Cabinet CHAVERON

It can be a very traumatic experience and if the death occurs overseas you can feel additional distress since you are unfamiliar with French procedures which differ significantly to those in the United Kingdom :

* the first step is to call a doctor

he will draft a medical certificate of the death ( “certificat médical de décès”) Any doctor may be called even if he was not the GP of the deceased person.

If the person died in a hospital or a old's people home, this certificate will be drafted by this hospital or home.

If the death occured on a public highway, the gendarmes will make a report describing the circumstances of the death.

If the person commited suicide or if an accident occured you have to call the

gendarmes immediately.

* the secund step is to register the death. You do not need to make an appointment beforehand. In France it is obligatory to register a person's death within 24 hours ( 5 days in UK and even 42 days for a stillbirth ). Registering a death is free. The death can be registered by a relative or a friend , anyone who has all information (e.g. the person's full name at time of the death, his/her date and place of birth, his/her last address, his/ her occupation...).

The French death certificate do not give the cause of the death. So when a body is

repatriated to England or Wales, a Coroner will hold an inquest if the death was

violent or unnatural or sudden and the cause unknown.

It is not obligatory but it is possible to register the death of a British national in the

Consular Register. You will have to contact the British embassy.

The death certificate in France is free, in UK the price varies from local authority to

local authority and if death is registered in the Consular Register it will cost you 113 €

and 72 € for a death certificate.