You have built a life in France since Brexit: a job or a business, a flat or a house, a residence card, a tax file. Now you want your husband, wife, partner or children to join you, or you have just married and want your spouse to settle with you in France. Since 1 January 2021, British citizens are third-country nationals under French immigration law, which means your family cannot simply move over as they could before Brexit. They need a visa, then a residence permit, and the route depends on who they are, when they started the process and whether you yourself are covered by the Withdrawal Agreement, the treaty that organised Brexit and is referred to in French as l’accord de retrait.

This guide explains, in English, the two legal doors through which your family can join you: the standard family reunification procedure, called regroupement familial, which applies to most British residents, and the special Brexit route for family members of Britons protected by the Withdrawal Agreement. It then explains what happens when the administration says no: how the prefect, the préfet, decides, how the consulate decides, and how the French courts control those refusals, with the exact statutes and recent court decisions. French terms appear in italics with an explanation the first time, because every letter you receive will use them.

I. How to bring your spouse and children to France after Brexit: the two legal doors

A. How to apply for family reunification as a British resident: spouse, children, income and housing

For most British residents, the route is the ordinary family reunification procedure, the regroupement familial. It is the same procedure that applies to American, Canadian, Australian or Indian residents: Brexit moved British citizens into this common-law track. The sponsor, meaning you, the family member already living in France, files the application in France; your family then applies for visas at the French consulate where they live.

The statute sets three conditions that you, the sponsor, must meet. “L’étranger qui en fait la demande est autorisé à être rejoint au titre du regroupement familial s’il remplit les conditions suivantes : 1° Il justifie de ressources stables et suffisantes pour subvenir aux besoins de sa famille ; 2° Il dispose ou disposera à la date d’arrivée de sa famille en France d’un logement considéré comme normal pour une famille comparable vivant dans la même région géographique ; 3° Il se conforme aux principes essentiels qui, conformément aux lois de la République, régissent la vie familiale en France, pays d’accueil.” Stable and sufficient income, a normal home, and respect for the essential principles of family life in France, such as monogamy, equality between men and women and school attendance for children. The official service-public.fr page adds a fourth practical condition: you must have lived in France for at least 18 months under a qualifying permit, such as a one-year temporary card, a multi-year card or a ten-year resident card, before you may even apply. Check the current page here: Regroupement familial | Service Public.

Who can join you is narrower than many British families expect. The procedure covers, collectively, your husband or wife, who must be at least 18 and legally married to you, and your minor children, meaning under 18. Children of the couple qualify where legal parentage, the filiation, is established, as do adopted children under a court decision; children from a previous relationship qualify where the other parent has died, lost parental rights, or where a foreign court gave you parental authority, the autorité parentale. Age is assessed on the day you file. Two limits matter enormously for British readers. First, an unmarried partner, however long the relationship, cannot use this route: only marriage counts, not cohabitation and not a civil partnership. Second, your parents and grandparents, your ascendants, are excluded from family reunification altogether; they may only come to live in France under visitor status, the statut de visiteur, if they have sufficient resources of their own, as explained here: Statut de visiteur | Service Public. If your plan was to bring an elderly mother to live with you permanently, say so openly in your first legal appointment, because the strategy is entirely different.

As a rule the whole family must come together: partial reunification, the regroupement partiel, is only allowed exceptionally, in the children’s interests, and you must justify it in a reasoned letter when you file, for example for schooling, health or a flat too small for everyone at once. The statute says so directly: “Le regroupement familial est sollicité pour l’ensemble des personnes désignées aux articles L. 434-2 à L. 434-4. Un regroupement partiel peut toutefois être autorisé pour des motifs tenant à l’intérêt des enfants.”

The income condition is where most files succeed or fail, so measure it exactly. Your resources and your spouse’s resources are assessed together over the twelve months before the application, by reference to the monthly average of the statutory minimum wage, the SMIC, over that period. The regulation states: “Pour l’application du 1° de l’article L. 434-7, les ressources du demandeur et de son conjoint qui alimenteront de façon stable le budget de la famille sont appréciées sur une période de douze mois par référence à la moyenne mensuelle du salaire minimum de croissance au cours de cette période.” And it continues: “Ces ressources sont considérées comme suffisantes lorsqu’elles atteignent un montant équivalent à : 1° Cette moyenne pour une famille de deux ou trois personnes ; 2° Cette moyenne majorée d’un dixième pour une famille de quatre ou cinq personnes ; 3° Cette moyenne majorée d’un cinquième pour une famille de six personnes ou plus.” In plain terms: one average monthly SMIC for a family of two or three, plus one tenth for four or five people, plus one fifth for six or more. The official page currently illustrates this as roughly 1,867.02 euros a month on average over the last twelve months for two or three people, 2,053.72 euros for four or five, and 2,240.42 euros for six or more, but these figures move with the SMIC, so always check the live page before filing.

What counts as income is broad but not unlimited. Wages and self-employed earnings count, as do investment income, rental income and pensions; your spouse’s earnings count too, provided they will continue to be paid once your spouse leaves their country. What never counts is a closed list: family benefits, the active solidarity income known as the RSA, the old-age solidarity allowance called the Aspa, the temporary waiting allowance known as the Ata, the specific solidarity allowance called the ASS, and the retirement-equivalent allowance known as the AER. A British sponsor living partly on UK rental income or a British pension is therefore in a stronger position than the bare salary test suggests, provided the income is stable and documented over twelve months with payslips, contracts, tax notices and bank statements. Two exemptions exist: no income condition applies if you receive the disabled adult allowance, the AAH, or the supplementary invalidity allowance, the Asi; and no income condition applies if you are over 65, have lived lawfully in France for at least 25 years, have been married for at least 10 years, and seek reunification with your spouse.

The housing condition is measured in square metres, by zone. The home must be normal for a comparable family living in the same area, and the regulation fixes the floor: “Pour l’application du 2° de l’article L. 434-7, est considéré comme normal un logement qui : 1° Présente une superficie habitable totale au moins égale à : a) en zones A bis et A : 22 m² pour un ménage sans enfant ou deux personnes, augmentée de 10 m² par personne jusqu’à huit personnes et de 5 m² par personne supplémentaire au-delà de huit personnes ; b) en zones B1 et B2 : 24 m² pour un ménage sans enfant ou deux personnes, augmentée de 10 m² par personne jusqu’à huit personnes et de 5 m² par personne supplémentaire au-delà de huit personnes ; c) en zone C : 28 m² pour un ménage sans enfant ou deux personnes, augmentée de 10 m² par personne jusqu’à huit personnes et de 5 m² par personne supplémentaire au-delà de huit personnes ; 2° Satisfait aux conditions de salubrité et d’équipement fixées aux articles 2 et 3 du décret n° 2002-120 du 30 janvier 2002 relatif aux caractéristiques du logement décent pris pour l’application de l’article 187 de la loi n° 2000-1208 du 13 décembre 2000 relative à la solidarité et au renouvellement urbain.” Paris and the inner suburbs sit in zones A bis and A, so a couple needs at least 22 square metres of living space, plus 10 per additional person; most of provincial France sits in zone C, where the starting point is 28 square metres. The flat must also meet decency, health and equipment standards. You do not need to own the flat on the day you file: the test is whether you have, or will have on your family’s arrival date, a qualifying home.

The procedure itself runs through three offices. You file with the French Office for Immigration and Integration, the OFII, with the cerfa form, your permit, full civil-status documents with sworn translations, twelve months of income proof and housing evidence. The mayor, the maire, of your town must give a reasoned opinion on your income and housing within two months; silence counts as a favourable opinion. The OFII completes the file and sends it to the prefect of your département, the préfet, or in Paris the prefect of police, the préfet de police, who authorises or refuses within six months of the complete file reaching the OFII. Silence for six months is an implicit refusal, and an express refusal must be reasoned. If the prefect says yes, the OFII notifies the consulate, your spouse applies for a long-stay visa, and your family must enter France within three months of the visas being issued, travel at their own expense. After arrival, they attend an OFII medical examination, and your spouse receives a long-stay visa acting as a residence permit, the VLS-TS, which must be validated online within three months of arrival. The medical certificate issued at the end of the OFII visit is indispensable for the later residence permit, so never skip that appointment.

One British-specific warning before we turn to the second door. The English-language service-public page for Britons states the post-2021 default plainly: “You wish to join a British member of your family settled in France since 1 January 2021. You have to ask for a long-stay visa to the French consular services in the United Kingdom. This visa will allow you to subsequently obtain a residence permit in the prefecture.” A spouse or child who simply arrives without a visa and hopes to sort out papers in France starts with a serious handicap, because family members already in France can only exceptionally benefit from reunification applied for on the spot, the regroupement sur place, and a refusal carries a legal sting: “En cas de refus de délivrance ou de renouvellement de tout titre de séjour ou autorisation provisoire de séjour, l’étranger est tenu de quitter le territoire.” On refusal of any residence permit, the foreigner must leave France. Build the file before anyone travels.

B. The Brexit door: joining as the family member of a Briton protected by the Withdrawal Agreement

The second door exists only for families whose story started before Brexit took full effect. If you, the British sponsor, exercised your right to live in France before 1 January 2021 and still live there, or took steps to be joined before that date by applying for a visa at the consulate, your close family members fall under the French decree that implements the Withdrawal Agreement, Decree No. 2020-1417 of 19 November 2020, rather than under ordinary immigration law. This is the favourable track: faster, built for keeping pre-Brexit families together, and with visas issued at no consular charge.

The decree draws a sharp line between the two worlds. Its Article 4 provides that British citizens and their family members who do not fall within Article 3 are subject, from 1 January 2021, to the ordinary provisions of the immigration code. In other words, miss the Brexit track and you fall back into the standard family reunification procedure described above, with its 18 months, its SMIC thresholds and its six-month prefectural examination. The Brexit track itself covers, among others, the family member who, before 1 January 2021, was supported by the British citizen in the country of origin, shared their household, or imperatively required personal care from them for serious medical reasons. The administrative appeal court of Nantes, in a case about a British resident’s sister, quotes the provision as follows: the family member must show that “Il est, dans le pays de provenance, à charge du ressortissant britannique mentionné au 1° ou au 5°, ou fait partie de son ménage, ou requiert impérativement une prise en charge personnelle par le ressortissant britannique mentionné au 1° ou au 5°, pour des raisons médicales graves ;” Dependency in the country of origin, shared household, or imperative personal care for grave medical reasons: one of these must have existed before the cut-off date and must still exist when the application is made.

On entry documents, the decree is generous where it applies. Its Article 5, again as quoted by the Nantes court, provides: “A compter du 1er janvier 2021, les membres de la famille d’un ressortissant britannique mentionnés aux 3° et 4° de l’article 3, qui ne sont ni de nationalité britannique, ni citoyens de l’Union européenne ou ressortissant d’un Etat partie à l’accord sur l’Espace économique européen ou de la Confédération suisse, sont, sous réserve de l’article 28, admis sur le territoire français s’ils sont munis d’un passeport en cours de validité, d’un titre de séjour délivré par la France portant la mention « Article 50 TUE/Article 18(1) Accord de retrait du Royaume-Uni de l’UE » ou d’un visa d’entrée sauf s’ils en sont dispensés en raison de leur nationalité. Lorsqu’il est requis, […] le visa d’entrée est délivré par l’autorité consulaire dans les meilleurs délais et dans le cadre d’une procédure accélérée, sur justification du lien familial.(…)” A valid passport plus either the Withdrawal Agreement residence document or an entry visa; and where a visa is required, it is issued at no consular charge, as quickly as possible, under an accelerated procedure, on proof of the family link. Compare that with the standard track, where consular fees, full files and ordinary delays apply. If your family qualifies for the Brexit track, claim it expressly and attach the proof of the link from the start: visas at no consular charge on a fast track are a right there, not a favour.

The same Nantes ruling shows how strictly the cut-off date is policed. A British man living in France since 2020, acting as legal guardian of his disabled Algerian sister under a 2019 Algerian court judgment, sought a long-stay visa for her as a Withdrawal Agreement family member. The consulate refused in November 2021, the visa appeals board confirmed in March 2022, and the court upheld the refusal, because “Il est constant qu’aucune demande de visa n’a été déposée pour Mme B… avant le 1er janvier 2021 auprès des autorités consulaires françaises, en méconnaissance des dispositions précitées du 3° de l’article 3 du décret du 19 novembre 2020.” No visa application before 1 January 2021, so no Brexit track. The family’s pandemic excuse failed on the facts: the minister proved that long-stay visa applications in Algeria had been possible again since 2 September 2020, so the closure of consular services from March 2020 did not explain the delay. The lesson for British sponsors is blunt: the Brexit door is dated, and assertions about closed offices or lost paperwork need dated proof, because the administration will produce its own timeline.

That ruling also answers a question disabled and elderly applicants always ask: does human rights law override the cut-off? The court recalled Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in full: “1. Toute personne a droit au respect de sa vie privée et familiale, de son domicile et de sa correspondance. 2. Il ne peut y avoir ingérence d’une autorité publique dans l’exercice de ce droit que pour autant que cette ingérence est prévue par la loi et qu’elle constitue une mesure qui, dans une société démocratique, est nécessaire à la sécurité nationale, à la sûreté publique, au bien-être économique du pays, à la défense de l’ordre et à la prévention des infractions pénales, à la protection de la santé ou de la morale, ou à la protection des droits et libertés d’autrui.” It then rejected the argument, noting that the sister, though chronically ill and recognised as 100 per cent incapacitated with her brother as guardian, was not isolated in Algeria, where she had always lived and where her mother and other siblings resided. Read the full decision here: CAA Nantes, 29 October 2024, No. 23NT02446. Guardianship alone, even formal court-ordered guardianship, does not create a protected family life in France where the applicant’s real family network remains abroad. British sponsors caring for a vulnerable relative should therefore build the Article 8 file around isolation and day-to-day dependence, not around the guardianship order alone.

A third situation deserves its own paragraph, because it bypasses both doors: where your spouse or partner is French. A foreigner married to a French citizen receives a one-year temporary card marked private and family life, the carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention vie privée et familiale, where three conditions are met. The statute provides: “L’étranger marié avec un ressortissant français, se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention « vie privée et familiale » d’une durée d’un an lorsque les conditions suivantes sont réunies : 1° La communauté de vie n’a pas cessé depuis le mariage ; 2° Le conjoint a conservé la nationalité française ; 3° Lorsque le mariage a été célébré à l’étranger, il a été transcrit préalablement sur les registres de l’état civil français.” Unbroken married life, a spouse still French, and for weddings abroad, prior transcription onto the French civil registers. So a British woman married to a French man in London must first have the marriage transcribed before the vie privée et familiale card follows. This route has no SMIC test and no housing test, which makes it by far the simplest where it is available, but it requires a genuinely French spouse and a genuine shared life: convenience marriages are criminally punished and systematically investigated.

II. How to answer a refusal and win: prefects, consulates and judges

A. How to challenge a prefect’s refusal of family reunification: income, housing and the judge’s control

Refusals from the prefect usually give two reasons: your income or your home. Both are fully controlled by the administrative judge, and the case law of the administrative courts of appeal is distinctly protective where the prefect stretches the rules. Two recent rulings give British sponsors the exact arguments to use.

On income, the rule is mechanical and the prefect may not add conditions the statute does not contain. The administrative appeal court of Nancy confirmed that where resources reach the SMIC, refusal for lack of income is unlawful, and the prefect may not deduct debts or charges. The court held: “il résulte des stipulations mêmes de l’article 4 de l’accord franco-algérien du 27 décembre 1968 que le préfet ne peut refuser l’autorisation de regroupement familial pour insuffisance de ressources si celles-ci sont égales ou supérieures au salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance (SMIC), sans pouvoir déduire un éventuel surendettement ou d’éventuelles autres charges.” In that case a lorry driver on a permanent contract earned a gross monthly average of 1,841.31 euros, above the SMIC of the period, yet the prefect refused because the man was in a formal over-indebtedness procedure, the surendettement, repaying over 150,000 euros of property loans and 25,000 euros of consumer credit under a court-approved plan. The court annulled the refusal: over-indebtedness deducted, the arithmetic was wrong in law. Read it here: CAA Nancy, 10 November 2020, No. 19NC03331. The principle extends beyond the Franco-Algerian treaty cited there into the general code, whose regulation fixes the same SMIC-based test. So if your salaries clear the threshold on paper, attach the twelve payslips and the average, cite the figure, and force the prefect to answer the arithmetic: mortgage payments, consumer loans, maintenance paid in England and credit card balances cannot lawfully drag you below the line.

The Paris court adds the method for counting. It recalls that “les ressources du demandeur et de son conjoint qui alimenteront de façon stable le budget de la famille sont appréciées sur une période de douze mois par référence à la moyenne mensuelle du salaire minimum de croissance au cours de cette période”, and lists the proof: employment contract or recent employer certificate, payslips for the twelve months before filing, the latest income tax notice where length of stay allows one, and the latest tax return, with non-wage income proved by any means. Read it here: CAA Paris, 30 December 2022, No. 22PA00809. For British sponsors this detail is practical gold: a sponsor who arrived eighteen months ago and changed jobs, moved from employee to self-employed consultant, or started drawing a UK pension mid-year must still show twelve continuous months, stitching periods together with every available document. Gaps invite refusal; a continuous paper chain defeats it. And remember that your spouse’s continuing income counts: a wife still teaching in Manchester whose salary will follow her to France improves the average, provided you prove it will continue.

On housing, the prefect may not refuse on speculation. In the same Nancy case, the sponsor owned a house that met the housing regulation, and the prefect argued it was up for sale and might be sold before his wife arrived. The court answered that “le préfet de l’Aube ne pouvait refuser à M. D… le bénéfice du regroupement familial en se fondant sur la seule circonstance, purement éventuelle, que sa maison sera peut-être vendue à la date d’arrivée en France de son épouse.” A purely hypothetical future sale cannot justify refusal. The test runs on the home you hold or will hold on arrival day, measured against the square-metre scale, not on the prefect’s anxieties about what you might later do. British sponsors in chains, selling in the UK, renting in France while hunting for a house, should therefore anchor the file on a qualifying tenancy: a signed twelve-month lease on a flat of the right size, with the floor plan and the council-tax equivalent, beats promises about a future purchase every time.

Procedure before the judge matters as much as substance. Challenge an express refusal, or a six-month silence, first with an informal appeal to the prefect, the recours gracieux, or a higher appeal to the interior minister, the recours hiérarchique, and then with a court action before the locally competent administrative tribunal, the tribunal administratif, within two months. Ask the tribunal not only to annul but to order the prefect to re-examine or to authorise, using the judge’s power of injunction, the injonction, which the courts exercise routinely in this field. Plead Article 8 alongside the arithmetic: length of marriage, children born or raised, schooling interrupted, a spouse alone abroad, medical needs. Article 8 rarely wins alone, as the Nantes sister case shows, but combined with a prefect who miscalculated income or speculated about housing, it colours the whole file. And keep the family abroad while the case runs: a spouse who enters without a visa during proceedings hands the prefect the separate argument of unlawful entry and, on refusal, faces the statutory duty to leave quoted above.

B. How to challenge a consulate’s refusal of a family visa: the appeals board and the Nantes court

Visa refusals follow their own track, and British families meet it twice: once when the family applies after a prefect’s authorisation, and once, more dangerously, when they apply directly for a long-stay visa as visitors or as Withdrawal Agreement family members. The first thing to understand is that the consulate’s stamp is not the last word. Against any refusal of a French entry visa you must first appeal to the board that hears visa appeals, the commission de recours contre les décisions de refus de visa d’entrée en France, usually shortened to the CRV. Only after the board rules, expressly or by silence, may you go to court, and visa cases go to one court for the whole country: the administrative tribunal of Nantes, the tribunal administratif de Nantes, on appeal to the administrative appeal court of Nantes, the cour administrative d’appel de Nantes. Every decision cited in this guide reached the reader through that funnel, which is why Nantes case law is the working law of family visas.

The board’s decision replaces the consulate’s, and that substitution has a sharp procedural consequence. In the sister case, the family attacked the poor reasoning of the original consular refusal; the court replied that “la décision de la commission de recours contre les décisions de refus de visa d’entrée en France, statuant au terme d’un recours administratif préalable obligatoire, s’est substituée à la décision initiale de refus de visa prise par les autorités consulaires. En conséquence, le moyen soulevé est inopérant.” Attacking the consulate’s reasoning becomes pointless, and the board’s own reasoning, which states the facts and law it relies on, was held sufficiently reasoned. Do not waste your appeal re-litigating the form of the consular stamp. Aim everything at the board: full civil-status file, translations, proof of the family link, proof of dependency where relevant, dated evidence of every step taken before any deadline. The board decides on the papers, so the papers must contain the whole case.

The commonest substantive ground for refusing a family visa is doubt about identity and parentage: the consulate does not believe the birth or marriage certificates. The Nantes court accepts that “la délivrance d’un visa sollicité par une personne dont le regroupement familial a été autorisé peut être refusée, notamment, si les actes d’état civil produits ne sont pas probants”, and in the Haitian case before it, incoherencies between the documents justified the refusal despite a DNA test and arguments about possession of status and the child’s best interests. Read it here: CAA Nantes, 14 December 2018, No. 18NT00826. For British families this bites in very concrete situations: children born abroad whose births were never declared to the British authorities, surnames spelled differently across documents, dates in different calendars, divorces pronounced abroad whose finality is unclear, or a marriage certificate from a third country with no verifiable register. Rebuild the chain before filing: consistent spellings across every document, legalised or apostilled certificates with sworn French translations, foreign divorce judgments shown to be final and irrevocable, the other parent’s authenticated consent where required, and where parentage is genuinely undocumented, court-established filiation rather than a private DNA kit, which consulates and courts treat with visible scepticism.

Where the board confirms the refusal, the court action in Nantes should ask for more than annulment. The families in these cases asked the court to order issuance of the visa within a month under a daily penalty, the astreinte, typically 100 to 200 euros a day, or at least to order re-examination under penalty, plus costs. Judges grant such orders where the refusal was unlawful and the file is complete, so frame the claim accordingly: annulment plus injunction to issue, in the alternative injunction to re-examine, each under penalty, with a costs claim. Plead in this order: the board’s legal error on the applicable track, Brexit track or ordinary track; the factual errors on income, housing, dependency or documents, each tied to a dated exhibit; then Article 8, built on isolation, daily care and the children’s schooling, not on bare kinship. And mind the clock throughout: board appeal promptly after the consular refusal, court action promptly after the board, entry within three months of any visa eventually granted, online validation of the VLS-TS within three months of arrival, OFII medical without delay. In this field, procedure is substance wearing a grey suit: the families who win are the families whose papers arrive complete, translated, consistent and on time.

Conclusion

Bringing your spouse and children to France after Brexit means choosing the right door and then proving, on paper, that you meet its conditions. The standard door, family reunification, asks a British sponsor for eighteen months of lawful residence, twelve months of income at or above the SMIC average for the family size, a home of the legal surface in the right zone, and a file that runs from the OFII through the mayor to the prefect within six months. The Brexit door, for families whose story started before 1 January 2021, offers visas at no consular charge under an accelerated procedure on proof of the family link, but the cut-off is enforced to the day and pandemic excuses need dated proof. Refusals are not the end: the judge annuls prefects who deduct debts from lawful income or refuse homes on speculation, and the visa board and the Nantes court re-examine consular doubts about documents, provided your civil-status chain is consistent, translated and complete. Start early, keep everyone lawfully abroad while the file runs, and challenge the first unlawful refusal instead of letting deadlines harden around you.

Need a quick opinion on your case

If your spouse, partner or children are still in the United Kingdom or elsewhere abroad and you want them to join you in France, or if a prefect, a consulate or the visa appeals board has just refused your family, speak to a lawyer before the next deadline passes. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm, telephone consultation: 80 EUR TTC. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write via our contact page. We receive clients in Paris and across Île-de-France, as well as British families elsewhere in France.