How Inheritance Tax Works in France: A Guide for UK Expats

• France taxes each heir individually, based on their relationship to you — not the estate as a whole, and not a single flat rate
• Spouses and PACS partners pay 0%; children each get a €100,000 allowance before tax starts
• France also applies forced heirship (réserve héréditaire) — you cannot fully disinherit your children the way you can in the UK
• Assurance-vie, gifting, and property structuring are the main legal tools for reducing the bill, and most need to be set up years in advance

If you've built your financial life in the UK, French inheritance tax will surprise you twice. First, the rates and allowances work completely differently. Second, France restricts who you're even allowed to leave assets to in the first place — something UK will law doesn't do.

This article covers how the system works overall. If you have no children, see our companion piece on inheritance tax in France if you have no children for the specific rules and tools that apply to that situation.

The core difference from UK inheritance tax

UK inheritance tax works on the estate as a whole: assets above the nil-rate band (currently £325,000, plus the residence nil-rate band) are taxed at 40%, regardless of who inherits them, with a full exemption only for a spouse or civil partner.

France does it the opposite way round. There's no single "estate tax." Instead, each heir is taxed individually on what they personally receive, at a rate and allowance that depends entirely on their relationship to you. A spouse and a distant cousin inheriting from the same estate can face completely different outcomes — one pays nothing, the other could pay well over half.

This matters practically: you can't estimate your French inheritance tax by looking at total estate value alone. You need to know who's inheriting what.

Rates and allowances by relationship

For children, the rate is progressive — the more they inherit above the €100,000 allowance, the higher the marginal rate on the top slice. The full bracket structure:

Like income tax, this is a marginal scale — each band applies only to the slice of value within it, not to the whole inheritance. In practice, most estates left to children fall well within the 20% band, since it runs all the way from €15,932 to €552,324 of taxable value. For example, a child inheriting €200,000 pays nothing on the first €100,000, then 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% on the successive slices above it — working out to roughly €18,000 in tax, not €200,000 × 20%.

The allowances apply per heir, not per estate. Two children each get their own €100,000 allowance against what they individually inherit — the allowance isn't split between them.

Forced heirship: France restricts who inherits, not just how it's taxed

This is the part that catches UK expats off guard, because it isn't a tax rule at all — it's a rule about who is legally entitled to inherit, before tax even enters the picture.

Under French law, children have a protected right to a portion of your estate called the réserve héréditaire. You cannot will your entire estate to someone else — a new partner, a friend, a charity — if it would cut your children out of their reserved share. The portion you're free to leave to anyone you choose is called the quotité disponible.

The size of the reserved share depends on how many children you have:

• One child: they're entitled to at least half the estate
• Two children: together entitled to at least two-thirds
• Three or more children: together entitled to at least three-quarters

This applies regardless of what your will says. A will that tries to override it can be challenged by the children after your death, and French notaires will generally flag the conflict before it gets that far.

If you're a UK national resident in France, EU Regulation 650/2012 (Brussels IV) allows you to elect for UK law — which has no forced heirship — to apply to your estate instead, via a clause in your will. This is one of the more consequential decisions in cross-border estate planning and is worth raising directly with a notaire, since getting it wrong can mean the election doesn't take effect at all.

Important: Get guidance from a notaire before you complete your will to ensure clarification of your position.

Assurance-vie: the main exception to both sets of rules

A French assurance-vie contract with a named beneficiary sits outside the normal succession process entirely — both the forced heirship rules and the standard tax table above. It's paid directly to whoever you name, under its own regime.

Premiums paid before you turn 70: each beneficiary receives up to €152,500 tax-free, then 20% up to €700,000, then 31.25% beyond that.

Premiums paid after you turn 70: only the amount of premiums above a combined €30,500 (across all your contracts) is brought into the estate and taxed at the standard rates above.

Because it falls outside the réserve héréditaire, assurance-vie is also the standard way to leave money to a partner you're not married or PACSed to, a stepchild, a friend, or anyone else who wouldn't otherwise inherit favourably — subject to the premiums-before-70 timing that makes the large allowance work. For how assurance-vie compares to UK savings and pension wrappers more generally, see our SIPPs vs Assurance Vie guide and Assurance Vie vs Life Insurance explainer. This tax treatment only holds up if the beneficiary clause is drafted correctly — see our guide to getting the assurance-vie beneficiary clause right for the wording mistakes that most commonly undo it.

If you're buying property jointly with a partner you're not married or PACSed to, a tontine clause is a separate tool worth knowing about — it can secure the property for a surviving partner outside the normal succession process, though it comes with real trade-offs. See our full guide to tontine clauses in France.

Reducing the taxable estate while you're alive

Two structures come up repeatedly in French estate planning, both aimed at legally reducing what's counted in your estate at death:

Donation avec réserve d'usufruit — you give away the bare ownership (nue-propriété) of a property or asset while keeping the right to use it or receive its income (usufruit). Only the bare-ownership value, discounted by your age at the time of the gift under Article 669 of the CGI, counts toward tax. When you die, the usufruct ends automatically and the recipient becomes full owner with no further tax due. If you're planning to pass property to more than one heir, this is often combined with an SCI (Société Civile Immobilière) — see our guide to using an SCI to pass on French property for how the two work together.

Lifetime gifting — each heir's tax-free allowance (€100,000 for a child, for example) can be used for lifetime gifts, not just inheritance, and it resets every 15 years. The catch: any gift made within 15 years of death is added back into the estate for tax calculation purposes, so this only fully works if there's enough time between the gift and death.

Common mistakes

1. Assuming UK-style estate planning transfers directly. A UK will, or an assumption that you can leave everything to whoever you choose, runs straight into forced heirship the moment you're a French tax resident with assets in France.

2. Not making a Brussels IV election. UK nationals can elect for UK law to govern their estate instead of French forced heirship rules — but only if it's explicitly set out in a will. Without it, French rules apply by default.

3. Treating the estate as one number. Because France taxes per heir, the same total estate can produce wildly different tax bills depending on who inherits what. Planning needs to happen at the level of each intended heir, not just the total.

4. Paying assurance-vie premiums after 70 without knowing the impact. The generous per-beneficiary allowance only applies before age 70 — after that, a single small combined allowance applies across everything, materially changing the maths.

5. Leaving it too late for lifetime gifts to help. The 15-year rule means gifting only reduces the eventual tax bill if enough time passes before death — a plan started early works; the same plan started at 85 largely doesn't.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much can I leave my children tax-free in France?

Each child has a €100,000 allowance against what they personally inherit from you, with progressive rates from 5% up to 45% on amounts above that. The allowance applies per child, not per estate.

Can I disinherit my children under French law?

Not fully. French forced heirship rules (réserve héréditaire) guarantee your children a protected share of your estate — at least half for one child, rising to three-quarters for three or more. You can only freely dispose of the remaining portion, the quotité disponible.

Can UK nationals opt out of French forced heirship?

Yes, in principle. EU Regulation 650/2012 (Brussels IV) allows a UK national to elect for UK law to apply to their estate instead of French law, but this must be explicitly stated in a will. Without that election, French forced heirship applies by default to a French resident's estate.

Does my spouse pay inheritance tax in France?

No. A legal spouse or PACS partner is fully exempt from French inheritance tax, with no cap on the amount inherited. This does not extend to unmarried partners.

Is French inheritance tax based on the whole estate or what each person inherits?

It's based on what each individual heir personally receives, taxed according to their relationship to you. There's no single estate-wide rate — a spouse, a child, and a distant relative inheriting from the same estate can each face a completely different tax outcome.

For the specific rules and planning tools that apply if you have no children, see our companion guide: Inheritance Tax in France If You Have No Children. For more on this topic generally, browse our Inheritance & Succession Tax category.