Your life is in France and your family is still in Britain, or half of your children are with you in Lyon while the elder two remain in Manchester with their grandparents. Since Brexit turned every British citizen into a third-country national, there is no automatic right to be joined by a spouse or a child: the route depends entirely on dates. If the family link already existed on 31 December 2020 and the British sponsor was settled in France before that day, the spouse, partner or child may still walk through the door left open by the Withdrawal Agreement, with a free residence card and no income test. Everyone else must use the standard French procedure called regroupement familial, family reunification, where the préfet, the state representative in your département (administrative county), grants or refuses permission after checking your length of stay, your income and your flat. Both routes end in the same place when things go wrong: a reasoned refusal from the préfet, or silence that counts as a refusal, challenged before the tribunal administratif, the administrative court. This guide explains which door is yours, what each one demands in pounds-and-pence detail, and how judges in Paris, Melun and Val-de-Marne cases actually decide.
I. Which door is yours: joining a Briton under the Withdrawal Agreement or applying for French regroupement familial
A. “My husband was living in France before 2021, can I simply join him?”
If your British spouse, parent or child was lawfully settled in France before 31 December 2020 and holds a Withdrawal Agreement residence card, you may be what the French administration calls a family member joining a beneficiary of the accord de retrait, the Withdrawal Agreement. The official service-public guidance lists exactly who is concerned: the family link must have existed before 1 January 2021, and you must be a direct descendant under 21 (or still dependent on the Briton you are joining), a dependent direct ascendant, a spouse, a partner in a duly attested durable relationship, or a dependent ascendant or descendant of that spouse, plus any child born to or legally adopted by the beneficiary after 1 January 2021. One condition is absolute throughout: the family link must still exist on the day the residence card is applied for, so a divorced spouse or a dissolved partnership loses the route.
The procedure is strikingly lighter than ordinary immigration. You file at the préfecture (local state authority office) or sous-préfecture of your French home, and the application must be made within three months of entering France, or, for a child reaching adulthood, during the year after the eighteenth birthday. Bring a valid passport, three photographs, proof of the family link or attested partnership with the British beneficiary, proof of your current French address, the beneficiary’s own Withdrawal Agreement card, and, only for over-21 children and for parents, evidence that the Briton actually maintains you. The card itself is free, valid for five years, and valid for ten years once you have five years of residence behind you. There is no income threshold, no housing inspection and no OFII medical queue at this stage, which is why establishing that the link predates 2021 is worth more than any pay slip. A family that married in 2019 where the husband moved to Bordeaux in 2020 uses this door; a couple that met in 2022 does not, and must read the next section instead.
Do not confuse this route with two neighbours. If your spouse is French rather than British, a different regime for family members of French nationals applies, with its own consular visa logic. And if you are the Briton yourself wondering about your own card, renewal and travel on an expired Withdrawal Agreement card are a separate subject, covered in our guide to renewing your Withdrawal Agreement residence permit and challenging a refusal. Here, you are the sponsor already in place, and the question is who may lawfully come and live with you.
B. “I arrived after 2021, how do I bring my spouse and children to live with me?”
Every British sponsor who settled in France on or after 1 January 2021 is outside the Withdrawal Agreement, and the family must come through regroupement familial. The statute opens the door in one sentence that contains the first lock: “L’étranger qui séjourne régulièrement en France depuis au moins dix-huit mois, sous couvert d’un des titres d’une durée de validité d’au moins un an prévus par le présent code ou par des conventions internationales, peut demander à bénéficier de son droit à être rejoint, au titre du regroupement familial” (Article L434-2 of the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile, the Code on the entry and residence of foreign nationals, usually shortened to CESEDA). Eighteen months of lawful residence under a title valid for at least a year, which in practice means a carte de séjour pluriannuelle (multi-year card), a one-year carte de séjour temporaire (temporary card), a ten-year carte de résident (resident card), or the renewal receipt for one of those, as Article R434-1 of the same Code confirms. A British retiree on a visitor card or an employee on a multi-year talent card counts once the eighteen months are done; a student on short permits or anyone still inside the first year does not, and applying early is the commonest way to waste a year.
The second lock is who may be joined. The spouse must be at least eighteen, and the children must be the couple’s minor children under eighteen. Children of only one spouse qualify in two narrow cases set by Article L434-3: filiation established solely towards the applicant or the spouse, or the other parent dead or stripped of parental rights. Where custody comes from a foreign court decision, Article L434-4 demands both the decision and the other parent’s written permission for the child to come to France, and Article L434-5 requires legally established filiation, including adoption, with a regularity check by the ministère public (public prosecutor) when the adoption was pronounced abroad. A British father in France with sole custody ordered by an English court therefore prepares the sealed order plus the mother’s consent letter before anything else, because without them the file never leaves the desk.
The third lock is the triple condition of Article L434-7, and each word has been litigated: “Il justifie de ressources stables et suffisantes pour subvenir aux besoins de sa famille” (stable and sufficient resources to maintain the family); “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” (a dwelling regarded as normal for a comparable family in the same area, held now or by arrival day); “Il se conforme aux principes essentiels qui, conformément aux lois de la République, régissent la vie familiale en France, pays d’accueil” (respect for the essential principles governing family life in France). Three members are excluded outright by Article L434-6: anyone whose presence would threaten public order, anyone with a disease listed in the International Health Regulations, and anyone already living in France, which kills the popular shortcut of bringing the family over on a visit and regularising afterwards. Finally, note the whole-family rule of Article L434-1: “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.” Apply for everyone at once, and if you want to leave one child behind temporarily, explain in writing why the child’s own interest requires it.
II. Winning the préfet’s yes and overturning a refusal
A. How much income, how large a flat: the file that survives the maire and the OFII
The application goes to the OFII, the Office français de l’immigration et de l’intégration (French office for immigration and integration), online or by registered post, and a complete file earns a récépissé de dépôt, a filing receipt whose date starts every clock in the procedure. From that receipt, your spouse applies without delay for a long-stay visa at the French consulate in London, and the family must enter France within three months of the visas being issued, at its own expense. The OFII sends the file to the maire (mayor) of your commune, who checks income and housing, may send authorised officers to visit the flat, and, where you do not yet hold the dwelling, verifies the promised accommodation on papers through the official housing-availability certificate. The mayor then has two months to give a reasoned opinion, and silence helps you: “Cet avis est réputé rendu à l’expiration d’un délai de deux mois à compter de la communication du dossier par l’autorité administrative” (Article L434-10), the opinion is deemed given when the two months expire. The file returns through the OFII to the préfet of your département, who decides.
On money, the statute counts everything except what it expressly throws out. “toutes les ressources du demandeur et de son conjoint sont prises en compte”, so all resources of the applicant and spouse count, apart from family benefits and the listed social minima, and the total “doit être au moins égal au salaire minimum de croissance mensuel et au plus égal à ce salaire majoré d’un cinquième”, must reach at least the monthly minimum wage (SMIC) and at most that wage plus one fifth (Article L434-8). The implementing table of Article R434-4 fixes the bar precisely: “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”, measured as the monthly average of the SMIC over the previous twelve months, counting only resources that will stably feed the family budget. British sponsors fail here in three classic ways: counting UK rental income that stopped when they moved, counting a bonus or overtime as stable, or counting family benefits that the statute excludes. Payslips for twelve months, the employment contract, and, for the self-employed, a full year of accounts beat any letter promising a rise.
On housing, Paris-region sponsors face the strictest surface table in France, because Paris sits in zone A bis. Article R434-5 provides that “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”, plus decency, health and equipment standards, with higher starting points of 24 m² in zones B1 and B2 and 28 m² in zone C. A couple with two children joining in Paris therefore needs 52 m² of surface habitable, habitable floor area, and that adjective does real damage: loggias, drying rooms and unconverted cellars do not count. In Paris, practical points matter as much as metres: the file goes to the préfecture de police rather than an ordinary préfecture, the OFII delegation for Île-de-France handles the investigation, home visits are routine in small flats, and a lease that states a headline area including a loggia should be accompanied by the habitable-area calculation from the outset, because the administration will recompute it anyway.
After arrival, the conveyor belt is short but unforgiving. The spouse validates the long-stay visa online within three months, which acts as the first year’s residence right, the family undergoes the OFII medical examination, and minor children enter on a family-reunification visa with no card until majority, or sixteen if they want to work. The spouse then takes a one-year carte de séjour temporaire vie privée et familiale (private and family life card), or a ten-year carte de résident where the sponsor holds one. Children born in France after all this are a different chapter, governed by nationality rules rather than immigration, explained in our guide to children born in France to British parents and their French and British nationality. And for British readers comparing with the reverse journey, the United Kingdom now runs its own mirror test: the partner-visa guidance sets a minimum income requirement of £29,000 a year of combined income, reduced to £18,600 for applicants who first applied before 11 April 2024 and are extending their stay (GOV.UK, financial requirements for partners). France has no single headline figure, but the SMIC-anchored table above is its functional equivalent.
B. Refusal, silence and the tribunal: how to challenge a no and what judges really check
The préfet must notify the decision within six months of the complete file reaching the OFII, with reasons if it is a refusal, and silence for six months counts as an implicit refusal that can be challenged exactly like a written one. Two clocks then run side by side. First, the administrative appeal, the recours gracieux before the préfet or the Minister of the Interior, which costs nothing and sometimes extracts a re-examination. Second, the court action before the tribunal administratif, which “ne peut être saisie que par voie de recours formé contre une décision, et ce, dans les deux mois à partir de la notification ou de la publication de la décision attaquée” (Article R421-1 of the Code de justice administrative, the administrative justice code). Two months from notification, not from when you feel ready, and for an implicit refusal the two months run from the day the silence turns into a refusal, so diary the six-month date the day you receive the filing receipt. A lawyer’s first reflex on any refusal is therefore calendar before merits: identify the exact notification date, check whether the recours gracieux extends the court deadline, and file the tribunal claim inside the window even while negotiating.
On the merits, courts check motivation first and substance second, and a recent Paris case shows the standard. In CAA Paris, 28 May 2026, no. 25PA05762, a father sought reunification for his two eldest daughters and attacked the Val-de-Marne refusal as unreasoned. The court answered that the decision named the statute and the failed conditions, adding that “après examen de l’ensemble des éléments du dossier l’autorité administrative a décidé de rejeter la demande”, after examining the whole file the administration decided to reject, so “la décision en litige est suffisamment motivée”, the decision was sufficiently reasoned (CAA Paris 28 May 2026, no. 25PA05762). The lesson for sponsors is blunt: a refusal that cites L434-7, states the missing income or metres, and shows an overall examination survives the motivation attack, so save that argument for refusals that are genuinely bare, and build the real fight on the facts.
The facts fight is usually the flat. In an October 2025 Paris judgment the court recalled that for a spouse and five children “la surface minimale du logement doit, en vertu des dispositions précitées de l’article R. 434-5 du code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile, être au moins égale à 72 m²”, and upheld the refusal where “l’Office français de l’immigration et de l’intégration a constaté que la surface du logement du requérant situé à Créteil de 63 m² était insuffisante pour accueillir une famille de sept personnes” (CAA Paris 15 October 2025, no. 25PA00527). The May 2026 case applies the same method through Article L434-7 and the R434-5 table: a lease announcing 76 m² left only 67 m² of habitable area once the loggia and drying room were stripped out, below the 72 m² required for seven people. Measure your own flat the way the court will: habitable area only, count every person who will live there including yourself, apply the zone table, and if you fall short by a few metres, move or document a larger dwelling before filing rather than hoping the maire rounds up.
The last line of defence is fundamental rights, and here honesty matters more than hope. Article 8 of the European Convention protects everyone’s right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence, but its second paragraph allows interference that is provided by law and necessary in a democratic society. French courts balance concretely: in the May 2026 case the father had lived in France since 1994, his wife had held a French title since 2020, and the two daughters, then 18 and 16, had “toujours vécu éloignées de leur père”, always lived apart from him, so the refusal did not rupture a lived family life. The argument runs strongest where separation is recent and suffered, where young children are involved, and where the sponsor shows steady presence, schooling plans and real ties; it runs weakest as an abstract plea after decades of distance. Plead it always, since the préfet must examine the whole situation including the children’s best interests, but never as a substitute for the missing metres or the missing euros, because the court will check those first and they decide most cases.
Conclusion
Bringing a spouse or children to France after Brexit means choosing the right door and then proving you deserve to walk through it. A family link that predates 2021 with a British sponsor settled before that date opens the Withdrawal Agreement route: a free card, applied for within three months of entry, with no income or housing test. Everyone else files for regroupement familial after eighteen months of lawful residence, for the whole family at once, and must clear the three locks of resources, housing and family principles, with the SMIC-anchored income table and the zone-based surface table doing most of the deciding. File through the OFII, watch the mayor’s two months and the préfet’s six, and treat silence at six months as the refusal it legally is. If the answer is no, check the calendar before the merits, file the tribunal claim inside two months, attack thin motivation where it exists, re-measure the flat the way the court measures it, and plead family life with concrete facts rather than slogans. Prepared this way, a British family’s reunification stops being a wait and becomes a file the administration can say yes to.