Surendettement in France: The Banque de France Over-Indebtedness Procedure

When a person living in France can no longer keep up with their personal debts, French law offers a formal and free procedure known as surendettement (over-indebtedness). It is handled in the first instance not by a court but by a commission de surendettement (an over-indebtedness commission), whose secretariat is run by the Banque de France, the country's central bank. The rules are set out in the Code de la consommation at Article L711-1 and the articles that follow.

This page is a procedural explainer. It describes who is allowed to file, what happens to creditors once a file is accepted, and the two broad directions the procedure can take. It is general legal information about how the system operates, not financial or legal advice, and it does not tell any individual what to do about their own situation.

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

What surendettement means

Surendettement describes a situation where an individual, in good faith, is genuinely unable to meet the whole of their non-professional debts, both those already due and those that will fall due. That definition comes from Article L711-1 of the Code de la consommation. The key words are non-professional and good faith. The procedure is aimed at ordinary household and consumer debts, such as consumer loans, rent arrears, unpaid utility or tax bills, and overdrafts, rather than at the debts of a business run by the person.

Good faith is presumed. A person is not expected to prove their honesty; instead, the commission may only set a file aside if there is evidence that the debtor acted in bad faith, for example by organising their own insolvency or making false statements. The size of the debt is not, on its own, the test. What matters is the gap between what the household can pay and what it owes.

The procedure covers individuals, not companies. A person whose difficulties come from a professional or commercial activity is generally directed toward a different legal route rather than the surendettement commission.

Who can file and the admissibility decision

A file, called a dossier de surendettement, is opened with the commission that covers the person's place of residence. The secretariat is handled by the Banque de France, and there is no charge for using the procedure. The debtor sets out their income, their spending, the people in the household, and the full list of what they owe and to whom.

The commission then examines the file and issues a decision on admissibility, known in French as the decision de recevabilite. This first step decides only one thing: whether the person's situation fits the legal definition of surendettement. It does not yet decide how the debts will be handled. A person can be declared admissible even if part of the difficulty is recent, provided the overall inability to pay is real.

If the file is accepted, the person is generally recorded for a period in the FICP, the national register of credit repayment incidents held by the Banque de France. That registration signals to lenders that the person is in the procedure.

What filing freezes

One of the most important effects of an admissibility decision is that it suspends and prohibits most enforcement actions that creditors could otherwise pursue over the debts covered by the file. In practice this can pause measures such as a wage garnishment or seizures carried out by a commissaire de justice, the officer who was formerly known as a huissier de justice.

This freeze is not unlimited. It applies to the debts within the procedure, it runs for a defined period rather than forever, and certain obligations, in particular current maintenance or family-support payments, are treated separately. The suspension is meant to give the commission time to work out a solution without a creditor stripping the household of resources in the meantime. Because the exact scope depends on the type of debt and the stage of the procedure, the precise reach of the freeze in any given file is a matter for the commission and, where needed, the judge.

The two possible outcomes

After a file is declared admissible, the commission looks at whether the household has any capacity to repay. From there, the procedure moves in one of two broad directions.

A repayment plan

Where the household can repay something, the goal is a plan. The commission first tries to broker an agreed plan, the plan conventionnel de redressement, between the debtor and the creditors. This can involve rescheduling the debts, reducing interest rates, or postponing payments. If the parties reach agreement, the plan is put in writing and followed.

If no agreement can be reached, the commission can itself impose or recommend measures, known as mesures imposees, that reschedule or otherwise adjust the debts. A repayment plan or set of imposed measures cannot, in principle, run longer than seven years. Some measures can extend beyond that limit in specific cases, in particular where they concern repayment of a loan taken out to buy the household's main home or are designed to let the family keep that home. This seven-year figure was confirmed against the official Banque de France and service-public guidance current in 2026.

Personal recovery

Where the situation is judged to be so seriously and irretrievably compromised that no repayment plan is realistic, the procedure turns instead to retablissement personnel, or personal recovery. This is the French route to a fresh start, and it comes in two forms.

Where the person owns nothing that could usefully be sold to pay creditors, the commission can move toward personal recovery without judicial liquidation. If it is granted, most of the non-professional debts that existed before the procedure are erased. Where the person does own assets that could be sold, personal recovery with judicial liquidation may be opened before the court, with the debtor's agreement; the assets are sold, the proceeds go to creditors, and remaining eligible debts are then cleared.

How long the effects last

The length of the procedure's after-effects depends on which outcome applies. A person subject to a repayment plan or imposed measures may remain listed in the FICP for up to seven years. A person who goes through personal recovery is generally listed for a shorter period, reported as five years, during which new borrowing is effectively closed off. These durations are set by the framework and are re-checked against the Banque de France register rules; anyone needing the figure for a specific file should confirm it with the commission, as register periods can be adjusted.

Because surendettement is a public procedure, it is opened directly with the Banque de France and costs nothing. It is worth knowing that this website is not the commission, not the Banque de France, and not a court, and cannot open or manage a file. For the official route and the current forms, the Banque de France and the public service portal are the authoritative starting points.

This page sits within our guide to French consumer rights, which also covers related topics such as the payment order a creditor may obtain and the enforcement role of a commissaire de justice. For the wider picture of legal life in France, see our France legal information hub.