American, and you want to become a legal resident of France!

So, you want to become a legal resident of France, here’s a general overview from our experiences and hopefully give you some tips…





Tips on becoming a legal French resident

Thanks Bonnie, we also split our time between US and Paris, but our primary home is Paris and secondary in US. There are benefits to having a titre, primarily eligibility for healthcare, which is 1/8th the cost of US healthcare for full coverage and discounts on pharmaceuticals. See my blog on health care for more detail. As for overstaying your visit, I can only tell you that from my friend’s experiences who live here part-time, that the French, will sometimes turn a blind eye to Americans. I actually know some one who has lived in Paris for 20-years and still doesn’t have a titre. And, another friend up until just recently lived here for 8-years without a titre, but decided he wanted a one for health care reasons. So, c’est depend. I know this is clearly not an answer, but nothing is clear with French bureaucracy!

Hilarious article and helpful. I love France and it has always been my dream to live there. We bought our home in the Herault department in the Languedoc spring 2010. We are residents of the US. Your info on applying for the long sejour is quite familiar as we have been dreaming of this time of our lives for years and trying to reserch it on our own. When we looked into all the details we would throw up our hands and say, ‘‘later maybe’’. I’m thinking now is the ‘‘maybe later’’. We are looking forward to our first limited long stay of 90 days since retirement is just around the corner. As you mentioned we can only be in France 90 days at a time without further documentation. I’'m not sure of the benefits of the carte de sejour. We still plan to keep our primary address in the states and France will be secondary. What I like about the carte de sejour, or the long stay visa is the flexability of our length of stay in France. Right now we are so paranoid of making sure that we only stay 90 days to avoid legal problems. I would like to stay off of that radar. Are there other benefits we are overlooking? If so, maybe you could advise us. Any pointers anyone?