Marrying a foreign national

A marriage between a French national and a foreign national is celebrated at the town hall under the ordinary procedure: filing of the file, publication of the banns for ten days, public celebration by the civil registrar.

The documents required are the same, with a few additions: a birth certificate translated and sometimes legalised or apostilled, proof of address, and, depending on the country, a certificate of custom attesting that the person meets the conditions of their national law to marry.

The civil registrar may interview the prospective spouses, together and then separately, if there are serious indications suggesting an absence of consent or a marriage contracted for other purposes. This power is framed: it presupposes indications, it cannot be systematic.

If a doubt remains, the registrar refers the matter to the public prosecutor, who has fifteen days to let the marriage proceed, to oppose it, or to suspend it for one month, renewable once. Suspension and opposition must be reasoned and can be appealed before a judge.

A marriage celebrated abroad under local forms is valid in France, provided the substantive conditions of French law have been respected and the banns have been published with the consular authority.

The certificate of capacity to marry, issued by the consulate after an interview, is required in practice for the transcription of the record into the French civil register. Without transcription, the marriage exists but cannot be relied on before French administrations, which blocks many procedures.

Marriage to a French national confers neither nationality nor an automatic right of residence. It gives entitlement, subject to conditions, to a temporary residence permit bearing the mention private and family life, notably lawful entry into the territory and an effective shared life.

Nationality may be applied for by declaration after four years of marriage, raised to five where the shared life has not been continuous in France, with conditions of language knowledge and assimilation.

The Constitutional Council and the European Court of Human Rights have recalled on several occasions that freedom to marry is a component of personal liberty, and that restricting it must be justified and proportionate.

Concretely, irregular residence status is no obstacle to the celebration, and a civil registrar cannot refuse to celebrate on that ground. They can report; they cannot decide. This distinction is one of the least well known in the field.