New French Inheritance Law for Non-French Residents (2026)

If you own French property but live outside France, you have probably relied on one reassuring idea: “I chose English law in my will, so French forced heirship doesn't apply to me.” That was broadly true between 2015 and 2021. It is no longer the whole story. This guide explains exactly what the 2021 law says, who is caught by it (fewer people than the alarmist headlines suggest — and more than the optimistic ones), how the compensatory levy is calculated with a worked example, and what you can still do about it in 2026.

The reform is short but far-reaching. Law no. 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021 (Article 24) added a new paragraph to Article 913 of the Civil Code — the article that defines the reserved share (réserve héréditaire) French law guarantees to children. In plain English, the new paragraph says:

• when the succession is governed by a foreign law that offers no mechanism protecting a reserved share for children (English law, most US state laws, and many common-law systems fall into this category), and
• 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,

then each child (or their heirs) may take compensation — a prélèvement compensatoire — from any assets located in France, up to the value of the reserved share they would have received under French law.

Two practical points follow. First, the levy only reaches French-situs assets: your French house, a French bank account — not your UK home or US brokerage account. Second, French notaires handling such an estate now have a duty to inform each affected child individually of their right to claim. The child can claim or renounce — nothing happens automatically, but silence from the notaire is no longer an option.

The 2021 law is narrower than most coverage suggests. It has a double trigger: the foreign law must ignore reserved shares, and there must be an EU connection through the deceased or a child. Here is how the most common non-resident profiles come out:

Note the asymmetry: the law looks at nationality and habitual residence, on both your side and each child's. Families move — a child taking a job in Dublin or Amsterdam is all it takes to switch the law on. If your planning assumes the law never applies to you, it should be reviewed every time a child relocates.

The levy compensates children up to their French reserved share. The reserve depends on the number of children: one child is entitled to ½ of the estate, two children to ⅓ each (⅔ combined), three or more share ¾. The remainder — the quotité disponible — is yours to leave freely.

Here is the mechanism on realistic numbers:

• The estate: a holiday home in the Dordogne worth €600,000, plus UK assets. Two adult children. An English will leaves everything to the surviving spouse.
• The trigger: one daughter lives in Dublin — an EU habitual resident. The 2021 law is engaged.
• The claim: under French law the two children's combined reserve is ⅔. Each child can claim compensation up to their share of the reserve, taken from French-situs assets only. On a €600,000 French property, that is up to €200,000 per child (⅓ each), if the estate's French assets cover it.
• What survives: the spouse keeps the entire UK estate untouched — the levy cannot reach assets outside France — and whatever remains of the French property after the children's compensation.

Three moderating factors matter. Children can simply not claim (many don't, especially where the surviving parent is the beneficiary — the notaire must inform them, not force them). The levy is capped by the value of French assets: if your French property is a small share of a large estate, the exposure is limited. And the reserve is calculated on the whole estate, but collected only in France — which is exactly why reducing the French-situs footprint (see the planning section below) is the lever that works.

The starting point has not changed. Since 17 August 2015, Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 — often called the EU Succession Regulation or Brussels IV — decides which country's law governs a cross-border estate. The default is the law of your habitual residence at death. But Article 22 lets you elect the law of your nationality in your will (a professio juris).

Two features make this regulation unusually generous for British and American owners:

• Universal application: the chosen law does not need to be an EU law. The UK never opted into the regulation and has since left the EU, and the US was never in it — yet a British national can validly elect English law, and an American can elect the law of their state, for their French property.
• One estate, one law: the election covers your worldwide estate — no more splitting between French law for French land and home law for the rest.

The election must be made expressly in a will (or result unambiguously from its terms). If you own French property and have no will, or a will that predates 2015, this is the first thing to fix — our guide to making a will in France covers the French and English routes and how they coexist. The election remains fully valid today; what the 2021 law changed is what happens next.

This is the articulation most guides miss: Article 913 does not cancel your election of English law. The succession is still governed by English law; an English executor can still administer it; English testamentary freedom still applies in principle. What the 2021 paragraph adds is a targeted French carve-out: when the triggers are met, disinherited children get a claim in rem against French-situs assets, enforced by the French notaire handling the French property.

Think of it as a hierarchy:

• Choice of law (EU 650/2012) → decides who inherits, in what order, and how the estate is administered;
• Article 913, new paragraph → regardless of the above, lets children take their French reserve from French assets, if (and only if) the EU-connection and no-reserve conditions are met;
• French tax law → applies to French assets in all cases, election or not — choosing English law never changed French inheritance tax rates and allowances, a point often confused with the forced-heirship question.

In short: your will and election remain the backbone of your planning. The 2021 law is a specific, conditional exception that bites on French assets only — which is why the response to it is asset-level planning, not tearing up the will.

The 2021 paragraph was controversial from day one, because it sits awkwardly with the EU Succession Regulation it purports to respect: the regulation's whole point is that one law governs the estate, and it only allows member states to block a foreign law through narrow public-policy exceptions. Before 2021, France's highest civil court had gone the other way — in two 2017 rulings (the estates of composer Michel Legrand's contemporaries, the Jarre and Colombier cases), the Cour de cassation held that a foreign law ignoring the reserve was not, in itself, contrary to French international public policy. The 2021 law was parliament's response to that case law.

Where things stand as of August 2026:

• Complaints are pending at EU level: practitioners and affected heirs have lodged complaints with the European Commission arguing the levy is incompatible with Regulation 650/2012. The Court of Justice of the EU has not ruled on the question.
• French notaires apply the law in the meantime — including the duty to inform each child. No French court has set it aside.
• Practical consequence: plan as if the law is here to stay, and treat any future CJEU or legislative development as upside. Estates being settled now cannot wait for Luxembourg.

We update this guide when the litigation moves. If you are settling an estate affected by the levy right now, the notaire's information letter to the children is the procedural step to watch — deadlines to claim run from it.

French estate planning for non-residents did not die in 2021 — it moved from “one clause fixes everything” to asset-level structuring. The realistic toolkit:

• Keep (or make) the choice-of-law will. It still governs everything the levy doesn't touch, and it is decisive for families with no EU connection. Review it whenever a child moves country.
• Assurance vie. A French life-insurance wrapper passes to named beneficiaries outside your French estate, with its own tax allowances (€152,500 per beneficiary for premiums paid before 70). Capital inside a policy is not French real estate — it changes both the forced-heirship and the tax picture for the sums involved.
• Holding the property through an SCI. Shares in a French property company are movable assets, which changes how private international law treats them; an SCI also eases fractional gifts and management between generations. It is a structure with running obligations — worth it for significant property, overkill for a small flat.
• Lifetime gifts. What you give away before death is no longer in the estate the reserve is calculated on at that point (subject to claw-back rules) — and French gift-tax allowances renew every 15 years. Gifting bare ownership while keeping a usufruct is the classic pattern.
• The tontine clause, inserted when buying: the survivor is deemed sole owner from day one. Effective between spouses/partners, but rigid (hard to unwind) and with tax caveats beyond spouses.

None of these is a silver bullet; combined, they usually reduce the exposed French-situs estate to a level where the levy is manageable — or moot. And talk to the children: a claim that no child intends to make is a risk on paper only.

To Anglo-Saxon eyes the reserve looks like an intrusion on a basic freedom. To French eyes, testamentary freedom looks like licence to disinherit — the reserve (réserve héréditaire) has protected children since the Napoleonic Code, as a family solidarity rule of public policy. Neither system is “right”; they answer different questions, and the 2021 law is best understood as France defending its answer within its borders.

The surviving spouse is a reserved heir only when there are no children (reserve of ¼). For the full picture of who inherits what by default — the order of heirs, the spouse's options, what a French will can and cannot change — see our guide to how French inheritance law ranks heirs. The present article is the non-resident supplement to it: the generic rules are there, the 2021 cross-border mechanics are here.