French inheritance rules: what happens to assets when a spouse dies?

Reader question: We are British and have two children in the UK. In 2025, we made our wills through a French notaire. We have been married under the communauté universelle regime since 2003 and obtained French nationality in 2012. We have some separate bank accounts and assurance-vie policies. The notaire says our children cannot access anything as long as one of us is alive, and all our assets will pass to the survivor. Is this correct?

Your notaire’s advice is broadly correct, provided your marriage contract includes a clause d’attribution intégrale.

Under the communauté universelle regime, the couple’s assets generally form a single common pool, regardless of when they were acquired or whose name they are held in. This means that having separate bank accounts does not necessarily make the money in them separate property.

However, the regime does not automatically transfer the entire community to the surviving spouse on the first death. For this to happen, the marriage contract must include a clause d’attribution intégrale. You should ask your notaire to confirm that this clause is present in your 2003 change-of-regime deed and check whether any assets were specifically excluded.

Where the clause applies, the surviving spouse receives the entire community without the usual division of the deceased spouse’s share as part of their estate. The children’s inheritance is therefore generally deferred until the second parent dies. There are exceptions, notably where children are not the offspring of both spouses, who may have grounds to challenge an excessive matrimonial benefit.

The regime is generally intended to cover assets owned when it was adopted, as well as those acquired subsequently, but its application to assets held abroad requires particular care.

French matrimonial property rules do not necessarily translate straightforwardly to assets in the UK, especially property. If you still own UK assets, you should obtain advice from a solicitor experienced in cross-border estates and check that your French wills and any English wills work together.

Assurance-vie policies also need to be considered separately. The beneficiary named in a policy will generally receive the death benefit, but the matrimonial regime can affect how the policy and the premiums paid into it are treated. You should ask your notaire to review each policy, including its ownership, source of funding and beneficiary clause, rather than assume that all proceeds will automatically pass to the surviving spouse.

Sarah-Jane Legge is a partner with Ashtons Legal.