updated

Start with why any of this reaches your British client at all: the assets do it. A French immovable moves only through the notaire-led settlement above — no English grant or order touches a French register — and a French account opens only to the French process. Once a French authority is involved, the EU Succession Regulation (650/2012, “Brussels IV”) tells it whose law governs — and the Regulation binds France: it applies to every succession before French authorities, whatever the nationality — Brexit changed nothing on the French side. The default is the law of the deceased’s habitual residence; a will may elect the law of nationality. The renvoi analysis (art. 34, Reg. 650/2012) runs as in our other countries: for a UK-resident owner of French property who made no election, English conflict rules can send the French immovable back to French law (the settled common-law lex situs rule — Nelson v Bridport (1846) 8 Beav 547; Philipson-Stow v IRC [1961] AC 727 — shared by Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia, and which art. 34(1)(a) accepts as a referral back to a Member State’s law) — a split estate — while a valid election of the law of England and Wales (never “British law”) excludes renvoi (art. 34(2)) — and on a full intestacy there is nothing to elect: the referral runs unopposed, and the French immovable passes under French intestacy, réserve included — though the election moves no French formality: the notaire-led settlement runs in full whichever law governs; the election only settles who takes, and hands the notaire an English law he will want formally proven. (No European Certificate of Succession can bridge any of this for a UK estate — the UK never joined the Regulation’s certificate system.)

But France has a wrinkle the other countries do not — and in 2026 it moved. France’s forced-heirship reserve (the réserve héréditaire) was reinforced by a 2021 statute (article 913, third paragraph, of the Code civil): where the deceased or a child is an EU national or EU-resident and the law governing the succession offers children no protective reserved-share mechanism, the children may claim a compensatory levy (prélèvement compensatoire) out of the French-situs assets. When it arrived, this read as France’s counter-attack on English choice-of-law clauses. The position as we write (August 2026) is markedly calmer: no French or European court has ever ruled on the provision, and in July 2026 the European Commission closed its complaint file on the strength of France’s own restrictive reading — that English law’s family-provision regime is itself a qualifying child-protection mechanism, so the levy should not bite merely because English law has no fixed reserved shares. The statute stays on the books, though, and one genuine edge case survives: family provision under the 1975 Act requires the deceased to die domiciled in England and Wales, so a France-domiciled client electing English law may sit outside that safety net. In short: a well-drafted election of English law now does most of the work — but where French assets meet a blended family, this is still the paragraph to take advice on, and precisely where a written, signed opinion earns its keep.

What this costs, and who does what

You stay lead: the English estate, the will, the family relationship, your fees — untouched. The French leg runs at published fixed prices — transferring a French property after a death is €5,000 + VAT; settling a whole French estate alongside the notaire is €6,000 + VAT; a two-system cross-border estate €9,500–€12,000 + VAT — agreed in writing before work begins. One honest number your client should hear early: the notaire’s regulated tariff runs in parallel and is real money — on a €400,000 property estate the core tariffed acts alone come to roughly €5,000–€5,500 including VAT — so we obtain and explain the notaire’s cost estimate at the outset, and every third-party cost is paid by your client directly: we never hold the money. (For an English eye: there is no client account and no undertakings culture in our system — the payment instructions come from us; the payments go straight to the official body.) Where formal proof of English law is needed for the French process (or, on the English side, the Probate Registry needs proof of French law under NCPR r.19 — where, since November 2020, a witness statement suffices in place of a sworn affidavit), we produce the certificate in-house, from €1,200 — because the same lawyer is admitted — and practising — on both sides of the question. How instructing us works is on our page for solicitors and professional advisers.

What to send us on day one

The death certificate; any wills the family knows of (no translation needed — we handle it, and the French central wills register is checked as a matter of course); a note of the French assets as best the family knows them — including any French life-insurance (assurance-vie) policies, which sit largely outside the succession under their own tax regime and change the arithmetic; a note of where and when the couple married, because the matrimonial-property regime determines what is actually in the estate; the heirs’ names, ages and where they live (ages matter — the 2021 statute is about children); and whether anyone plans to sell. That is enough for a written fixed quote. Please don’t hold the file until it is complete — one of the two tax clocks is already running.

What we organise together

Two pieces of the file sit naturally between your office and ours. First, the power of attorney: we draft it, bilingual and to French standards; your end oversees the family’s signing before a notary public and the FCDO apostille — then it travels here, and everything else follows without anyone boarding a plane. Second, money: prepare your client for a system without a client account — our fees are invoiced in instalments at the milestones, the notaire’s regulated tariff is estimated and explained at the outset, and every third-party cost is paid by the client directly on a payment instruction we prepare; the estate itself moves bank-to-heir. Set those two expectations early and the file feels orderly rather than foreign.

A matter on your desk now? office@carrolllaw.eu — professional enquiries answered in plain language, with a written fixed quote your client-care letter can quote.