France · Blended families · Information, not legal advice — as at 26 August 2026
Second marriages and stepchildren in France: who inherits, and the 60% surprise
Three rules collide in a French blended family. First, your own children — from every relationship — are protected heirs whose reserved shares a will cannot remove. Second, stepchildren are not your heirs at all: unless you leave them something by will, French law gives them nothing. Third — the sting — anything you do leave a stepchild is taxed as a gift to a stranger: a €1,594 allowance, then a flat 60%, while your own children each enjoy a €100,000 allowance and far gentler rates. The surviving spouse is fully exempt from tax, but with children from another relationship in the picture the spouse’s intestacy position also weakens (one-quarter outright, no usufruct option). None of this is unmanageable — a properly drafted will inside the disposable portion, the right marriage or PACS status, and for British owners a Brussels IV election, change the outcome substantially — but the tax rates themselves follow blood, not the will, so planning has to start from that fact.
This guide is general information, not tax advice — Carroll Law handles a French estate on both sides, the legal side and the French succession duty itself, and says plainly and early where an adviser at home is needed. But no honest account of blended-family planning in France can leave the tax out, because in France the tax is the story.
Rule one: your own children cannot be written out
French law reserves a fixed part of your estate for your children — the réserve héréditaire — and it protects all of your children equally: the children of your first marriage hold the same reserved shares as the children of your second. A will that tries to leave everything to the new spouse, or to the new family, gives the disinherited children a claim that French practice takes entirely seriously. Planning in a blended family starts from what the reserve leaves free — the disposable portion — not from a blank page.
Rule two: stepchildren are strangers in law
A stepchild you raised for thirty years is, to French succession law, not family: no intestate share, no reserved portion, nothing — if there is no will, a stepchild inherits no more than a neighbour would. If you want a stepchild to take anything, the will must say so, inside the disposable portion. So far, that is a drafting job — the real obstacle is rule three.
Rule three: the 60%
French inheritance tax is banded by blood. Your own child has a €100,000 allowance and then climbs a scale on which most family inheritances sit at 20%. A stepchild — however long they called you a parent — is taxed as an unrelated beneficiary: €1,594 of allowance, then a flat 60% on everything else. Leave a stepchild a €200,000 share of the French house and roughly €119,000 of it goes to the tax office; leave the same share to your own child and the bill is a small fraction of that. The full French tax picture is here — and one nuance belongs to specialists: adoption can, in defined circumstances, move a stepchild into the child’s tax band, which is exactly the kind of step to take advice on before relying on it.
The spouse in the middle
The surviving spouse (or PACS partner) pays no French inheritance tax at all — the one unqualified kindness in the system. But in a blended family the spouse’s default inheritance position weakens: where any child of the deceased is from another relationship, the intestacy choice between usufruct-of-everything and a quarter outright disappears, and the spouse takes one-quarter outright, full stop. And note the mirror-image trap for the unmarried: a partner without marriage or PACS is both heavily taxed and unprovided for: taxed at 60% as an unrelated person on anything a will gives them, and with no right to inherit at all without one. (A PACS partner, by contrast, pays nothing on what a will gives them, but without a will also inherits nothing.)
What planning can and cannot do
A will drafted around the reserve can direct the disposable portion where you want it — to the spouse, to stepchildren, in usufruct-and-bare-ownership combinations that keep the survivor housed while your own children keep the capital. British owners have one more lever: an election of English law under Brussels IV can lift the French reserved-share rules from the French property — with the French “clawback” now read narrowly in the election’s favour, though no French court has yet ruled on it. But hold onto the distinction that decides everything here: the election changes who may inherit; it changes nothing about how France taxes them. A stepchild taking under an English-law will still pays the 60% on French assets. That is why French blended-family planning is a two-adviser job — the will and the structure from the lawyer, the tax arithmetic from a tax adviser — and why doing it while both spouses are alive is worth many times the same effort done after.
If you are planning: the French planning-ahead service builds the will (or the French–English pair — drafted so neither revokes the other) around exactly these rules. If a death has already happened and the family is blended: the fixed-fee written opinion answers the first question — who inherits what, under which law — before anyone signs anything.