Please, please can somebody help… husband and I are now applying for renewal of our Carte de Sejour (after 1 year VLTS and 1 year Carte de Sejour)… Husbands has now come back fine… mine … they are struggling with me proving my income and that my husband supports me (ish!!)…
I have sent them proof of my pension but how can I prove we also live off his Local Government Pension… I have sent them our joint bank statement with his pension entering it each month… This is getting so tedious now… Have been back and forwards with them now for two weeks… that just seem to be not accepting anything at all… and… fyi… for anybody else… they will not accept an EDF attestation as proof of address… Would be so grateful for any advice… thanks…
The EDF attestation, does it have your name on it? If not and only your OH that is why they refuse it. You need something with your name printed on it to proove your address. Otherwise you could write out an Attestation Sur Honeur, take it to the local Mairie and get them to witness it and then stamp it with their official stamp, that has worked many times over the years for me when I or the family needed something official. You could photocopy your Acte de Vente when you bought the house if you bought in joint names, it would have both the address and your name on it. As an afterthought, what about your joint Avis d’Imposition, that should have both names on it surely as you are taxed as a household.
Thanks Shiba… yes we got over the proof of address bit… I was just so surprised that they didnt accept the EDF attestation (in joint names!)… Apparently you have to send them some sort of ‘consumption’ invoice… managed in the end with an EDF graph of our electricity usage… bizarre…
No… my problem is proving my husband lets me have some of his pension… He thought this was hysterical… his answer was ‘just show them the car you drive as opposed to mine’ !!! You have to laugh…
Just sent them yet another copy of my state pension statement - they already have his… but I think if this is no good we will have to go down the route of writing some sort of letter from him saying he supports me… It’s going to be another long, long day… thanks for your help…
In case it’s of any use in the future, what I did quite a while back to ensure my income was right as far as the Prefecture was concerned, was to transfer across to my French bank account the exact amount of income I received in my UK bank account, and I took both statements plus the Wise transfer statement to show how much the pound money was in euros.
I did this for a long times and now it has become a habit. Perhaps next time a Carte de Sejour renewal is coming up, your husband could transfer his government pension across like that but in two bits, labelled “his” and “hers” …
I agree with @shiba about the “who you get on the day” problem. Both my partner and I applied for nautalisation recently and his request was treated very differenlly from mine. His had “I’m in a grumpy mood” stamped all over it
Yes, my boy had the same sort of person too, no chit-chat, no smiles or casual things, only wanted to know what he thought about laiicité in his work and that was it, in and out in a few minutes.
I’m just wondering if the easiest thing for you … is to have a joint French bank account, into which gets paid the pensions of both parties… and the account pays out the EDF/whatever bills for the household…
Thus it’s obvious that each person supports the other…
this works for us… and seems so straight forward to me, that I’m wondering if I’ve misunderstood something…
That is exactly what I sent them… a joint account bank statement with both state pensions going in and a Local Government pension going in each month …. And the EDF standing order going out… It really couldn’t be more obvious that we share money… but hey ho!! It is what it is… I now have my ‘acceptance’ email - so stress over for a year at least…
Good grief… you poor thing… sounds like someone needs a kick up the whatzit.
When the prefecture was giving the runaround to some local Brits… we got the Mairie involved…
A polite but “to the point” email was zapped off, from our Maire to the Prefecture… asking them to get their finger out and co-operate fully with his Residents !!
I like your style Stella!! I was going in the direction of the Maire had they not given in today… I think they just got fed up with me in the end… I wore them down !!!
Seems to me that this saga is yet further evidence that France often remains a male dominated country and has poorly trained admin people who still have some very old fashioned and outdated habits.
So, I find what is often most effective is to play them at their own game by sending them two things;
An ‘Attestation sur l’Honneur’ from the male of the household certifying that he will take full responsibility for all debts and expenses incurred by his lady, and preferably witnessed and stamped by the Mairie. (A terrible thing to have to do in this day and age but it works.)
Copies of every piece of paper that could be remotely relevant such as Marriage Certificate, Birth Certificate, Justicatif de Domicile (at least 2), Bank Statements for each account you may have, P60s, Carte Vitale, Carte Mutuelle, HMRC paperwork, in fact anything and everything that is relevant to verifying identity, place of residence, and income. (Basically, drown them in paperwork.)
Keep all the scanned copies in a special file on your computer so that you can easily send or print them in the future when some petty admin person is being awkward. We shouldn’t really have to do this but it does work.
An ‘Attestation sur l’Honneur’ from the male of the household certifying that he will take full responsibility for all debts and expenses incurred by his lady, and preferably witnessed and stamped by the Mairie. (A terrible thing to have to do in this day and age but it works.)
Thank you for that… and I couldnt agree more… and sadly it think its very true… Yes, I shall be more prepared next year and do as you suggest… Thank you… I like the idea of the attestation…
Fair enough if the wife is in fact supported by the husband. Things are just so different here in Strasbourg where almost all the British women I know are either the main or the sole breadwinners. The bank at the organisation where we work has had so much flak from us over the years that they eventually stopped sending out bank statements addressed by default to Monsieur.
Not only that point but the fact that people forget when living here is that every single person is their own individual citizen in the eyes of the fisc except when it suits them otherwise. The use of a married name never goes down well either and I receive things still in my maiden name and other stuff in my married name and why somany women keep their maiden names all their lives on official stuff.
Keeping your maiden name certainly seems to make life easier. When I was young and in lust I couldn’t wait to trade my name for an exotic-sounding Russian one. Wish I’d had more sense!
I long ago gave up worrying about my status in this French world as a woman and like @Robert_Hodge says, I play the game and wheel out OH when I need to. I am used to asking the questions in French and having the reply directed to him. It amuses me.
I like your style Stella!! I was going in the direction of the Maire had they not given in today… I think they just got fed up with me in the end… I wore them down !!!