France Consumer and Debt Rights: A Guide to the Law

French consumer and debt law splits cleanly into two halves, and working out which half a problem sits in is the first step to solving it. Your rights when a purchase goes wrong live in the Code de la consommation (the Consumer Code), the body of law that governs sales to consumers, product guarantees, and distance selling. What a creditor can do when you owe money lives somewhere else, in the rules on civil enforcement, where a court procedure first turns an unpaid debt into an order and only then into a real recovery action.

Two institutions run through the debt side and are worth knowing by name before anything else. The commissaire de justice (judicial officer), the professional most people still call the huissier de justice or French bailiff, is the officer who serves legal papers and enforces court decisions. The Banque de France, the central bank, runs the separate over-indebtedness procedure for people who genuinely cannot pay. This page explains how these pieces fit together and routes you to a detailed guide for each. It links out for the exact figures rather than repeating them, because several of them are re-set every year.

Information last verified on 22 July 2026. This page presents general legal information, not legal advice.

How French consumer and debt law is organised

The one head-term worth clearing up at the outset is the officer's name. The huissier de justice and a second older profession were combined into a single new profession, the commissaire de justice, when the merger took effect in 2022. The powers did not change, only the title. Because almost everyone still searches for and says huissier, this section and every enforcement guide below treat the two words as the same person.

Beyond that, the useful mental model is to sort any problem into one of two families. A dispute about something you bought is a consumer-rights question, governed by the Code de la consommation and, for some faults, by the Civil Code. A dispute about money you owe is an enforcement question, governed by the civil-enforcement rules and carried out by the commissaire de justice, with the over-indebtedness route sitting alongside for people who cannot pay at all. The sections that follow are grouped the way a reader actually meets these problems. For the wider legal picture beyond consumer and debt matters, see our France legal information hub.

When something you bought goes wrong

Most purchase problems come down to one of three questions, and French law answers each with a different right on a different clock. Naming which one you are in is what makes a refund request succeed.

If you have simply changed your mind about an online, phone, or doorstep purchase, the tool is the right of withdrawal (droit de retractation), a short cooling-off window that lets you return distance-sold goods for a full refund with no reason required. It is a real legal right, but only for the way you bought; it does not cover an ordinary in-store purchase, where a shop's return policy is goodwill rather than law. Our guide to the 14-day right of withdrawal sets out the window, the refund timing, and the genuine exceptions.

If the item is faulty or not as described, the right to reach for is the legal guarantee of conformity (garantie legale de conformite), a free and mandatory guarantee owed by the seller for a fixed period from delivery, with a presumption that works in the buyer's favour during an early window. It is the closest French equivalent to a lemon-law protection, and the legal guarantee of conformity page explains the remedies of repair, replacement, price reduction, and refund, and how it differs from an optional commercial warranty.

A third situation is the serious defect that was hidden at the time of sale and surfaces later, which is common with used cars bought privately. Here the Civil Code's hidden-defects warranty (vice cache) applies, running from the day you discover the fault rather than the day of the sale, and it binds any seller including a private individual. The hidden defects guide covers the two remedies, the proof a buyer must bring, and why the seller's identity changes everything.

Because online orders can raise all of these at once, plus the separate problem of an order that never arrives, we pull the threads together in a practical guide to getting a refund on an online purchase. It also explains why a bank chargeback is a payment-scheme service, not a legal right.

When you owe money and a creditor comes after you

The debt side runs as a sequence of stages, and the single most useful thing to understand is that they are separate. A creditor cannot leap straight to seizing your pay; the law makes them get a court title first, and only then enforce it.

The officer at the centre of enforcement is the commissaire de justice, and knowing the limits of the role is a genuine protection. This officer serves legal acts, draws up formal factual reports, and carries out seizures, but cannot lawfully seize wages or property without an enforceable title behind the demand. Our guide to the commissaire de justice, the profession still known as the huissier, explains what the officer can and cannot do and how to check that a demand is genuine.

The usual way a creditor obtains that title for an unpaid sum is the payment order (injonction de payer), a fast-track court procedure decided on the papers without a hearing. What matters for a debtor is the short window to contest it: challenge the order in time and the dispute goes to a normal hearing; let the window pass and the order hardens into a full enforceable title. The payment order page walks through the request, the opposition deadline, and why this stage, not the seizure, is the moment to act.

Once a creditor holds a title, one common enforcement is wage garnishment (saisie sur salaire), where part of a debtor's pay is diverted at source by the employer. French law caps this tightly: only a bracketed fraction of pay can be taken, on a scale re-indexed each year, and a protected minimum equal to the standard welfare benefit is always left in the worker's hands. The procedure itself was reshaped by a recent reform that moved it toward the commissaire de justice. Because the brackets and the floor change annually, the wage garnishment page carries the current-year figures rather than this hub.

When the debt is more than you can pay

Contesting a single claim is a different problem from being unable to pay anything at all. For the second situation, French law offers a distinct and free route that does not run through the ordinary courts.

The over-indebtedness procedure (surendettement) is handled by a commission whose secretariat is the Banque de France. An individual acting in good faith who cannot meet their non-professional debts can file a dossier; if the commission accepts it, most enforcement action is suspended while a solution is worked out. The outcome is either a repayment plan, capped in principle at a maximum number of years, or, where the situation is judged hopelessly compromised, a personal-recovery route (retablissement personnel) that can erase most remaining debts. Our guide to over-indebtedness explains who can file, what filing freezes, and the two possible outcomes, and stresses that the procedure is opened directly with the Banque de France and involves no private company.

Which right applies to you

The whole cluster reduces to a few routing questions. If the problem is a purchase, ask why you want out: a change of mind points to the right of withdrawal, a fault points to the legal guarantee of conformity, and a hidden, pre-existing defect points to the vice cache warranty. If the problem is a debt someone is pursuing, ask what stage it has reached: an amicable demand carries no power to seize, a payment order is a contestable title in the making, and a wage garnishment is enforcement that needs a title already in hand. And if the problem is that the debts as a whole are simply unpayable, the over-indebtedness procedure at the Banque de France is the dedicated route. Each linked guide takes one of these paths in full detail, including the exact figures and deadlines this overview deliberately leaves to them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a huissier de justice the same thing as a commissaire de justice?

Yes. The huissier de justice profession was merged into a single new profession, the commissaire de justice, in 2022. The name is what changed; the core role, serving legal papers and enforcing court decisions, is the same. Most people and most search queries still use the older word huissier, so both terms refer to the same officer today.

I want a refund on something I bought. Which right do I use?

It depends on the reason. If you simply changed your mind about a distance or online purchase, the 14-day right of withdrawal applies. If the item is faulty or not as described, the legal guarantee of conformity applies and runs for two years from delivery. If a serious hidden defect surfaces later, or the seller was a private individual, the hidden-defects warranty (vice cache) is the route. Each has its own deadline, so start by naming the situation.

Can a creditor take money from my wages without going to court first?

Generally no. Wage garnishment is an enforcement measure, and it requires an enforceable court title, such as a judgment or a final payment order. A demand that threatens to seize pay without a title behind it does not reflect the procedure. Getting the title and collecting the debt are two separate stages.

How much of my salary can be garnished in France?

Only a fraction, set by a progressive scale of income brackets, and a protected minimum equal to the standard welfare benefit is always left untouched. Both the brackets and the floor are re-indexed each year by decree, so the exact euro figures change annually. The wage garnishment page carries the current-year numbers.

What can I do if I cannot pay my debts at all?

French law provides a free over-indebtedness procedure handled by a commission whose secretariat is the Banque de France. An individual acting in good faith who cannot meet their non-professional debts can file a dossier. If the file is accepted, most enforcement is suspended, and the outcome is either a repayment plan or, where the situation is hopeless, a form of debt relief. It is opened directly with the Banque de France, not through any private company.