What to do after a death in France

While this guide focuses mainly on practical matters, coping with a loved-one's death is often very difficult emotionally. If you need extra support you can find English-speaking counsellors and psychotherapists via this website.

Timeline of tasks

French government information website service-public.gouv.fr has a simple website for checking key things to do after a death depending on your personal situation. It will tailor steps to take that are very specific to your situation and relationship with the deceased.

Within 24 hours

• Obtain a medical certificate (un certificat de décès) from a doctor certifying the death. Violent deaths, including road accidents, must be notified to the police or gendarmerie, who will supply a certificate; in which case the body may be transferred to a special mortuary where an autopsy may be conducted before it is transferred to a usual mortuary after judicial permission.

Apart from the basic proof of death, the medical certificate will also contain information that is important for admission to a private or municipal mortuary; transport of the body before the coffin is sealed and transport abroad after sealing; embalming or cremation.

In such cases, the certificate must show that there are no medical/legal issues of concern, that the person did not have a contagious illness and, if they are to be cremated, that they did not have a pacemaker – or if they did, that it has been removed, as these can explode.

• Declare the death to the mairie of the area where it occurred. This can be done by the funeral directors or a care home or medical establishment if the death happened there. It must be done within 24 hours (not counting weekends and bank holidays). Some mairies have limited opening hours and you may need to call the mayor directly.

If you do this yourself you will need personal ID, the certificat de décès, plus ID for the deceased such as a marriage, birth certificate or passport. This is the same for anyone else who is charged with declaring the death. You will then be given a death certificate acte de décès – and we advise getting at least a dozen copies.

• Wherever the death takes place, the close family can ask for the body to be transferred for example, from a hospital or retirement home, before the placing in the coffin – whether to their home, a relative’s home or to a chambre funéraire. The latter is a private or municipal mortuary, often run by funeral directors and which costs more than using a hospital mortuary. This requires authorisation from the local mairie and usually must take place within 24 hours, or 48 hours if there has been embalming. 

If the body is to be transferred to a different commune, authorisation from that commune’s mairie is required. In the case of transfer from an institution, transfer also requires permission from the home director or the doctor in charge.

Organising a funeral

Contact your chosen firm of funeral directors (pompes funèbres) within about 48 hours of the death and instruct them of your wishes.

They will help with subsequent formalities and arranging the obsèques (funeral). A list of firms can be found at the mairie. You should check if the deceased had expressed a choice of cremation or burial.

Before signing anything make sure the quote includes all charges and labour. The average cost of a funeral is around €4,300 for a funeral with burial and €3,800 for one with cremation, a study by a professional body for the sector, CPFM, found.

However the organisation said prices vary widely, and can be twice as much in Paris or the Riveria compared to Hauts-de-France. 

You may wish to obtain quotes from several firms. Vocabulary may include: a fully-equipped oak coffin for burial in a cemetery (cercueil en chêne équipé). Equipped means with inner lining, handles, plaque, screws etc; a coffin equipped for cremation (cercueil équipé destiné à la crémation);or equipped and zinc-coated (zingué et équipé) for shipment abroad;a hearse (corbillard) and pallbearers (porteurs de cercueil).

The tasks of the funeral director may include: cleaning and dressing the body (if not already carried out at hospital), looking after it in their chambre funéraire, embalming, providing a coffin and accessories (or an urn), organising the cortège (hearse and bearers), a civil or religious ceremony (with or without a maître de cérémonie in charge), fees for the burial plot, grave digging, funeral monument or for storage of an urn.

There may be extra fees for the firm’s help with general organisation, printing cards and for a notice in the paper.

A funeral must take place within fourteen days unless there are special circumstances and permission.

The placing in the coffin (mise en bière) usually happens at the place where the person died. 

Wherever a death takes place, in general no one can impose removal of the body to the deceased’s home or to a chambre funéraire without permission from the family. 

How does repatriation to the US work 

If a person dies in France, there are several formalities that must be carried out before they can be repatriated back to the US. 

US citizens can always legally be repatriated back to the country, regardless if they are resident or tourist of the place where they died. 

However, whether the body is repatriated depends on the person’s will and next of kin, particularly due to the costs involved.

The death of a US citizen abroad should always be declared to the Consulate or Embassy (even if they are being buried outside of the US) so a consular death report can be filed. This document is used to resolve legal matters relating to the person’s estate back in the US.

Repatriation usually occurs within a week to ten days (bodies must be buried or cremated within six working days of death in France) unless the death is being investigated in relation to a certain type of incident (crime, accident, etc).

Standard procedures following a death include obtaining a death notice (certificat de décès) from the authorities, which in turn is needed for an official death certificate (acte de décès). 

This is obtained by the person’s local mairie (if they were a resident) or place of death (if a visitor), and acts much like a UK or US death certificate.

You should request several copies as you will need to hand this out as proof of death to various services, including in relation to repatriation.

Note that rules may be slightly different if a person died in public (such as a road accident or due to a violent crime), and if they died in a elderly care home or hospitals, some administrative authorities are carried out by staff. 

Rules change depending on ashes or full remains

Next steps depend on if the person had insurance, and if so the type of contract they held.

Visitors may have expatriation costs partly or fully covered by their insurance, and residents with a life insurance plan may have had a policy geared towards repatriation.

You should carefully check policy documents and contact insurers to see what is covered.

If this is not the case, the best option is to contact a funeral company that specialises in international repatriation.

This can be either a French, US, or international company, and several packages are available. Compare several options online before choosing a service. Costs are estimated between €7,400 - €8,000 depending on location. 

You must contact the US Embassy (or a Consulate) to inform them of the repatriation. 

They will help with formalities and obtaining necessary documents, and may be able to point you in the direction of a repatriation service. 

The documents required depend on the state the body is being transported in. 

If you wish to repatriate a body prior to burial, you will need:

- The official death certificate

- A doctor’s certificate stating that death occurred under noncontagious, nonepidemic circumstances

- An embalming certificate (French laws only require embalming for transportation of remains if the death was due to a contagious disease, but bodies repatriated to the US will need to be embalmed to prevent decomposition before arrival)

- Police certificate that remains are sealed in an airtight container (usually the inner coffin) 

- Transit permit for the remains

If the body is cremated and you are repatriating the ashes to the US, the following is required: 

- Official French death certificate

- Certificate confirming the ashes were sealed in an airtight urn

- Transit permit for the remains

Exhuming remains that have already been buried is a complicated process, and in France a body cannot be disinterred until at least five years after it was first buried. In this case, you should contact a French funeral home well-versed in local laws for further assistance. 

Coffin requirements for exhumed remains are far more stringent, and costs significantly more expensive. The Embassy/Consulate must again be informed of the procedure. 

Further details can be found directly on the US Embassy in France's website.

Useful vocabulary for speaking about death in France

La mort (silent ‘t’) – death

Le décès – death (more formal)

Le deuil – mourning

Mourir, décéder – to die

Il est mort (‘t’ silent), elle est morte (‘t’ pronounced) – he/she is dead

Il est décédé, elle est décédée – deceased (not to be mistaken with décider – to decide)

Le défunt, la défunte – the deceased

Un enterrement – burial

Les obsèques (feminine) – funeral

La crémation – cremation

Etre enterré/e – to be buried

Etre incinéré/e – to be cremated

Les pompes funèbres – undertakers

Une tombe, une sépulture – a tomb

Un cimetière – cemetery

Un cercueil – a coffin

Une couronne mortuaire – wreath

Un convoi funéraire – a funeral convoy

Un corbillard – a hearse

Une urne – urn for ashes

Le corps – the body

Les cendres (feminine) – the ashes

Une chambre mortuaire – chapel of rest

Une veillée mortuaire – a wake

Un maître de cérémonie – (funeral) celebrant

Un crématorium – crematorium

Laïc – non-religious

Un faire-part de décès – death notice

Un monument funéraire – funeral monument

Un caveau – a vault

Feu (example: feu votre femme): '(the) late'.

Invariable adjective (so no feminine or plural form), used in expressions such as: j’ai bien connu feu votre tante – I knew your late aunt very well.

The vocabulary in this column supplied by Camille Chevalier-Karfis of French Today.

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