You live in France on a British passport, and the person you love most cannot join you. Your wife is still in Manila, your husband is waiting in Algiers, your six-year-old daughter is staying with her grandmother in London while you work in Lyon. You filed the papers, the consulate stamped a refusal, or the prefecture has said nothing for months. Since Brexit made British citizens third-country nationals, bringing a non-British spouse or child to France follows rules that surprise many British families: your British residence permit alone does not open the door, a separate procedure must be completed before anyone boards a plane, and the wrong route means a refusal that could have been avoided. French law nevertheless gives you two structured routes and a full chain of appeals. This guide explains every French term the first time it appears, links every decisive statement to its official text, and shows you how judges actually decide these cases. Part I identifies which of the two routes fits your family: the Withdrawal Agreement family route, with its strict pre-2021 gate, or the ordinary regroupement familial (family reunification) procedure with its residence, income and housing tests. Part II walks you through the filing steps, the consulate visa stage and the medical examination, then through every remedy when the answer is no: the prefect, the visa appeals commission, the administrative court in Nantes and the fallback residence card for private and family life.

I. Which Legal Route Lets Your Spouse or Child Join You in France After Brexit

A. The Withdrawal Agreement Family Route Applies Only If the Link Predates 2021, and Judges Enforce That Gate Strictly

If you were settled in France before 31 December 2020, you keep residence rights under the Withdrawal Agreement, the treaty that organised Brexit, and those rights extend to certain family members who join you later. The French administration describes this route on its official service-public.fr page for British citizens: you are concerned, it states, if the family relationship existed before 1 January 2021 and you are a direct descendant under 21 or dependent on the British national, a dependent direct ascendant, a spouse, a partner in a long-term and duly documented relationship, or a dependent ascendant or descendant of the spouse, and a child born to or lawfully adopted by a beneficiary of the Withdrawal Agreement after 1 January 2021 also qualifies. The page adds that the family relationship must still exist when the residence permit is applied for, that the application must be filed with the préfecture (the local state authority headed by the prefect) within three months of entry into France, and that the card issued is valid for five years, or ten years where the holder has resided in France for more than five years. These cards are issued at no consular fee, and the implementing rules sit in decree number 2020-1417 of 19 November 2020 on the entry, residence, employment and social rights of foreign nationals benefiting from the agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom, presented on the official service-public.fr page for British citizens. For the narrow group that fits, this is by far the fastest and lightest route: no income threshold, no housing inspection, no OFII procedure. The difficulty is that most families reading this guide in 2026 will not fit, because the relationship or the steps were not in place before the cut-off, and the courts show no flexibility on that point.

The warning comes from a decision that reads like many British households. In a ruling delivered publicly on 29 October 2024, the administrative court of appeal of Nantes decided case number 23NT02446, concerning a British man resident in France since 2020 whose Algerian sister, for whom he had become legal guardian under an Algerian court judgment of 20 June 2019, applied at the French consulate in Algiers for a long-stay visa as the family member of a British beneficiary of the Withdrawal Agreement. The consulate refused on 9 November 2021 and the visa appeals commission confirmed the refusal on 2 March 2022. The full text is published at CAA Nantes, 29 October 2024, number 23NT02446. The court first recalled the decree: its article 3 covers the family member of a British national who exercised the right to reside in France before 1 January 2021 and continues to reside there afterwards, in the court’s quotation, a person who “a exercé le droit de résider en France avant le 1er janvier 2021 et continue à y résider par la suite, ou qui a engagé avant cette date les démarches pour le rejoindre”. It then held that no visa application had been filed for the sister before 1 January 2021, and it rejected the pandemic excuse in terms you should read carefully: although the family argued that the French consular services in Algeria had been closed from 17 March 2020 because of Covid-19, the minister proved that from 2 September 2020 it had again been possible to file long-stay visa applications in that country, in the court’s words, “il était possible de déposer dans ce pays des demandes de visa de long séjour ou d’établissement en France” from that date. The human-rights argument failed too. The sister suffered from a chronic illness and recognised disabilities, and her brother was her guardian, but the court observed that she was not isolated in Algeria, where she had always lived and where her mother and other siblings resided: “n’est pas isolée en Algérie, où elle a toujours vécu, et où résident sa mère et d’autres membres de sa fratrie”. The appeal was rejected in full, including the claim for a refund of the visa fees. Three practical lessons follow. First, the Withdrawal Agreement family route is a closed list with a procedural clock, not a general right to bring relatives at any time. Second, consulate closures and practical obstacles are judged against what was actually possible, month by month, so keep dated proof of every attempt. Third, guardianship or dependency alone does not carry the case under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private and family life, where the applicant retains a genuine family circle at home. If your relationship postdates 2021, or no step was taken before the cut-off, do not waste months on this route: the ordinary reunification procedure below is your real path.

One common confusion should be cleared up at once. French law gives the foreign spouse of a French citizen a one-year temporary card for private and family life almost as of right, provided the couple still live together, the French spouse has kept French nationality and, for marriages celebrated abroad, the marriage was transcribed onto French civil-status records, under article L. 423-1 of the CESEDA, the code governing entry and residence of foreigners and asylum. As a British sponsor you are not French, so this shortcut is closed to your spouse. Your route is either the Withdrawal Agreement family provisions above or the ordinary regroupement familial procedure, which is what the rest of this guide covers.

B. The Ordinary Regroupement Familial Procedure Tests Your Residence, Your Income and Your Home Before Anyone Travels

The ordinary procedure is called regroupement familial, literally family regrouping, and its logic is the reverse of what most people expect: the prefecture examines you first, the family applies for visas only afterwards. The sponsor conditions are set by article L. 434-2 of the CESEDA, which provides that a foreigner who has resided lawfully in France for at least eighteen months under a title valid for at least one year may apply for the right to be joined, and the code uses the phrase “peut demander à bénéficier de son droit à être rejoint, au titre du regroupement familial”, by a spouse aged at least eighteen and by the couple’s children under eighteen: “1° Par son conjoint, si ce dernier est âgé d’au moins dix-huit ans ; 2° Et par les enfants du couple mineurs de dix-huit ans”. Your British status changes nothing here except that you must count eighteen months of lawful residence under qualifying titles: a Withdrawal Agreement card, a multi-year card or a temporary card valid for at least a year all count, and the administration also accepts combinations including long-stay visas and renewal receipts for building up the eighteen months, as the official service-public.fr page on family reunification details. The same chapter extends the circle carefully. Article L. 434-1 adds that regrouping is requested for all the persons named in the following articles but that partial regrouping may be authorised where the children’s interests so require: “Un regroupement partiel peut toutefois être autorisé pour des motifs tenant à l’intérêt des enfants”. Articles L. 434-3 to L. 434-5 cover the children of one spouse only, where parentage is established solely on one side, where the other parent has died or lost parental rights, or where custody was awarded by a foreign court decision with the other parent’s written consent, and adopted children subject to verification of the foreign adoption by the public prosecutor. Three bars close the door: a family member who would threaten public order, one suffering from a disease listed in the international health regulations, or one already living in France, under article L. 434-6. Polygamy is dealt with bluntly in article L. 434-9: a foreigner living in France with a first spouse cannot obtain regrouping for a second spouse, and a residence card obtained by a second spouse is refused or withdrawn.

The two tests that defeat most applications are money and housing, and both are arithmetic, which is good news because arithmetic can be prepared and challenged. Article L. 434-7 requires stable and sufficient resources to support the family and a dwelling considered normal for a comparable family in the same area, in the code’s words: “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”. The implementing figures sit in article R. 434-4: resources are assessed over the twelve months before the application by reference to the monthly average of the Smic, the statutory minimum wage, and they are sufficient at that average for a family of two or three, the average plus one tenth for four or five people, and the average plus one fifth for six or more. The official service-public.fr page translates this into current euros: 1,867.02 euros monthly average for two or three people, 2,053.72 euros for four or five, and 2,240.42 euros for six or more, counting wages, self-employment income, investment returns and pensions of both spouses where they will continue, but excluding family benefits, the RSA minimum income, the old-age solidarity allowance and similar minimum-income benefits. A narrow exemption exists for recipients of the disabled adult allowance and, for applicants over sixty-five with twenty-five years of residence and ten years of marriage, for a spouse application. Housing is measured in square metres by article R. 434-5: in zones A bis and A, which include Paris and much of Île-de-France, 22 square metres for a childless household or two people plus 10 square metres per additional person up to eight and 5 beyond, in the text’s words “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”, with 24 square metres as the base in zones B1 and B2 and 28 in zone C, plus decency, health and equipment standards. The maire, the mayor of your commune, verifies the dwelling and the prefecture decides; the mayor’s opinion is deemed given after two months without reply, under article L. 434-10, which states “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”. Keep payslips for the full twelve-month window, keep the lease and floor-area evidence, and photograph the dwelling: every missing month and every missing metre becomes a ground for refusal.

Judges check this arithmetic themselves, and the prefecture’s sums do not always survive. In CAA Bordeaux, 21 February 2023, number 22BX01053, a resident mother sought regrouping for her husband, the prefecture of Gironde refused first on housing grounds, then substituted a resources ground in its defence, and the administrative court of Bordeaux upheld the refusal. The court of appeal reversed everything. It adopted the lower court’s finding that the housing-based refusal rested on an error of law, then recomputed the resources from the payslips for June 2019 to May 2020: a total of 16,057.58 euros, in the court’s figures “une somme globale de 16 057,58 euros, soit une moyenne mensuelle de 1 338 euros”, against a required minimum-wage average plus ten per cent for the family size of 1,331.20 euros, “la moyenne mensuelle du salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance sur la même période majorée de 10% pour tenir compte de la composition de la famille, s’élève à 1 331,20 euros”. The margin was under seven euros a month, yet it was enough: the refusal ground was vitiated by an error of fact, “le motif de refus de sa demande de regroupement familial tiré de ce qu’elle ne justifie pas de ressources suffisantes est entaché d’une erreur de fait”, both decisions were annulled and the prefecture was ordered to re-examine the file and decide afresh within three months. The lesson for a British sponsor is concrete: file twelve complete monthly payslips, compute your own average against the R. 434-4 thresholds before applying, and if the prefecture refuses on resources, have the figures rechecked euro by euro, because courts annul on a few euros’ difference. The same judgment shows the prefecture may substitute a new ground late in the proceedings, so answer every possible ground from the start rather than only the one stated in the refusal letter.

II. How to File the Application and Challenge a Refusal or a Blocked Visa

A. File With the Prefect First, Then Send Your Family to the Consulate, and Mind Every Deadline in Between

The sequence matters more than anything: prefecture first, consulate second, travel last. You file the regrouping application with the prefecture of your home, increasingly online through the ANEF foreigners’ digital administration, attaching civil-status documents, twelve months of income proof, the lease with floor area, and, for children of one spouse only, the custody judgment and the other parent’s consent. The mayor checks the dwelling, the prefecture has six months to answer, and silence for six months counts as an implied refusal, a refus implicite, as the official service-public.fr guide to family reunification confirms. If the answer is yes, you receive an attestation de dépôt, a filing certificate, which you send with the civil-status documents to your family abroad. Your spouse then applies without delay to the French consulate for a long-stay visa serving as residence permit, the VLS-TS, because article L. 312-2 requires anyone planning a stay over three months to seek a long-stay visa from the French diplomatic and consular authorities, and article L. 411-1 and article L. 412-1 make a first residence card conditional on that visa. The same official guide states that the family must enter France within three months of the visas being issued, at their own travel cost, and the spouse must validate the VLS-TS online within three months of arrival and pay the corresponding fee. Minor children travel on a family-reunification visa. After arrival comes the OFII medical examination, run by the French office for immigration and integration: the official page states the family will undergo the examination once in France, possibly in the country of origin where the OFII has representation, and that the medical certificate issued at the end is essential to obtain the residence permit. Only then does the prefecture issue the residence card, mirroring yours: where you hold a one-year temporary card, spouse and adult children apply for a one-year private-and-family-life temporary card within two months of arrival. For Withdrawal Agreement joiners the chain is shorter, as seen above: entry, then a prefecture application within three months with passport, proof of the family link predating 1 January 2021, proof of residence, your own Withdrawal Agreement card and, for dependent adult children and ascendants, proof of dependency, leading to the five-year or ten-year card.

Two practical points specific to Paris and Île-de-France deserve emphasis, because that is where most British sponsors file. First, in Paris applications go to the préfecture de police rather than an ordinary prefecture, and in the inner suburbs to the prefectures of Nanterre, Bobigny and Créteil, each with its own online booking and ANEF routing: check the prefecture website before queuing, because a file lodged at the wrong counter loses weeks. Second, the OFII territorial directorate for Paris handles large volumes, so book the medical examination the day the family arrives and keep the convocation safe: without the OFII certificate the residence card cannot be issued, and prefectures in Île-de-France apply that requirement strictly. Dwellings in Paris fall in zones A bis or A, so apply the 22-square-metre base plus 10 per extra person when choosing or declaring the flat, and remember that a quittance de loyer, the rent receipt, plus the lease and a recent utility bill form the standard proof bundle. If you are posted outside Paris but the family will live in Île-de-France, the mayor consulted is the mayor of the commune where you will settle, so align the lease address with the application from day one. Readers who need the wider visa picture, including short-stay and long-stay categories beyond family cases, can use our guide for British newcomers on French long-stay visas, residence cards and challenging a refusal or removal order alongside this family-specific procedure.

B. Challenge Every Refusal in the Right Order, Before the Right Body, and Keep the Private-Life Fallback Ready

A refusal is the start of a procedure, not the end of the story, but the order of remedies is strict and the clocks are short. Against the prefecture’s refusal of regrouping, which must be reasoned, you may file a recours gracieux, an informal appeal to the authority that decided, or a recours hiérarchique to the Minister of the Interior, and you may also go to the locally competent administrative court. The general time limit for court action against an administrative decision is two months from notification, under article R. 421-1 of the administrative justice code: “La juridiction 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”. File the court action even while the informal appeal is pending if the two months are running, because an informal appeal extends the clock only where it was filed within the initial two months. Against the consulate’s visa refusal the chain is different and mandatory. Article D. 312-3 creates a commission attached to the foreign and interior ministers to hear administrative appeals against long-stay visa refusals, and it warns that applying to it is a compulsory first step before any court action, “est un préalable obligatoire à l’exercice d’un recours contentieux, à peine d’irrecevabilité de ce dernier”, meaning a direct court application without it will be thrown out as inadmissible. Article D. 312-4 sets thirty days from notification to file: “doivent être formés dans un délai de trente jours à compter de la notification de la décision de refus de visa”. The commission, known as the CCRV or CRRV appeals commission, sits in Nantes, examines the file on the papers, and may reject, dismiss summarily through its president where the appeal is plainly inadmissible or ill-founded, or recommend that the ministers grant the visa. If it rejects, or the ministers maintain the refusal against its favourable opinion, you have two months to seek annulment before the administrative court of Nantes, which has exclusive jurisdiction over entry-visa refusals, as the official service-public.fr long-stay visa guide confirms, which gives the deadline as two months before the Administrative Court of Nantes. Write the commission appeal in French, sign it, send it by recorded post with every supporting document, and keep the acknowledgement: dating proof decides admissibility.

Courts do more than annul: they order visas issued. In CAA Nantes, 19 November 2024, number 23NT01530, a Malian father had obtained regrouping authorisation for his wife and four children, the visa commission refused long-stay visas including for an older alleged child, and the administrative court of Nantes annulled the refusal for the wife and four children, ordering the Minister of the Interior to issue those visas within two months of notification, while rejecting the claim for the older child. On appeal the court of appeal found the lower judgment defective for failing to answer the plea of manifest error of assessment, annulled it in part and took the case over itself through évocation, the power to decide the merits directly. The details matter less than the structure this reveals: the Nantes court routinely couples annulment with an injunction to deliver the visas on a two-month timetable, and it scrutinises the reality and sincerity of family links child by child. For your file this means individualised proof per person: marriage certificate with translation and legalisation or apostille, birth certificates showing the chain of parentage, evidence of genuine cohabitation or support, and, for older or stepchildren, dependency transfers and the custody paperwork from section I. When the commission’s reasoning is thin, plead insufficient reasoning and lack of individual examination alongside the merits, because a reasoning defect can carry the annulment even where the merits are contested.

Keep one fallback card ready from the start: the one-year temporary card for private and family life under article L. 423-23, available to a foreigner outside the standard categories whose personal and family ties in France are such that refusing residence would disproportionately breach the right to private and family life, in the code’s formulation where “le refus d’autoriser son séjour porterait à son droit au respect de sa vie privée et familiale une atteinte disproportionnée au regard des motifs du refus”, assessed on intensity, age and stability of ties, living conditions, integration including knowledge of republican values, and remaining ties abroad. In CAA Bordeaux, 4 July 2023, number 23BX00350, the prefect of Guadeloupe refused to renew a mother’s card, ordered her to leave within thirty days and argued the family could rebuild in Dominica; the lower court annulled and ordered a private-and-family-life card, and the court of appeal upheld it, finding that although she kept ties abroad she had the essential part of her attachments in France, “elle démontre néanmoins avoir l’essentiel de ses attaches en France, où résident, outre ses enfants et son compagnon, une partie de sa fratrie et ses grands-parents, et où elle résidait elle-même depuis douze ans”, with detailed testimony of the couple’s integration, and it added a penalty of 50 euros per day of delay beyond two months: “L’injonction prononcée par le tribunal administratif de la Guadeloupe est assortie d’une astreinte de 50 euros par jour de retard dans un délai de deux mois suivant la notification du présent arrêt”. Use this route where regrouping is structurally unavailable, for instance for a durable partner who is neither spouse nor covered by the Withdrawal Agreement list, or for a family member already in France whose removal is threatened: build the ties file in parallel with the main application, with dated evidence of cohabitation, schooling, language learning, community involvement and financial interdependence, because proportionality is proved with documents, not adjectives. And note the honest limit the case law sets: where the applicant’s core family life remains abroad, as with the sister in the Nantes Withdrawal Agreement case, article 8 arguments fail, so assess coldly before spending a year litigating.

Conclusion

Bringing your spouse or child to France after Brexit is a two-gate system, and your first job is to choose the right gate. If the family link predates 1 January 2021 and you are a Withdrawal Agreement beneficiary, use the family route with its three-month filing clock and five-year card, but heed the Nantes precedent: without a pre-2021 step, that gate is shut and no pandemic or hardship narrative reopens it. Otherwise, build the ordinary regrouping file as an accountant would: eighteen months of residence, twelve months of income at or above the Smic-based threshold for your household size, a dwelling meeting the square-metre scale for its zone, and a custody paper trail for every child who is not the child of both spouses. File with the prefecture first, send the family to the consulate only with the filing certificate, secure entry within three months of the visas, validate the VLS-TS online, and complete the OFII medical examination without which no card issues. When refusal comes, respect the clocks that decide everything: thirty days for the visa appeals commission before any court action, two months for the administrative court of Nantes on visas and for the local administrative court on prefectural decisions, and a reasoned, French-language, recorded-delivery paper trail at every stage. Plead each family member individually, keep the private-and-family-life fallback documented from day one, and measure article 8 arguments against where the family’s real centre of life lies. Done in this order, with figures checked to the euro and deadlines diarised to the day, a British family’s reunification file is not a plea for goodwill but a case a judge can grant.