MrsM and self have one child between us (MiniM), and I have 2 children from previous marriages.
Eldest child is very close to us, and we have had regular contact throughout his life.
Middle child wants nothing to do with me, and we haven't seen each other for over 20 years.
Assuming that she continues this non-contact, where do we stand with the French inheritence laws?
We will have a house in France, some cash in banks, and memories.
MiniM will be a French resident, and other 2 children will be UK residents.

Hope this all makes sense.

Thanks again

You would do well to consult the Notaire who deals with your house purchase - he/she will advise you to make a Will in accordance with French Law, bearing in mind your "recomposed" family situation. Normally you can't disinherit children.
But apparently there's soon to be legislation whereby expats can choose to make a Will in accordance with their original country's legislation, although a French Notaire might not necessarily take any notice of it!
In any case, French Inheritance Tax will be levied on all French property/assets, whatever other legislation is in force.

Dmu

I am grateful for your responses.

Is there a way to have the estate made into a trust that isn't inherited, but the management of the trust is?

Yes it's called an SCI, you'll find plenty of info if you google. This looks like a good clear comprehensive explanation if your French is OK:
La SCI familiale | Notaires de France
As said your notaire will advise you on all this before he draws up the purchase contract.
Personally I think a lot of Brits use SCIs when French law offers simpler solutions but in your situation as you've outlined it, I think it could be the best solution for you.

you can include a clause "en tontine" (or similar spelling) on your house purchase which would mean that the house would go to your wife and miss out the children. Other wise, if you died, your half of the house would be spread between your 3 children. If she died her half would go to her children.

I've never really understood the point of the "tontine" clause, it can't work fairly for "recomposed" families - AFAIK it would only be the children of the surviving partner who would inherit at his/her death, i.e. if the OP goes first, the OP's widow's daughter at her death (and neither of the OP's children, in the present case).
But the Notaire will know best....

as far as I understand it

If I die, my half of the house goes to all my children
And if my wife dies first her half goes to all her children.

Of course this can cause problems if one of the children wants their share immediately.

The tontine clause removes this and the property would pass wholly to the surviving partner/name on deeds.

As I understand, which is normally way off what it actually means

Well, maybe I've got it wrong as well loy loy, but my understanding is the same as yours. BTW From where on earth does your moniker derive?

Oh, it's a bit rubbish really, we used to live in a town in the UK which was famous for its cockerel, and because of this there was a big silver cockerel on a roundabout. And for some reason this was both our children, when they were learning to speak and couldn't say cockerel, would say loy loy

That's what I understand, too and, rightly or wrongly, I assume that L-L and his wife are their children's two parents.
But in the OP's case, if his wife is the surviving partner, the whole house goes to HER child at her death, not to his children.
If the wife goes first, then there's no problem, the house will be divided equally between the OP's three children at his death (which brings us back to the hint about possibly disinheriting one of the elder children).

This is the problem. I don't want my middle daughter to inherit anything. (Don't judge me. I know that sounds heartless, but there are reasons.)

We're not here to judge, these things happen in families....

There is a new EU law which takes effect this August that allows you to specify the law of your country of nationality for inheritance purposes, this will allow you to disinherit a child as this is OK under English law. The new law, however, will not apply to French inheritance tax, so plan carefully when making your purchase. A tontine clause has the result that when one spouse dies, the other becomes the owner of the whole property as if the deceased had never existed, so this can cause problems if you want a child from a previous marriage to inherit. If MiniM is on good terms with eldest step-brother, it might be easiest to do a tontine and leave it to them to sell and share the proceeds after you are both gone. If you want to protect your eldest directly, then tontine is not appropriate since if you die first, your son will effectively be disinherited. An SCI is a good option, but there are set-up costs and administration to deal with. Another option is to put cash in "Assurance Vie" accounts - these are not life insurance policies but more like ISA's and you can leave the proceeds to whoever you want with a certain amount (around €100000 each I think) inheritance tax free. Also, they are not included in your estate when you die.

Thanks TinaBee