Carte Vitales at Last!

I'm celebrating - after 2 and a half years we have finally received those important little green cards.


I now have the fight of getting Maisy added as she was born in England & even though I sent off her birth certificate with a translation certified by the Mairie and sent it all Recommande avec avis de reception she still hasn't been added.


I now have a mounting pile of feiulle de soins from all the medecin & pharmacie visits.


On my latest phone call to RSI the lady said she needs to send me a form out to add all the ayant droits (beneficiaires) I have duly filled in the form with the longest title ever....Declaration en vue du rattachement des membres de la famille des assures pour le benefice de l'assurance maladie et maternite.


It asked for our livret de famille...don't have & not sure we would be given one if neither of us is French? Has anyone else been given a livret de famille if neither of you are French? where do you get it from?

We were married thirty years ago by our mayor in a village near Grenoble. Lovely man with a tricolour sash. He handed us our Livret de Famille as we left the mairie. Neither of us are French.

Terry I love your story;

re; cartes vitales it took us 3 years to get ours back again (2 months ago) after we (stupidly) went against all advice and sent ours back, when the RSI requested it. The RSI and the Chambre de Commerce must be one of the biggest wastes of money in the French civil service. we have had no end of trouble with both organisms. I suspect institutional racism exists there too as well as total lack of concern and incompetence. Although I do feel the same way about the HMRC, DVLA and several hundred thousand bankers of all nationalities. Oh, and anyone rich, who avoids taxes..

with you there terry - I just love it when we hear the 'anglais' mutters aside then my italian-swiss wife ploughs in and I ask whether they are all belgians before explaining I am a Scot. Then the children's names... our game is all on our side!

One of the fun moments having kids in a mixed nationality couple Terry ;-)

My wife is French, we were married in the UK and we have a Livret de Famille. So you don't have to be married in France to get one. At least that was the case 49 years ago! However, we did make sure we registered the marriage with the French consulate in Birmingham of all places despite the fact we were livng in Hull at the time, and they sent us the Livret de Famille. Similarly we registered our son's birth with them to make sure he kept both nationalities. On the subject of which, our grandson, having turned 16, went to be "recensé" at his local mairie this week. Nationality of father, they wanted to know. French, but he's also British. Oh. Nationality of your mother? Moroccan naturalised French. A longer oohhh. So what nationality are you? Well, I'm French, and here's my ID card to prove it. Oh, right. But I'm also British and Moroccan.... At this point the lady behind the counter swallowed a couple of valium! Grandson enjoyed that.

Like Karen always being asked for the Livret at school. I just send the now famous 'dossier'- Copy of mine + OH passport only , all birth certificates + translations and finally marriage certificate + translation. ( the RSI also have several copies !)

now laugh folk. our teacher friend popped in for a coffee, he being on holiday, recently divorced and bored and all. I knew his ex and he got spliced in Las Vegas, so asked about their livret. Because it was circumstantial with a USA certificate and only a single copy at that with big effort required to get a copy, they simply never bothered. When their children were born they simply got the certificates and told the maire they'd never got round to the livret. As he said, it isn't actually useful for very much... so not worth running round half the offices in Aquitaine to get one.

good idea Karen will try that too

You will often be asked for a livret de famille - even the schools want one! I usually send photocopies of passports - that does the trick!!

Sorry! yes you have to be married here to get one &issued when you get married or if you have a french spouse!

It's not only for the French - anyone who gets married here gets one, several of my friends have been married in France and we all have them even without a French spouse.

Livret de famille is only for the french unless that what your partner is.The mairie will tell you all that & admin sites on web

You need to have the birth certificate translated in to french by a regresited translater gov ment affiliated cost around 60euros.

your child will then be reattachedto your seceurity social number &will be issued a card .more paper work!! photo etc . Good luck .

All this has to be changed once they start uni studies as a different social security!!!

just had a look too: 3 possible situations; a marraige, birth or adoption. Obviously involving at least one French parent although does that mean 100% british couples who have a child here but weren't married here, Suzanne, just get the birth certificate and can't have a livret de famille? Bizarre as it is, I think that's the situation unless someone here can tell us any different/managed to convince their local maire to sort one out for them...!

Yes Tracey, marraige (you're case) or you need to have kids with a french person and they then get their livret de famille at that point if they're not married (our case) - there needs to be a French connection : french wedding or french babies (at least one parent being french), we're getting there...!

oh yes, get yours andrew but evidently much of what changed in 2007 is yet to syphon down through the system, yet more bureaucratic inefficiency of course.

we really choke them when they see that the English marriage certificate does not give my OH my name or imply she should ever use it. up to that point they never believe we are spliced.

no problems with hyphenated names, our kids are Mouysset--Hearne the double hyphen being used to differentiate between those, like us, who simply use both parents last names, and one hyphen for the old aristocratic names etc. But for everything that isn't official everyone just puts one hyphen. The law changed just before our first was born so her cousin who is a year older couldn't have both her mum and dad's last names (they're not married either) but ours can. you can now (since about 2007) choose to give the child the father's, the mother's or both last names. my kids can pronounce Hearne properly, and I gave up years ago using an aspirated "h"!

oldest has a welsh name, then and english one and another spelled the italian way, the younger has a girl's name that boys have sometimes in the english speaking world (parental ignorance) so they assume she is a boy until the german then scots gaelic names follow on... we enjoy screw bureacrats everwhere with our entire catalogue of names and spelling them out letter by letter and enjoy every mistake they make. watch people go pale when we offer to check back over!

Just had a quick look inside the livret and it states that it is 'delivered to the spouses by the officer of the state who celebrates their marriage' so it would seem unless you marry here, you can't have one.