Yes, it was a complete surprise as I was a 19 year old student at the time and certainly had no thoughts of ever being a pensioner nor any idea that I would be living in France.
I just received a letter, out of the blue, on my 62nd birthday saying that I was entitled to a monthly pension or a lump sum which I could defer until aged 65 should I choose. This option has been revoked 3 years later so I was automatically paid the monthly pension. I now pay more in social charges than my annual French pension as I am no longer entitled to the S1.
Wow. That’s going to come as quite a shock to several people I know who worked briefly as teaching assistants in France decades ago and - assuming they’ve checked on info.retraite and noticed they’re entitled to a tiny French pension- were planning not to claim it. Precisely for the reason you mention, ie so they can keep their S1.
I didn’t realise French pensions could start being paid automatically and nor did I realise that that would automatically cause the S1 to be revoked, ie I’d assumed some action would be required on the part of the claimant.
Thanks for enlightening me!
Perhaps it depends, too, on how assiduous the school/university was when it came to record-keeping and paying “cotisations” all those years ago.
It had just never occurred to me that a French pension could suddenly find itself in payment, without some action on the part of the person concerned. I would have thought that - even if you didn’t contact them and they contacted you - you would still have the option of renouncing the pension, even if the window for doing that is, I understand, very small.
I was in the French system long enough to qualify for a pension of two rusty sou.
Another wrinkle: While I was working in the system I had a French EHIC, now retired I have an S1, and so need a UK GHIC or EHIC. That did cause me some confusion when I tried to renew the old one.
Edit: I should have said I used to have the French CEAM, not EHIC. Same thing, but my slack use of abbreviations might be confusing.
Is that because you drove for a French company, Brian, even if you still lived in Blighty? I think you are from Soton aren’t you?
I was determined to be a French resident before my first job here, although a small English company based here, before I was offered my eventual job with Gauthier’s. I have always been amazed at the generosity of my French pension, double what was predicted for my voluntary deferral.
My sympathies on the loss of your S1. How did they know your bank account to pay it into - or is it a monthly cheque inn the post?
And (this may also interest @Helenochka ) you mentioned a choice of lump sum or regular pension - do you wonder if you’d taken the lump sum that would have extinguished the pension entitlement so you would have had no france pension?
I did make some choices I shouldn’t have.
I was on for a UK company driving mostly France for several years. I had a house in France, but also had a foot in the UK. For ease…laziness…I stayed fully in the UK system as long as I could. Come a few questions from DREAL during a control, (cabotage and country of licence etc etc) and then Breixt, I migrated fully into France. But by this time the offer to work as a full employeee for that company had faded away (they discovered how expensive it was for employers) so we came to alternative arrangements. Complicated, but with the aid of French accountants, legal.
Anyway, a knee injury, changing over my vocational licence, renewal due of DCPC/FICO, I retired.
Brexit had also changed my old job a lot and it was no longer the work I had taken a pay cut to do. But that is another story.
We’re all complicated in one way or another I suppose in our line of business, just have to get to be an expert to navigate to the best, legal, advantage.
I’d forgotten about him, imagine what he would make, as a senior local government waste disposal executive, of my cry for help in my glass disposal posts elsewhere here.
BTW I wonder if you knew this about him. I discovered when I was a mod on TN that all his posts were automatically diverted through Rikki and Lucy before passed or edited for publication. This explained the bizarre consequent that sometimes his posts seemed out of synq with the discussion. Many who noticed simply put that down to lunacy.
Same here, waited another year and got more than twice what the original payment would have been. They do contact you and you have to reply about this deferral or the original offer will get paid instead.
A question more for my accountants than myself! I said I qualify for a couple of rusty sou, but that was meant light-heartedly, I actually claim none at all.
I accepted that accountants know more about French tax and employment laws etc etc than me, so I left everything to them.
I think my friends are working on the assumption that, like you, they will have the option of simply not claiming it. It would come as a bit of shock if it suddenly just started being paid.
OH received a cheque for 5euros on his birthday one year in full payment for his French pension! Finally remembered he had done one day’s official work on a friend’s vineyard many years ago.
It will also automatically show up on tax papers too so you can’t actually avoid ignoring it as the pension, like the social security bodies, will have declared payments to the fisc from their end.
So basically anyone who was planning on simply not claiming a French pension really needs to actively renounce it within the permitted timeframe. Because otherwise - if they do nothing - it will be paid out and their S1 will be revoked.
This doesn’t apply to me personally. I’ll be quite happy for my husband’s little French pension to kick in because it’ll exempt him from the PUMA tax.
Certainly looks that way. A very useful/timely reminder for this household as there’s the possibility of a French pension (from auto entrepreneur earnings) being available in November. I shall have to find out about the window for renouncing it, though I suppose you have to first be advised of it’s availability before one cqn renounce it??
