French Estate Planning and Wills

If you own assets in the UK and France, or are British with assets in France we can help you to put Wills in place. Depending on your circumstances, we can either draft a single Will to cover your worldwide estate, or alternatively, where appropriate, we can draft separate Wills to cover assets in the UK and France and elsewhere, drawing on our knowledge and contacts from around the world.

Owning assets in more than one jurisdiction inevitably leads to conflicts of law which are not always immediately obvious. For this reason, and to ensure the accuracy and dependability of our advice, we carefully analyse our client’s circumstances and provide them with a comprehensive, bespoke written report before we draft their Wills.

Most of our clients do not live within close proximity to our offices, but whether our clients can come into our offices to meet us, or whether we instead take instructions using telephone, email, the post and video conferencing such as Zoom, Skype, or Teams, we can advise those with assets in the UK and France, on how to:

• structure their wills, so that they are completely valid in both the UK and France;
• carry out their wishes, in so far as that is possible in France;
• deliver results in a tax efficient way.

In our experience it is not possible for any lawyer to draft a Will where there are assets in more than one jurisdiction, without considering all of the following issues. If your lawyer is drafting Wills without considering all of the following, you should ask why not?

• Domicile – common law and civil law definitions.
• Matrimonial Property Regimes (marriage contracts).
• Testamentary Freedom.
• French ‘Forced Heirship’.
• Spousal Rights.
• Conflict of laws / Private International Law.
• Children from previous relationships – the effect on succession (who gets what) and taxation.
• European Regulation 650/2012 (Brussels IV) – where appropriate.
• UK Inheritance Tax Principles.
• Analysis of your worldwide assets, liabilities and lifetime gifts.
• Detailed report into your liability to UK Inheritance Tax.
• An explanation of UK Inheritance Tax Allowances & Exemptions (estate planning opportunities).
• Generic overview of the French Inheritance Tax regime.
• Double Taxation – an analysis of how the UK/French double taxation treaty on inheritance tax applies to you.
• The validity of Wills – a review of how your Wills will be valid and appropriate for use in the UK and France. 

After speaking with our client, we cover all the issues above in a personalised report for them, together with a summary and recommendations and draft Wills. When our clients are completely happy, we provide final copies of the Wills for them to sign. 

The Will signing can either take place in our offices, or we can send the Wills to our clients to sign at their home with detailed instructions and guidance on how this should be done. Once the Wills are signed they can be returned to our offices for secure storage.