Fiona

Thanks Clair.

My husband and I live in Alsace and I'm looking into replacing the tiles in the house with wooden floors (very cold here in Winter).   Back in Scotland we used reclaimed wood for everything but I don't know if that sort of yard exists in France, and if it does what is it called?   I speak pretty fluent French but I just can't think/find what it is called - Depot de Bois de Reclamation/Repris??? Can anyone help? Thanks

It seems that everyone elses alarm goes off when its windy - which is strange because we have never heard a peep out of ours!!!   The only noise it has ever made is when you pass the magnet over the top to switch it on or off....... Question : our house has a wall and fence all the way around it and a gate that locks - is that considered enough security or do you have to put a special fence just around the pool???   What is the legislation here??? It's good to hear that it's not just us........thanks for everyones replies.

Well your posts confirms what we already thought!!! We have a WaterAir pool - Claire08 which is in the form of a kidney bean so I don't think we can get a roller security cover for it and I'm not sure that I really want one (like to just jump in when the fancy take me).    So back to the drawing board..........

Hi All, We have recently just finished our pool and like good citizens bought an alarm for it.   It is an AQUASENSOR alarm.   But we cannot get it to work.   We have followed all the instructions in the book where you throw the jerry can in the pool to get the alarm to go off.   This didn't work so we started throwing ourselves in the pool and nada, nothing.   I'm really sure how exactly it should work, I'm guessing that if the level of the water changes significantly then the alarm should signal but I'm not really sure how........ Has anyone had a similar problem? Did you fix it? Could the alarm simply be faulty? Or are we stupid and not doing something right? Thanks for all your help.

Hi CJN My boyfriend and I have just spent about 6 hours at our Notaire discussing the best course of action in just such a situation.   My boyfriend has kids from a previous marriage and I have none.   We bought our house whilst unmarried and only found out about such problems through this website so thanks to all the questions.   What we have done is to make a contract of marriage (cannot remember the name right now) which basically makes anything that we buy together common to the marriage.   (Basically disinheriting the kids).   The only claim that the kids might have is on the amount of the mortage we have already paid.   So, without getting too complicated, imagine we have already paid 10,000 Euros of our mortgage before we get married the children can then claim a percentage of that amount since the house did not yet belong to the marriage.   Therefore, we have to get married as quick as possible - just getting all the paperwork together now. However, we did get one surprise - the price!!   Since the house will be passed from one partner to the other with no inheritence tax you have to pay a tax on the amount of the mortgage you have already paid.   I don't know the percentage but we only have our house since October last year and it cost us 1.300€ to make the marriage contract.   We live in Alsace and so we have a different regime, in other parts of France you have to add another 2.000€ (roughly) to this price.   If you are prepared for this its not a huge amount of money but we had no idea it would cost anything like that. Once you are married the children have NO claim on the house whatsoever.   We did not need permission from the kids to do this because we bought the house 50/50.   If my boyfriend had put more deposit than me or he paid more mortgage than me then it would have been more complicated apparently! We should get our papers soon and I'll be able to give you the exact name of the contract! Hope everything works out for you.   Other tip if you are getting married and you pay tax in France then do it in the middle of the year - you save more tax!   And beware that the documents you need from the British embassy cost 64€ each too! What a hassle!!!!!

Hi All, My boyfriend and I have just spent about 6 hours at our Notaire discussing the best course of action in just such a situation.   My boyfriend has kids from a previous marriage and I have none.   We bought our house whilst unmarried and only found out about such problems through this website so thanks to all the questions.   What we have done is to make a contract of marriage (cannot remember the name right now) which basically makes anything that we buy together common to the marriage.   (Basically disinheriting the kids).   The only claim that the kids might have is on the amount of the mortage we have already paid.   So, without getting too complicated, imagine we have already paid 10,000 Euros of our mortgage before we get married the children can then claim a percentage of that amount since the house did not yet belong to the marriage.   Therefore, we have to get married as quick as possible - just getting all the paperwork together now. However, we did get one surprise - the price!!   Since the house will be passed from one partner to the other with no inheritence tax you have to pay a tax on the amount of the mortgage you have already paid.   I don't know the percentage but we only have our house since October last year and it cost us 1.300€ to make the marriage contract.   We live in Alsace and so we have a different regime, in other parts of France you have to add another 2.000€ (roughly) to this price.   If you are prepared for this its not a huge amount of money but we had no idea it would cost anything like that. Once you are married the children have NO claim on the house whatsoever.   We did not need permission from the kids to do this because we bought the house 50/50.   If my boyfriend had put more deposit than me or he paid more mortgage than me then it would have been more complicated apparently! We should get our papers soon and I'll be able to give you the exact name of the contract! Hope everything works out for you.   Other tip if you are getting married and you pay tax in France then do it in the middle of the year - you save more tax!   And beware that the documents you need from the British embassy cost 64€ each too! What a hassle!!!!!

My partner and I went to see our lawyer on Friday concerning inheritance laws, tax, etc and what he told us almost turned my hair grey!!!   My partner has children from a previous marriage and with us not being married if anything happened to him the children would inherit his half of the house (minus the 25% he is allowed to leave me).   The children in this situation can then force the sale of the house in order to get their money quicker.   Or stop the sale if they think the market is not good enough.   We could write a will declaring that I am allowed to live in the house until my death but I would have to pay 60% inheritance tax which once calculated on what our house is worth now is a scary, scary number.   We talked about civil marriage and PACS which decreases the tax to 50% which is still crazy money. So basically the only thing to do to protect each other (from house selling and tax) is to get married.   Then we started calculating what we would still have to give the children.   Because we were not married when we bought the house the children can still fight for a certain percentage of the part of the mortgage which is already paid.   So ideally we have to get married asap.   This week if possible.   With every mortgage payment you make the amount of money children from a previous marriage can demand gets higher and higher.    It's not that we don't want to provide for them but we want it to be under our terms and not theirs!!!! French law is really strict when it comes to protecting the children so if you have to get married to protect yourselves then sobeit!   Just remember to go the the notaire and make the correct marriage contract splitting everything 50/50 even things that you have not bought yet!

We went to see our notaire for other matters on Friday and discussed this situation.   Unfortunately, for the bac à graisse he has advised us to let it drop.   He insists that it would be difficult to bring a case against him.   However, for the wooden fireplace he says that we have a very strong case and should first of send a letter directly from us (no lawyers involved) to test the water.   If this does not prove to be fruitful then he can follow it up with an official letter.   The good thing is that we did have the same notaire as the vendors so it might be easier to get something sorted out.  

Where exactly did the previous owner lie to you if you never spoke to him until you picked up the keys? --- He lied because the contract stated "tout à l'egout" which it clearly is not.   And when I called and asked him if he was sure he told me that there was a bac à graisse but we did not use it since he bypassed it years ago.   Another lie.   Since we have cleaned it I can see the water running in to it and running out! It sounds like you have bought an old house and may, like many others, be spending money on it for some time. --- This is not an old house, its only 20 years old.

Thanks to everyone for replying to my post. I just want to make a few things clearer after some remarks.   I have been living in France for 10 years and speak fluent French.   The house we bought is not an old house (20 years old) and its not in the country (only 6km from Basel, Switzerland).   The owner has lied to me on two occassions, firstly it is written in my contract "tout à l'egout" which is clearly not true since we use the bac à graisse.   When I called the owner (after the 5th flood) he told me that the house no longer used it since he had bypassed it years ago - another lie!!    We suffered another 3 floods before digging this thing up to double check.   Just to find out that yes we use it and oh yes its full. I also understand that plumbing problems happen - especially in France.   However, what I am annoyed at is that if he had informed us of the bac à graisse then we would have known to check it out and get it cleaned if necessary and avoided the floods.   Secondly, I was more concerned about the wooden fireplace than anything else, we were very close to losing our house that day, the wooden beams in the living room had started to smoulder and the ceiling was starting to flame when we managed to put it out!   It was months ago now and we can still smell the smoke (even after professional cleaning).

We recently had a fire in our newly purchased house because the previous owner had installed the chinmeny completely the wrong way.   It cost us 9000€ in damage and to get everything pulled down and replaced.   Our insurance company would not pay a penny.    My advice is to go to a good, reputable company like GODIN, pay the extra money and get it done correctly the first time!   At least you will be able to sleep at night knowing that the fire is safe! Fiona

My boyfriend and I recently bought a house in the Alsace region of France.   We bought it through an agency and only spoke to the owner once when we collected the keys.   Since we moved in there has been disaster after disaster.   We had a fireplace in the living which was not only installed completely the wrong way but the surround (la hotte) was wooden.   We assumed that underneath the decorative wood was metal or bricks or something non-flammable.   It was in fact chipboard.   We lit a fire and sometime later were fighting with flames and smoke and basically just trying to save the house!   It cost us 9000€ to pull down the old fireplace and install a new one.   Our insurance company did not pay. Then our cellar started flooding everytime it rained - up to ankles in rancid smelling water 3 times a week is really unpleasant.   We called plumbers but they refused to come out because our problem was caused by rain - still don't understand that one.   Eventually we got the water board to come out - they were stumped and had no idea what was the problem.   Except that maybe we had a "bac à graisse" (grease tank).   We called the previous owner who told us that in fact there was a "bac à graisse" but that he had bypassed it so that could not be the problem.   He told us where it was, we started digging and almost passed out with the smell.   It was so full and blocked and clearly the root of the problem.   It cost us 350€ to get it emptied and cleaned.   We have since dug up all of the pipework in the garden and found out that he has lied to us - all of the water from the house goes into the tank!   We also found out "by accident" that we have a septic tank in the garden.   Our electrics are so messed up that we might have to redo the house - for instance everytime we switch on the hall lights the doorbell rings, everytime we switch on the dishwasher the whole house trips out!! Sorry for being so long-winded (guess I need to vent). Basically what I'm asking is, is the previous owner under any legal obligation to inform us about septic tanks, bac à graisse, wooden fireplaces, electric problems, etc.........Even on the plans of our house there is no information about the septic tank, nor the bac à graisse.   Who should I contact to help - the notaire?? Thank you for any help! Fiona