French Inheritance for US Citizens

How French inheritance law affects American owners

If you are a US citizen and you own property in France, French inheritance law will very probably decide who inherits that property, in what shares, and how much of it you were free to leave by will — regardless of what your American estate plan says. The reason is situs: French-situated assets, and French real estate above all, are governed by French succession law unless the deceased has validly chosen another law to govern the estate. A revocable living trust drafted in California, a "pour-over" will signed in New York, or a beneficiary designation that works perfectly for your assets at home does not, by itself, override the rules that France applies to a house in the Dordogne or an apartment in Paris.

This surprises American owners more than any other single feature of the system, and it surprises them at the worst possible moment — after a death, when the family discovers that the French notaire (the public officer who settles the estate) is applying rules they had never heard of. Two of those rules do most of the damage. The first is forced heirship (réserve héréditaire): French law guarantees children a fixed minimum share of the estate that cannot be given away, so an American parent cannot simply leave everything to a spouse, or to one child, or to a trust. The second is that the interaction between French law, US law and the treaties between them is genuinely technical, so that the answer to "who inherits, and who taxes it" depends on details — where you live, where your children live, your nationality, and the exact wording of your will — that most people never think to line up in advance.

There is, though, a real and often decisive tool on the other side. The EU Succession Regulation — Regulation (EU) No 650/2012, often called Brussels IV — applies to the estates of everyone who dies on or after 17 August 2015 and is applied by France to nationals of any country, EU or not. It lets a person choose the law of a country of their nationality to govern their whole succession (EUR-Lex, Regulation 650/2012; European e-Justice Portal). For a US citizen, that opens the door to having US law — which does not impose forced heirship — govern the devolution of a French estate. Whether that election actually achieves what you want, and whether it changes the tax result at all (it does not), is the subject of this article. We set out how French forced heirship affects American owners, how the Brussels IV election works and where it stops, what the France–US estate and gift tax treaty does and does not do, how US federal estate tax reaches French assets, and the practical steps a US owner should take before signing anything.

One point should be clear from the outset, because it is the source of most of the confusion we see. Succession — who inherits — and taxation — who pays and how much — are two separate questions, governed by two separate sets of rules. Choosing US law under Brussels IV can change who inherits your French property; it does nothing to change the French inheritance tax that falls on that property, and nothing to change the reach of US federal estate tax. You have to plan for both, and you have to plan for them separately.

Forced heirship: the shock for US families

French inheritance law does not give an owner free rein to dispose of an estate. The nearest heirs are protected by the reserved portion (réserve héréditaire), the share of the estate that must pass to them (Article 912 of the Civil Code). What is left over is the freely disposable portion (quotité disponible), the only part an owner can give away by will or lifetime gift to someone outside the protected group (Article 912, paragraph 2). Because the reserve is an absolute right, it is impossible to disinherit a reserved heir completely. For an American used to the common-law principle of testamentary freedom — the idea that you can leave your property to whomever you please — this is the shock.

The reserved heirs are the descendants and, where there are no descendants, the non-divorced surviving spouse (Article 913-1 and Article 914-1 of the Civil Code). For children, the size of the reserve turns on how many there are. Article 913 fixes the freely disposable portion at one half where the deceased leaves one child, one third where there are two children, and one quarter where there are three or more. The reserve is the mirror image: one half is reserved for a single child, two thirds for two children between them, and three quarters where there are three or more. All descendants count as "children" for this purpose (Article 913-1), so grandchildren of a predeceased child stand in that child's place, and the reserve is worked out by branch (souche). Where there are no descendants at all, the surviving spouse's reserve is fixed at one quarter of the estate (Article 914-1).

Put in concrete American terms: if you are a US citizen with two children and you own a French house, French law reserves two thirds of that house for your two children between them, and leaves you free to dispose of only the remaining third — to your spouse, to a third child, to a charity, to anyone. If you have three children, three quarters is reserved and only a quarter is yours to direct. You cannot, under French devolution, leave the whole house to your surviving spouse, or split it unequally between children in a way that leaves one child below the reserved share, or route it into a trust that keeps it out of the children's hands. This is exactly the arrangement many American estate plans are built around, and it is exactly what French forced heirship prevents.

The reserve is not merely a headline figure; it is enforced. If lifetime gifts or legacies encroach on it, the reserved heirs can bring an action to cut them back — the action to reduce (action en réduction) — though the reduction does not happen automatically and must be claimed by the heirs who have been shortchanged (Article 920 of the Civil Code). Conversely, a reserved heir can agree in advance, in a formal notarial deed, to give up the right to attack a future gift, through an advance renunciation of the action to reduce (renonciation anticipée à l'action en réduction) in an estate that is not yet open (Article 929). And where there are no reserved heirs at all — no descendants and no spouse — the whole estate is freely disposable and gifts or legacies may exhaust it (Article 916). For an American with no children and no spouse, in other words, French law imposes no reserve; the constraint is real only where there is a protected heir.

Why your US will does not defeat the reserve on its own

A common assumption is that a validly executed US will, or a funded revocable trust, simply overrides French forced heirship because it reflects the deceased's clear wishes. It does not. Left to itself, a French estate — including French real estate owned by a US citizen — falls under French succession law, and a US will that purports to leave the French house away from the children is, to that extent, vulnerable to the children's action to reduce. The document is not ignored: it can still appoint executors, express wishes and dispose of the freely disposable portion. But it cannot, on its own, enlarge that portion beyond what Article 913 allows. The only mechanism that can change the governing law is the Brussels IV election, and that is where an American owner's planning has to focus.

Using your US will (the Brussels IV election)

The EU Succession Regulation is the instrument that lets a US owner escape French forced heirship on succession. By default, it makes the law of the deceased's last habitual residence govern the whole succession; but it also lets a person choose, in a declaration that typically sits in their will, the law of a country whose nationality they hold to govern their estate instead (EUR-Lex, Regulation 650/2012). The Regulation applies to the estates of those who die on or after 17 August 2015, and — critically for Americans — France applies it universally: the chosen law can be that of a non-EU country, including the United States. A US national can therefore elect US law to govern their French estate, and because US succession law recognises testamentary freedom rather than a forced reserve, that election is the route to leaving French property more freely than French devolution would allow.

There is a wrinkle that is specific to Americans and that has to be handled with care. The United States has no single, unified federal law of succession; inheritance is a matter of state law, and it differs from state to state. When a US national elects "the law of their nationality" under the Regulation, the relevant law is therefore not some federal US succession code — there is none — but the law of the particular US state connected to the person (typically the state of domicile or closest connection). The Regulation contains rules for exactly this situation of a state that comprises several territorial units with their own succession laws, and a well-drafted election has to identify the intended state law rather than gesture vaguely at "US law". This is not a formality: get it wrong and the election can be challenged. It is one of the main reasons a US owner should not draft the choice-of-law clause without French advice.

Where the election stops: the 2021 compensatory levy

Choosing US law does not always give a clean result, because French law added a corrective in 2021. For estates opened since 1 November 2021, where 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, and the foreign law governing the succession allows no mechanism reserving a share for the children, each child (or their heirs) may take a compensatory levy (prélèvement compensatoire) on the assets located in France at death, so as to be restored to the reserved rights French law would have given them, up to that amount (loi 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021, Article 24; Article 913 of the Civil Code as amended). In plain terms: even after a valid choice of US law, an EU-connected child can claw back their French reserve out of the French assets.

Whether this catches a US family depends entirely on the EU connection, and the distinction matters enormously. The trigger is met where the deceased or a child is either an EU national or habitually resident in the EU. Consider a US citizen who lives in the United States, whose children also live in the United States, and who owns a French holiday home: none of them is an EU national or EU-resident, so the compensatory levy does not apply, and a valid election of US law can leave the French house free of the children's reserve. Now consider a US citizen who has retired to France and lives there permanently: that person is habitually resident in an EU member state, the residence limb is satisfied, and a child who has been cut below the French reserve can invoke the levy against the French assets despite the choice of US law. The same is true if one of the children has moved to and settled in France, or in any other EU country. For a purely US family with no EU residence and no EU nationality, in short, the levy generally will not apply; for an American who has actually moved to France, it very well may.

Outside the levy — for estates with a genuinely non-EU international character, and for those opened before 1 November 2021 — the position rests on case law. The Cour de cassation held in 2017 that a foreign law designated by the conflict rule which ignores the reserved portion is not in itself contrary to French international public policy, and can be set aside only where its concrete application would leave the children in a situation of economic precariousness or need (Cass. civ. 27 September 2017, nos. 16-13151 and 16-17198). For a US owner with no EU foothold, that ruling is the reassurance that a choice of US law will normally be respected; but it is a fact-sensitive standard, not a guarantee, and the safe course is to structure the estate so that no child is left destitute. The widget below walks a US owner through whether a French property can be left freely, given nationality and where the children live.

The France–US estate & gift tax treaty

Americans planning around a French estate almost always ask whether there is a tax treaty that stops them being taxed twice. There is. A bilateral convention on death and gift taxes exists between the two countries: the "Convention between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the French Republic for the Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion with Respect to Taxes on Estates, Inheritances, and Gifts", signed on 24 November 1978 and amended by a protocol signed on 8 December 2004 (IRS, Estate & gift tax treaties; US Treasury, 2004 protocol). Its stated purpose is exactly what an American owner hopes for: to relieve double taxation, and to prevent fiscal evasion, in respect of taxes on estates, inheritances and gifts.

Two cautions are essential, and we state them deliberately. First, this estate and gift tax convention is a separate instrument from the far better-known France–US income tax treaty. The income tax treaty (signed at Paris on 31 August 1994) covers taxes on income and capital and expressly does not cover estate, inheritance or gift taxes — so it is the 1978 estate and gift convention, not the income treaty, that governs death-tax questions. It is a common and expensive error to reason from the income treaty about an estate. Second, the precise way the convention allocates taxing rights between the two countries, and the exact reliefs and credits it provides, are set out in the articles of the convention and its protocol; those are the only reliable source for a specific rule, and they should be read for the case at hand rather than assumed. We do not restate particular treaty articles here, because the outcome for any given estate depends on which country is treated as the domicile, where the assets sit, and how the convention's tie-breakers apply — and getting that right is a matter for the treaty text and professional advice, not a rule of thumb.

What we can say with confidence is how the double-tax relief works in principle, because it follows the ordinary logic of these conventions and is reflected in French law. Double taxation arises where the same person is taxable on the same assets by more than one state. Where a convention applies and France is the state of residence, the tax paid abroad is creditable against the tax due in France, within the limit of the French tax on those assets — France credits the foreign tax rather than exempting the assets. That credit mechanism, combined with the existence of the 1978 convention, is what prevents the same French property being fully taxed twice over. The direction of the credit — which country gives way to the other — depends on the domicile and situs rules in the convention, which is precisely why the convention text has to be consulted. The practical takeaway for a US owner is reassuring but not a substitute for planning: double taxation of a French estate is relieved, but only if the estate is administered with the convention in mind and the credits are actually claimed in the right country.

US estate tax vs French assets

US federal estate tax reaches French property because of how the United States taxes its own citizens and residents. The US estate tax is a tax on the transfer of property at death, and for a US citizen or resident the gross estate "includes all property in which the decedent had an interest (including property outside the United States)" (IRS, Instructions for Form 706). In other words, a US citizen is taxed by the United States on worldwide assets — a French apartment counts toward the US taxable estate exactly as a house in Florida would. Choosing French or US law under Brussels IV does not change this: succession law decides who inherits, but US estate tax follows US citizenship and reaches the French property either way.

What keeps most American estates out of actual US estate tax is the size of the exclusion. US law allows a basic exclusion amount — a threshold of value that passes free of federal estate tax — and it is large and indexed for inflation. The Internal Revenue Service has published a basic exclusion amount of USD 15,000,000 for the estates of decedents dying in 2026, up from USD 13,990,000 for 2025 (IRS, Estate tax). An estate whose worldwide value — French assets included — falls below the exclusion generally owes no US federal estate tax and generally need not file a US estate tax return. Because the figure is adjusted annually and has changed materially in recent years, the current amount should always be checked on the IRS site before relying on it; do not plan against a number you remember from a previous year.

The non-citizen surviving spouse and the QDOT

One trap catches mixed-nationality couples in particular, and it is worth flagging because it is easy to miss. US estate tax normally allows a deduction for property passing to a surviving spouse, which defers tax until the second death. That relief operates differently when the surviving spouse is not a US citizen. US law provides a specific vehicle — the qualified domestic trust, or QDOT — for this situation: the QDOT rules apply where a decedent's surviving spouse is not a US citizen, and the estate tax on property held in the trust is reported and paid through it (IRS, About Form 706-QDT). For an American married to a French (non-US-citizen) spouse — a very common situation among owners of French property — this means the usual spousal deferral cannot simply be assumed, and a QDOT may be needed to obtain it. This is a US-law mechanism, confirmed on the IRS site; how and whether to use it in a particular estate is a question for a US estate tax adviser working alongside your French notaire.

The French side of the same estate follows its own territorial rules, and those rules, not US citizenship, decide what France taxes. Under the General Tax Code, French gift and inheritance duties fall on the transfer of assets by reference to situs and residence. Where the deceased was resident in France for tax purposes, French duty is due on the worldwide estate — all movable and immovable property situated in France or abroad. Where the deceased was a non-resident, only property situated in France is taxable — so an American who never moved to France is, on the French side, taxed by France essentially on the French property alone. And there is a third rule that catches families who have moved: where the deceased was a non-resident but the heir has been resident in France for tax purposes for at least six of the ten years preceding the death, the whole worldwide estate coming to that heir becomes taxable in France (Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code). A US family with a child who has settled in France for years can therefore find France taxing far more than the French house alone.

Layer the two systems together and the shape of the problem is clear. France taxes the French property (and sometimes more, under Article 750 ter); the United States taxes the same property as part of a US citizen's worldwide estate, subject to the large exclusion. Where both countries tax the same assets, the 1978 convention and the ordinary credit mechanism are what prevent the tax being suffered twice: where France is the residence state, the foreign tax paid is creditable in France within the limit of the French tax (Article 750 ter framework; convention of 24 November 1978). The tool below helps a US owner see, at a high level, where French tax and the treaty come into play.

Practical steps for a US owner

The single most useful thing a US owner of French property can do is to line up succession and tax as two separate exercises and take advice on both before signing a will. The steps below are the sequence we generally work through with American clients; they are not a substitute for advice on a specific estate, but they show the order in which the decisions have to be made.

Frequently asked questions

Does French forced heirship apply to Americans?

Yes, by default. French-situated assets, and French real estate in particular, are governed by French succession law unless the deceased validly chose another law, so an American who owns a French property is subject to French forced heirship: half, two thirds or three quarters of the estate is reserved for the children depending on their number (Article 913 of the Civil Code). A US citizen can escape this only by electing US law under the EU Succession Regulation, and even then a compensatory levy may restore an EU-connected child's reserve on the French assets.

Can I use my US will for my French property?

A US will is not ignored, but on its own it cannot override French forced heirship on your French property. To have US law — which allows testamentary freedom — govern your French estate, you must make a choice-of-law election under the EU Succession Regulation, choosing the law of your US state of nationality (Regulation 650/2012). That election is usually best set out in a French will coordinated with your US documents, and drafted to identify the correct US state law because the United States has no single federal succession law.

Is there a France–US estate tax treaty?

Yes. There is a "Convention between the United States and France for the Avoidance of Double Taxation… with Respect to Taxes on Estates, Inheritances, and Gifts", signed on 24 November 1978 and amended by a 2004 protocol, whose purpose is to relieve double taxation on death and gift taxes (IRS, Estate & gift tax treaties). It is a separate instrument from the 1994 France–US income tax treaty, which does not cover estate, inheritance or gift taxes. The precise allocation of taxing rights is set out in the convention's articles and should be checked for your estate.

Will my estate be taxed in both countries?

Both countries can tax the same French property — France because the asset is situated in France (Article 750 ter of the General Tax Code), and the United States because a US citizen is taxed on worldwide assets (IRS, Form 706 instructions). Double taxation is relieved by the 1978 convention and by the ordinary credit mechanism — where France is the state of residence, the foreign tax paid is creditable against the French tax within its limit. Most US estates owe no US estate tax anyway because the worldwide estate falls below the large basic exclusion amount, which is indexed annually and should be checked on the IRS site.

How do I protect my heirs?

Plan succession and tax separately and before signing anything. Decide whether to elect US law under Brussels IV, check whether the 2021 compensatory levy could still reach the French reserve (it can where you or a child is an EU national or lives in the EU), coordinate your US and French documents so they do not contradict each other, and take US advice on estate tax — including whether a QDOT is needed if your surviving spouse is not a US citizen (IRS, About Form 706-QDT). A French notaire and a US adviser working the same file is the reliable route.

Does moving to France change the picture?

Yes, significantly. If you become habitually resident in France, the 2021 compensatory levy can restore your children's French reserve even after you elect US law, because the residence limb of the rule is then satisfied (loi 2021-1109; Article 913 of the Civil Code). On the tax side, a deceased resident in France is subject to French duty on the worldwide estate, and a French-resident heir who has lived in France for at least six of the last ten years can pull the whole worldwide estate into French tax (Article 750 ter). Residence changes both the succession and the tax analysis, so review your plan when you move.

How our French lawyers help US owners of French property

Cross-border estates are where the most avoidable mistakes are made, because the French rules and the US rules each look complete on their own and only collide after a death. We advise American owners on exactly how French forced heirship applies to their French property, whether a Brussels IV election of US law will achieve what they want and how to draft it so it names the correct state law, whether the 2021 compensatory levy could still reach the children's reserve, and how the France–US estate and gift tax convention and the double-tax credit fit the family's situation — coordinating, where needed, with your US estate tax adviser on the US side, including the QDOT question for a non-US-citizen spouse.

This article is for general information only. It does not constitute legal or tax advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. How French inheritance law, US estate tax and the France–US convention apply depends on nationality, residence, the assets and their location, and any will or choice of law. Figures and thresholds — including the US basic exclusion amount — change; verify the current position and take advice on your situation before acting.