Americans in France: US Estate Tax & French Forced Heirship Explained

American families in France tend to discover forced heirship at the notaire's office, after a death, when a will drafted in Texas or New York turns out to govern less than its author assumed. The reverse surprise is just as common: a French spouse who is entirely exempt from French inheritance tax finds that the US estate tax marital deduction does not apply to her because she is not a US citizen. Neither system is unreasonable on its own terms. The difficulty is that a household in France lives under both.

This article is aimed at US citizens and green-card holders living in France - married, in a PACS or single, with or without children, and often with a spouse or children of French nationality - who hold assets on both sides of the Atlantic and want to understand what each system will do with them. It covers the US side only to the extent needed to see the interaction; the mechanics of the 2026 exemption and of mixed-nationality couples are treated in separate Skybound Wealth USA articles linked below. It recommends no structure and does not discuss trust planning.

This article describes how United States federal tax law and the U.S.-France income tax treaty apply to US persons. It summarises French rules only as published by the Direction générale desFinances publiques (DGFiP), for context, and is not French tax, legal or succession advice - those questions belong with a French-qualified professional.

The US side: a worldwide estate and a $15 million exclusion

The IRS states that US citizens are subject to US estate taxation on their worldwide assets even if they are not US residents. For estates of decedents dying after 31 December 2025 the basic exclusion amount is $15,000,000 under Section 2010(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code as amended by Section 70106 of Public Law 119-21, indexed for inflation for years after 2026 from a 2025 base; the highest rate above that is40% under Section 2001(c).

The gift tax shares the same exclusion under Section 2505, so lifetime gifts above the annual exclusion - $19,000 perdonee for 2026 - draw down the amount available at death. Form 706 is due nine months after death with an automatic six-month extension, and an estate below the threshold may still file to pass the deceased spousal unused exclusion to a surviving spouse under Section 2010(c)(4). The article on the 2026 estate tax changes for American families covers those mechanics; this one turns to what changes when the family lives in France.

The non-citizen spouse: Section 2056(d) and the qualified domestic trust

The unlimited marital deduction of Section 2056(a) is withdrawn by Section 2056(d) where the surviving spouse is not a US citizen, unless the property passes to a qualified domestic trust (QDOT) under Section 2056A or the spouse becomes a citizen before the estate tax return is filed. A QDOT must have at least one trustee who is a US citizen or domestic corporation, with the right to withhold tax from any distribution other than income; the deferred estate tax is then imposed on principal distributions during the survivor's life and on the value remaining at the survivor's death.

Lifetime gifts to a non-citizen spouse are handled differently: no marital deduction, but an enlarged annual exclusion of $194,000 for 2026 under Section 2523(i). Portability is not denied to anon-citizen survivor, but where the property passes to a QDOT the Treasury regulations treat the deceased spousal unused exclusion as preliminary until the QDOT terminates or the survivor becomes a citizen. The article on mixed-nationality couples and US estate tax goes deeper; the question for a Franco-American couple is whether the treaty offers something simpler.

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The 1978 Estate and Gift Tax Treaty as amended by the 2004 Protocol

The Convention between the United States and the French Republic with respect to Taxes on Estates, Inheritances and Gifts was signed at Washington on 24 November 1978 and amended by a Protocol signed on 8 December 2004 that entered into force on 21 December 2006. As the Senate's executive report describes it, the country of domicile may tax the estate on a worldwide basis, while real property, certain business assets and related partnership interests are taxable where situated; Article 12, as replaced by the Protocol, requires each country to credit the other's tax on property the other may tax.

Two Protocol provisions speak directly to Franco-American families. Article 11(3) allows a US marital deduction for property passing to a spouse who is not a US citizen where the decedent was domiciled in France or the United States or was a US citizen, and the surviving spouse was domiciled in either country; the deduction is the lesser of the value of the qualifying property or the applicable exclusion amount, and the executor must elect it and irrevocably waive any other estate tax marital deduction. It is, in other words, an alternative to a QDOT with a cap, not an addition to one.

Article 12(3) gives the estate of a person domiciled in France who is not a US citizen a unified credit equal to the greater of the credit allowed to a nonresident non-citizen under US law and the proportion of the full US citizen's credit that the US-situated part of the estate bears to the worldwide estate. The Technical Explanation puts the floor at the $13,000 credit of Section 2102; the $60,000 filing threshold for nonresident estates is a separate rule. Which of these provisions a family can use depends on domicile as the Convention defines it - a determination for the US estate attorney and the notaire together.

The French side: réserve héréditaire, the spouse, and whoinherits by law

Article 913 of the Civil Code limits what a person may give away, by gift or will, when children survive: no more than half the estate with one child, a third with two, a quarter with three or more. The remainder is the réserve héréditaire, which Article 912 defines as the share the law assures to certain heirs free of charges.

A will that ignores the réserve is not void; the children may claim reduction of the excess gifts, and since 2021 then otaire must inform each reserved heir individually where a gift may impair their share.

The surviving spouse's statutory position depends on the children. Under Article 757, where all the children are common to both spouses, the survivor chooses between the usufruct of the whole estate and full ownership of one quarter; where any child is from another relationship, the choice narrows to one quarter in full ownership. The spouseis a reserved heir only where there are no descendants, for one quarter under Article 914-1.

Two further rights protect the home: one year's free occupation of the marital residence as of right under Article 763,and a lifetime right of habitation under Article 764 unless the deceased excluded it in an authentic will, to be claimed within a year of death. A donation entre époux under Article 1094-1 can enlarge the spouse's options to the disposable share in full ownership, a quarter in ownership with threequarters in usufruct, or the usufruct of everything. Which of these a French notaire would suggest for a particular family is a French-law question; what a US will can and cannot achieve against them is the next one.

Regulation (EU) No 650/2012: what a choice of US law canand cannot do

Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 (the EU Succession Regulation, often called Brussels IV) applies by default the law of the deceased's habitual residence at death to the succession as a whole. Its Article 22 lets a person choose instead the law of the State whose nationalitythey possess, and Article 20 provides that the chosen law applies whether or not it is the law of a Member State - so an American in France may choose thelaw of their US state.

The choice must be made expressly in a disposition of property upon death - a will - or be demonstrated by its terms, and Article 23 confirms that the chosen law governs the disposable part of the estate, the reserved shares and other restrictions on disposal. Article 35preserves a public-policy exception where applying the foreign law would be manifestly incompatible with the ordre public of the forum. On that point the Cour de cassation held on 27 September 2017 (n° 16-17.198) that a foreign law designated by the conflict rule which ignores the réserve héréditaire is not in itself contrary to French international public policy, and may be set aside only where its concrete application leads to a situation incompatible with essential principles of French law - noting that the heirs in that case did not claim to be in economic precariousness or need.

Two limits are built in. The Regulation binds participating EU Member States, not the United States, so it governs how a French court or notaire treats the succession, not how a US probate court does; and it decides only which succession law applies - the tax consequences on each side are set by each country's own tax law. A choice of Texas law does not alter one euro of French droits de succession, nor one dollar of US estate tax.

The 2021 prélèvement compensatoire and where its challenge stands

Law No. 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021 added a third paragraph to Article 913, in force for successions opened from 1 November2021. Where the deceased or at least one child is, at death, a national of or habitually resident in an EU Member State, and the foreign law applicable to the succession allows no reserved-share mechanism protecting children, each child may take a compensatory levy on assets situated in France at the date of death, so as to be restored to the reserved rights French law would give them, within that limit.

The provision has not been repealed, amended or ruled on. No Conseil constitutionnel decision, no Cour de cassationjudgment and no reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union on the paragraph was located for this article. What exists is a European Commission file: multiple complaint CPLT(2022)03325, alleging that the paragraph infringes the Regulation's choice-of-law provision, acknowledged on 15 February 2023 and pursued through a pre-infringement dialogue with letters of 22 July 2025 and 4December 2025. No letter of formal notice was issued.

In a pre-closure letter dated 4 June 2026 the Commission recorded the French authorities' explanation that the levy applies only where the foreign law provides no mechanism protective of children at all, and that the family-provision rules of English law count as afunctional equivalent; France undertook to publish that interpretation, and the Commission stated that it considers the legal uncertainty resolved and intends to close the case, giving complainants four weeks to respond. Whether the case has since been formally closed, whether France has published its interpretation, and - the question that matters to Americans - whether a US state's law would be treated as offering a protective mechanism, are all unaddressed in the documents located. A notaire should be asked, and asked again as the position moves.

French inheritance and gift tax: allowances, rates and the six-year rule

France taxes the recipient, by relationship to the deceased or donor, after an allowance. Where the deceased was fiscally domiciled in France, Article 750 ter of the CGI reaches all assets wherever situated; where the deceased was domiciled abroad, only French-situated assets; and, under paragraph 3°, an heir who is fiscally domiciled in France at the date of receipt and has been so domiciled for at least six of the preceding ten years is taxed on everything received, worldwide, whatever the deceased's domicile.

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The exemption of the surviving spouse and PACS partner from succession duties is the feature that most surprises Americans, since it is the mirror image of the US non-citizen-spouse rule. Adéclaration de succession is due within six months of a death in metropolitan France and twelve months of a death abroad. Assurance vie sits outside these scales under its own regime - an allowance of €152,500 per beneficiary for premiums paid before age 70 under Article 990 I, and succession duties on premiums above €30,500 paid after 70 under Article 757 B - which the cornerstone article describes.

Matrimonial regimes: what is in the estate before anyone inherits

Before the réserve or the tax scale applies, French law asks what belonged to the deceased. A couple married in France without a contract is under the communauté réduite aux acquêts: property acquired for value during the marriage is common, while property owned before it or received by gift or inheritance stays personal. On death the survivor keeps their half of the community, and only the deceased's half plus their personal property enters the estate.

Under a séparation de biens each spouse'sproperty remains their own; under a communauté universelle everything iscommon, and a clause d'attribution intégrale can pass the whole community to the survivor. Regulation (EU) 2016/1103 on matrimonial property regimes, applicable since 29 January 2019, governs which country's rules decide a couple's regime. For an American couple married in the United States and now living in France, which regime applies - and whether changing it would move property into or out of the estate - is a question for a notaire, with the US estate tax consequences checked by a US estate attorney.

One US instrument needs a factual note. France treats a trust under Article 792-0 bis of the CGI as the set of legal relationships created under a foreign law by a settlor placing assets under a trustee's control for beneficiaries, and imposes reporting: the trustee files an event declaration on creation, modification or termination and an annual declaration of asset values where a settlor, beneficiary or asset is connected with France, with a specific tax under Article 990 J where the assets are not otherwise declared. A US revocable trust or a QDOT touching France is therefore a reporting matter on the French side before it is anything else; this articlemakes no recommendation about using one.

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Who taxes what: a US citizen domiciled in France

For a US citizen whose domicile is France, the United States taxes the worldwide estate because of citizenship and France taxes it because of domicile; the Convention decides which country yields on each class of asset and Article 12 credits the other's tax. The table shows the allocation as described in the primary sources located; where the 1978 base text was not itself retrievable the description follows the Senate executive report.

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The documents question: US will, French will, choice of law

Three documents recur in these conversations, and each raises questions rather than answers. A US will, drafted under state law, may or may not contain a choice of that law for the purposes of Article 22 of the Regulation; the choice must be express in a disposition upon death or demonstrated by its terms. A French will can carry the same choice.

Service-public.fr describes three Frenchforms: olographe, written entirely by hand, dated and signed; authentique,dictated to a notaire before two witnesses or a second notaire; and mystique,handed to the notaire sealed before two witnesses.

Service-public.fr states that a notaire isrequired where the succession includes real estate, where there is a will or adonation entre époux, or where the estate is €5,965 or more - which for most American families in France means always. The questions to bring, to thenotaire and the US estate attorney together, are whether two wills are consistent with each other and with the chosen law, whether a professio jurisclause should sit in one or both, whether a donation entre époux or a change of matrimonial regime is worth examining, and what each choice does to the French tax scale and to the US estate tax computation. None of those is a decision to take from an article.