Since Brexit, a British national who shares their life with a partner in France often assumes that signing a pacte civil de solidarité (PACS, the French civil partnership) will sort out their immigration status at the same time as their family status. It does not. The PACS organises your life as a couple; it does not, by itself, give you the right to live in France. A spouse of a French citizen receives a one-year carte de séjour (residence permit) marked vie privée et familiale (private and family life) almost as of right once three short conditions are met. A PACS partner, British or otherwise, gets no such guarantee: the préfet (the State’s representative in the department, who decides on residence permits) examines the reality, duration and stability of your shared life, and refusals are common. The refusal letter frequently arrives stapled to an obligation de quitter le territoire français (OQTF, the order to leave France), typically giving you thirty days to depart voluntarily. That combination feels final, but the administrative courts regularly annul it. In two recent appeal rulings, couples who had signed a PACS saw the refusal and the removal order cancelled because the administration had ignored the genuine shared life proved by leases, insurance papers and witness statements. This guide explains, for a British reader, how to register a PACS that will withstand scrutiny, how the préfet assesses your application for a vie privée et familiale card, and how to challenge a refusal and an OQTF before the tribunal administratif (administrative court).

I. The PACS Protects the Couple, Not the Right to Stay: Registering Properly as a British Partner

A. How a British National Signs a PACS That the Administration Will Take Seriously

A PACS is, in the words of article 515-1 of the Civil Code, “Un pacte civil de solidarité est un contrat conclu par deux personnes physiques majeures, de sexe différent ou de même sexe, pour organiser leur vie commune.” It is a contract between two adults, of different sexes or the same sex, organising their life together. It suits many British couples in France: it creates a shared household, a duty of mutual material assistance and, unless the partners agree otherwise, joint ownership of property bought after registration. It does not create a right to a surname change, a right to remain, or the inheritance position of a spouse.

Registration happens, under article 515-3 of the Civil Code, by joint declaration before the officier de l’état civil (civil registrar) of the municipality where the couple sets their shared residence: “Les personnes qui concluent un pacte civil de solidarité en font la déclaration conjointe devant l’officier de l’état civil de la commune dans laquelle elles fixent leur résidence commune”. In practice you attend the mairie (town hall) together with your signed convention (the written agreement organising your life together) and your identity documents. The town hall registers the PACS for no registration fee; a notaire (a public-officer lawyer who authenticates deeds) can also register it but charges for the service. If you both live outside France, registration goes through the embassy or consulate instead.

Where one partner is British, the official guidance on the service-public.fr page on getting PACsed adds three points that cause most rejected or delayed files. First, the foreign partner must have reached the age of majority as fixed by their own national law, which for a Briton means eighteen. Second, the foreign partner must produce a certificat de coutume, a certificate issued by the competent authorities or the diplomatic representation of the foreign country describing the relevant foreign law; where the country of origin does not issue one, an attestation from its competent authorities saying so must be supplied instead. British partners should therefore ask the mairie early exactly which document it expects on capacity and marital status, and allow time for a sworn translation. Third, the file must include a birth certificate showing parentage, and the guidance requires an extract showing parentage less than three months old at the date of registration for applicants whose birth is centrally registered. A British birth certificate will need to be recent, complete and, in most town halls, accompanied by a translation from a traducteur assermenté (sworn translator). None of this is residence paperwork, but prefectures later read the PACS file as the first chapter of your story: a PACS registered promptly, at the town hall of your genuine shared address, with clean paperwork, starts your evidence trail on the right date.

Two configurations matter enormously and are often confused. If your partner is French, your PACS feeds directly into the family route described below. If you are two Britons signing a PACS together in France, the PACS still organises your property and mutual obligations, but neither of you gains any residence advantage from the other’s status: each of you must independently qualify for a card, whether as a worker, student, visitor with sufficient resources, or on family grounds of your own. The arrival pillar for newcomers, the long-stay visa and first carte de séjour guide, covers those standalone routes, and the marriage route, with its self-declaration and its bans, is explained in the guide to getting married in France after Brexit. Choose the PACS with open eyes: it is the lighter, faster union, and precisely for that reason the immigration reward is smaller and must be earned with proof.

B. Why the PACS Alone Gives No Residence Card, and What the Préfet Actually Weighs

The decisive sentence of the official guidance, on the service-public.fr page on private and family ties, explains that being PACsed creates no automatic entitlement to a vie privée et familiale card, though the PACS is taken into account when assessing personal ties in France. Being PACsed does not give an automatic right to a vie privée et familiale card, but the PACS counts as one factor in assessing your personal ties in France. That single distinction explains most refusals: couples file the PACS certificate as though it were a marriage certificate, and the prefecture answers that a certificate of union is not a certificate of shared life.

The contrast with marriage is written into the statute. Under article L. 423-1 of the CESEDA (the Code on the entry and residence of foreigners and asylum, France’s immigration code), “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.” A foreigner married to a French citizen is issued the one-year card once the couple still live together, the spouse is still French, and any foreign marriage has been transcribed into the French civil registers. Three boxes, ticked or not: that is a right. The PACS partner has no equivalent paragraph. Their application is examined under article L. 423-23 of the CESEDA, the general family-ties provision: “L’étranger qui n’entre pas dans les catégories prévues aux articles L. 423-1, L. 423-7, L. 423-14, L. 423-15, L. 423-21 et L. 423-22 ou dans celles qui ouvrent droit au regroupement familial, et qui dispose de liens personnels et familiaux en France tels que 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, se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention ” vie privée et familiale ” d’une durée d’un an, sans que soit opposable la condition prévue à l’article L. 412-1.” In plain terms: if refusing your stay would disproportionately harm your right to private and family life, you get the one-year card, and the usual requirement to have entered with a long-stay visa cannot be held against you. The same paragraph tells the prefecture what to weigh: “Les liens mentionnés au premier alinéa sont appréciés notamment au regard de leur intensité, de leur ancienneté et de leur stabilité, des conditions d’existence de l’étranger, de son insertion dans la société française ainsi que de la nature de ses liens avec sa famille restée dans son pays d’origine.” Intensity, age and stability of the ties, your living conditions, your integration into French society, and the nature of your links with family left in your home country. It adds that integration is assessed with regard to knowledge of the values of the Republic, which is why prefectures increasingly note French classes, community involvement and knowledge of everyday civic life.

For a British partner this framework has one practical consequence that dominates every file: time and paper matter more than the ceremony. Prefectures commonly look for around a year of genuine shared life in France before a PACS-based application looks credible, and they count the common life, not the PACS anniversary. A PACS signed last month after six weeks of cohabitation will almost always fail, while a PACS signed last month after two years under the same roof, proved month by month, can succeed. The two court rulings examined in Part II both turn on exactly this point: judges counted the shared life that predated the PACS signature. So do not wait for the PACS to start collecting evidence. From the first day you live together, put both names on the lease or the taxe d’habitation (the local residence tax) where possible, take out home insurance naming both partners, keep electricity and internet bills showing the shared address, file your French tax returns from that address, and keep dated photographs, travel bookings and statements from friends, neighbours and employers. The service-public.fr page on the vie privée et familiale card confirms the method: proof by any means of genuine and ongoing relationships with family members settled in France, expressly including a cohabiting partner or PACS partner. Proof by any means is an invitation, not a relaxation: the more independent the document, the heavier it weighs. A joint lease and a home-insurance certificate naming both partners outweigh ten affectionate letters from friends, and an official paper beats a private one every time.

One further warning belongs here, because it surprises British couples. The PACS can be dissolved far more easily than a marriage, and dissolution destroys the foundation of your card. Under article 515-7 of the Civil Code, “Le pacte civil de solidarité se dissout par la mort de l’un des partenaires ou par le mariage des partenaires ou de l’un d’eux”, and “Le pacte civil de solidarité se dissout également par déclaration conjointe des partenaires ou décision unilatérale de l’un d’eux.” Death, marriage, joint declaration or even a unilateral decision ends it. If your relationship ends, expect the renewal of your card to be refused; if it deepens into marriage, your position actually improves, because you move into the as-of-right protection of article L. 423-1. Couples who PACS first and marry later often find that sequence ideal: the PACS organises the household immediately, the marriage then locks in the residence right.

II. From the PACS to the Card: Building the File and Defeating a Refusal

A. Assembling a File That Proves a Genuine, Continuous Shared Life

Applications are now filed online through the ANEF portal (the digital administration for foreigners in France), and the prefecture issues a récépissé (receipt) while it examines your case. Treat the upload as a trial bundle, because that is what it becomes if you must appeal. The prefecture’s caseworker will look for three things in this order: that you live together now, that you have lived together continuously for a significant period, and that your life in France is real beyond the couple itself.

Start with the roof over your heads. The strongest single page in many successful files is a home-insurance certificate (attestation d’assurance habitation) naming both partners as beneficiaries at the same address, ideally going back months or years. In the Nancy appeal ruling discussed below, it was precisely an attestation d’assurance de responsabilité civile dated 11 September 2020, naming both partners, that proved the shared life predating a PACS signed on 12 January 2021, where a family-benefits declaration and bank transfers had failed to convince. Add the lease or title deeds showing both names, successive electricity, gas and internet bills at the same address, the taxe d’habitation or taxe foncière notices (local residence and property taxes), and your French income-tax notices (avis d’imposition) sent to that address. For a Briton who arrived recently, the earlier documents may legitimately be English: keep the UK tenancy showing you both at a British address, the Eurotunnel or ferry bookings, the removal invoice, and the first French papers in sequence. A gap in the chain is where refusals are born, so annotate the timeline in a one-page covering note that walks the caseworker from the start of the relationship to the PACS signature to today.

Next, prove integration, because article L. 423-23 expressly requires it. Enrol in French classes and keep the certificates and attendance records; join a local association, a sports club or a parents’ association and keep the membership cards; register with a médecin traitant (your nominated GP in the French health system) and keep the registration; collect attestations from your employer, colleagues, neighbours and friends describing your everyday life in France, each with a copy of the writer’s identity document. The Paris appeal court gave explicit weight to such testimony about the applicant’s integration into French society. Do not apologise for not working if you have no work authorisation: the same court held that unemployment cannot be held against an applicant who holds no permit allowing them to work. What the administration may legitimately examine is whether you live on stable means or on precarious arrangements, so include bank statements, your partner’s payslips, and any evidence that the household stands on its own feet.

If your stay is irregular or your history is complicated, plead the fallback expressly. Article L. 435-1 of the CESEDA allows admission on an exceptional basis: “L’étranger dont l’admission au séjour répond à des considérations humanitaires ou se justifie au regard des motifs exceptionnels qu’il fait valoir peut se voir délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention ” salarié “, ” travailleur temporaire ” ou ” vie privée et familiale “, sans que soit opposable la condition prévue à l’article L. 412-1.” Humanitarian considerations or exceptional reasons can justify the same card, again without the long-stay visa condition being held against you. Ask for it in the alternative in your covering letter, and if you have lived in France for many years, remind the prefecture that beyond ten years’ habitual residence it must seek the opinion of the residence-permit commission before refusing exceptional admission. File early, keep every receipt, and never let a récépissé expire without requesting renewal: an expired file with no pending renewal is the fastest route to the refusal-plus-removal package.

B. Challenging the Refusal and the Removal Order: Deadlines, Pleas and What Judges Actually Annul

A refusal rarely travels alone. Under article L. 611-1 of the CESEDA, the administration may order a foreigner to leave France where, among other cases, issuance or renewal of a residence permit has been refused, an application receipt or provisional stay authorisation has been refused, not renewed or withdrawn, or a permit has been withdrawn. A refused card can therefore lawfully trigger an OQTF, and the standard package gives you thirty days to leave voluntarily, fixes the country of return, and sometimes adds a ban on returning. Do not read the thirty days as a cooling-off period: it is the deadline for both departure and legal action. The service-public.fr page on the OQTF states the general rule plainly: where there is no house arrest or detention, the deadline for challenging the order is one month. Without house arrest or detention, you have one month to appeal, and it warns that an informal appeal to the prefecture or the minister does not extend that deadline. The court then has six months to rule: the court then has six months to hand down its ruling. File one single appeal covering everything: the refusal itself, the OQTF, the departure deadline, the return ban if any, and the country of return. Under article L. 614-1 of the CESEDA, all of those decisions may be challenged together before the administrative court, which is why lawyers systematically attack the refusal first: if the refusal falls, the removal order built on it falls by consequence, as both rulings below confirm.

The pleas that win in PACS cases are consistent across the appeal courts. First, disproportionate interference with private and family life: article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights combined with article L. 423-23. Second, misjudgement of the facts: the prefecture underestimated the duration, stability and genuineness of the shared life, or ignored documents in the file. Third, failure to examine the personal situation seriously, which succeeds when the refusal reasoning is a template that mentions none of your evidence. Fourth, in the alternative, exceptional admission under article L. 435-1. Frame every plea around dated documents, because the court replays the file as it stood on the day of the refusal, updated by what you add on appeal.

The first illustration comes from the Paris administrative court of appeal, 3rd chamber, 1 December 2020, no. 19PA03959. A man whose life as a couple with his French partner had begun in Belgium in July 2016, continued in Paris from July 2017 at a shared address, and was formalised by a PACS on 14 December 2017, had been refused a card and ordered to leave by a Paris police-prefecture order of 5 April 2019; the administrative court had upheld the refusal in November 2019. The court of appeal reversed everything. It noted that the reality and stability of the shared life were not seriously disputed by the administration, and held, in words worth quoting: “La réalité et la stabilité de la vie commune n’étant pas sérieusement contestées par l’administration en défense, M. C…, à qui il ne saurait être fait grief de ne pas exercer d’activité professionnelle dès lors qu’il ne dispose pas de titre l’autorisant à travailler, et dont les témoignages attestent l’insertion dans la société française, est fondé à soutenir que le refus de lui délivrer un titre de séjour a porté une atteinte disproportionnée à son droit à une vie privée et familiale.” The refusal was annulled, the OQTF and the return country with it, the prefecture was ordered to re-examine the application within three months and to issue a temporary stay authorisation within a fortnight, and the State paid 1,000 euros in legal costs. For a British reader the message is direct: a PACS backed by a year and more of proved shared address and credible testimony beats a refusal, even after a first-instance defeat.

The second illustration, from the Nancy administrative court of appeal, 3rd chamber, 20 June 2024, no. 23NC00540, shows how judges sort strong proof from weak proof. A woman present in France since 2012 had signed a PACS on 12 January 2021 with a partner who himself held a multi-year vie privée et familiale card. The court discarded two of her exhibits: a family-benefits declaration mentioning a relationship since November 2019, and bank transfers between the partners from February 2020, neither of which proved a shared household. What carried the case was “l’attestation d’assurance de responsabilité civile du 11 septembre 2020, qui mentionne les noms des deux intéressés parmi les bénéficiaires” — the civil-liability insurance certificate of 11 September 2020 naming both of them as beneficiaries, which established a shared life before the PACS. The refusal, the thirty-day removal order and the return country were all annulled, and the court went further than Paris: it ordered the prefecture to issue the one-year vie privée et familiale card within two months and to deliver immediately, pending the card, a provisional stay authorisation expressly permitting work. That immediate paper has a statutory peg worth knowing: under article L. 614-16 of the CESEDA, “Si la décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français est annulée, il est immédiatement mis fin aux mesures de surveillance prévues aux articles L. 721-6, L. 721-7, L. 731-1, L. 731-3, L. 741-1 et L. 743-13, et l’étranger est muni d’une autorisation provisoire de séjour jusqu’à ce que l’autorité administrative ait à nouveau statué sur son cas.” Annulment of the removal order ends the monitoring measures at once and the foreigner receives a provisional stay authorisation until the administration decides again. Ask your lawyer to request exactly that interim paper in the appeal conclusions, with express permission to work where your livelihood depends on it.

Conclusion

A PACS is an excellent household contract and a useful, but incomplete, immigration asset. Register it cleanly at the town hall of your real shared home, with a complete British file including the certificate of custom and recent birth records. Build from day one the paper chain of your shared life, with both names on the lease, the home insurance and the tax mail, because prefectures and judges count the months under one roof rather than the months since the signature. If the answer is no, treat the refusal and the thirty-day removal order as one combined decision to be appealed together within a month, centred on the disproportionate harm to your family life and documented exhibit by exhibit. The appeal courts have shown, twice in the cases above, that a genuine PACS-backed household defeats a lazy refusal. Keep the evidence continuous, keep every receipt, and if the relationship matures into marriage, convert the union: the statute then moves you from assessment to entitlement.