Revocation of French Wills

Question: I am selling my French house and moving back to the UK. I am wondering how to ‘cancel’ my French Will as this mentions the house and some other items. I think I no longer need a French Will.

In general, when we answer questions concerning Wills, these cover how to prepare them to ensure that they are valid and suitable. However, it is equally important to understand how to revoke a Will properly, should that be the intention.

It is not necessarily enough to conclude that the sale of your house in France would result in the French Will becoming ‘redundant’. When advising clients on Will preparation, one of the common points of discussion is whether it would be preferable to prepare a separate Will for each jurisdiction or whether one Will should cover their worldwide estate.

It follows from this, of course, that a French Will can be valid and apply to assets in the UK, and vice versa.

There are international regulations that cover the validity of Wills across jurisdictions, which both the UK and France have ratified. Those regulations cover the revocation of Wills as well. Thus, if the Will has not been correctly revoked, it could still be applicable back in the UK. Mistaken revocation of Wills can be problematic – we occasionally see estates where a deceased person may have originally had separate Wills across jurisdictions but revoked one of them because they had not taken sufficient care in drafting a Will for the other jurisdiction. Similarly, the failure to revoke a French Will when leaving France could easily cause complications for the estate administration.

The easiest – and clearest – way to ensure correct revocation is to update your English Will so that it expressly revokes the previous French Will. It is, after all, prudent for everyone to review their Wills regularly, and certainly, when there is a major change of circumstances, selling up in one country and moving to another would count as a major change of circumstances.

It is to be noted as well that there is a Wills Registry in France, and it is standard practice for a Will to be registered. To avoid any risk of confusion, it is always prudent to ensure that any registration is cancelled once the Will has been revoked. To do this, you would need to contact the law firm that holds the original Will (this is likely to be a notaire’s practice in France, or perhaps a firm of solicitors in England if it is registered as a repository for French Wills), to confirm cancellation.

Contact our French law solicitors today

If you have any questions or would like advice on creating a French Will, cross-border estate planning or buying/selling a French property, please get in touch with our specialist French Legal Services team through this website or by calling 0330 404 0768.