Your UK marriage or partnership in France
France has a number of marriage regimes which define how property is owned and what happens to it on death or divorce. It is common to draw up a contract with a notaire.
A couple married in Britain but now living in France will be treated as having a regime called séparation de biens, unless a decision is taken to change this with help from a notaire.
In this regime all property owned at the time of the marriage and bought during it remains owned by the person who paid for it or was given or bequeathed it and only the individual’s possessions are at risk if he or she is in debt.
Where property is not clearly owned by one or the other partner, it is deemed to be owned half and half if it has been acquired by means of income accruing during the marriage. This may apply to the matrimonial home if the deeds state it is jointly owned but do not specify precise portions of the purchase price to be paid by one or other of the spouses.
In the case of death, the surviving spouse has only the usual legal rights. Whether he or she also has full or partial ownership depends on whether he or she already owned a share, the contents of the deceased’s will, and whether or not the deceased had children entitled to a share. In a divorce each party gets property which belonged to him or her.
A French marriage with no specific regime choice is under the regime of communauté réduite aux acquêts (common ownership of assets acquired during the marriage). Each party retains what they owned prior to the union, but whatever is acquired afterwards is joint property (but not gifts and inheritances).
Another common regime is communauté universelle (joint ownership of everything). Thus, a property bought is owned jointly and on the death of one partner it is wholly owned by the survivor. Court consent must be obtained to change a regime and possibly the consent of adult children where their rights could be affected.
A couple married in the UK may change their regime to communauté universelle solely as regards assets in France, a device often used to avoid problems with inheritance laws.
Homosexual marriage became legal in 2013.
Unmarried couples, of the same or opposite sex, can enter a pacte civil de solidarité (pacs) similar to a British civil partnership (which is also recognised in France on the same footing). Here the default regime is séparation de biens, although other options are possible. Couples living together without a formal arrangement may wish to look at this, bearing in mind the heavy inheritance taxes they face otherwise.
