Marriage, PACS and divorce in France for foreigners 2026

We at “Vibe South of France” went through marriage, PACS and divorce for foreigners using the service-public cards (checked by their editors between February 2025 and October 2026) and the Ministry of Justice statistics book; our own check was on 24 October 2026. Below: what to bring to the mairie, how a PACS differs from marriage and what it means for a residence permit, what kinds of divorce there are and which amounts are officially stated. To hear how it went for others, ask in the “Vibe South of France” community chat on Telegram - moving and family paperwork in the South of France.

In short, as of October 2026

• Marriage. From 18, at the mairie of the commune where one of you or a parent of one of you lives. The banns are posted for 10 days, and you can marry from the 10th day after publication.
• A foreigner’s documents. Passport, a birth certificate no older than 6 months with a sworn translation, and, if the mairie asks, a certificat de coutume and a certificat de célibat.
• PACS. Open to any nationality. Free at the mairie; at a notaire’s, €101.41 for the agreement and €125 in duty.
• PACS and residence permits. No automatic right to a card for a non-EU citizen; no citizenship for anyone.
• Divorce without court. A lawyer each, 15 days to reflect, filing with a notaire for €41.20 excl. VAT.
• Court divorce. €50 stamp duty, a lawyer is compulsory; since 2021 the procedure goes straight to the hearing on interim measures.

Amounts and deadlines in one table

Getting married at the mairie

Where you can marry

The wedding takes place in a commune with which at least one of you has a “lien durable”. That is the commune where you are settled (domicile), where you are living for the time being (résidence), or the same kind of commune for a parent of yours. Residence comes with a condition: “au moins 1 mois d’habitation continue à la date de la publication des bans”, so a month of living there without a break by the day the banns are published. For domicile the card sets no such period. And one more caveat from F930: “Le fait d’être né dans une commune, sans y résider, ne suffit pas” - being born in a commune you don’t live in isn’t enough.

If you are both foreigners and don’t live in France, you can marry here only at your own country’s consulate or in an overseas commune (COM, New Caledonia).

What to gather

Each of you needs:

• the original and a copy of a photo ID - a passport, a residence card or another state-issued document;
• proof of address in your name: an energy bill, home insurance, a rent receipt; “Les factures de téléphonie mobile et les RIB ne sont pas admis” (mobile phone bills and bank details slips don’t count);
• a birth certificate: a foreign one no older than 6 months, a French one under 3 months old; the clock runs to the day you submit the file, not the wedding day;
• foreign documents translated by a sworn translator (traducteur assermenté) and, depending on the country, an apostille or legalisation;
• the witnesses’ details and copies of their ID, and your occupation in French.

You order the birth certificate from the embassy or consulate of the country where you were born. How the CIS countries handle apostilles and where to find a sworn translator, we cover in the guide Apostille, sworn translation and diplomas for France.

If you were married before and the divorce isn’t noted on your birth certificate, you need the final divorce judgment and a livret de famille with the annotation; a judgment issued abroad goes in with a sworn translation. If you are signing a marriage contract, a certificate from the notaire goes in the file.

Certificat de coutume and certificat de célibat

The mairie may ask a foreigner for documents tied to their nationality. The certificat de coutume is usually issued by your embassy or consulate: it sets out your country’s marriage rules and confirms your civil status and that you are not married. A certificat de célibat (or de capacité matrimoniale) is asked for when your country can’t supply up-to-date documents.

If your country doesn’t issue such a certificate, card F930 offers a chain of substitutes:

1. a statement from your country’s authorities that no certificat de coutume is issued;
2. a certificate from a lawyer or legal expert on your country’s marriage rules;
3. if even that is impossible, an attestation sur l’honneur that you are of age, unmarried and legally capable.

Where the necessary information is missing, the registrar must warn you that your country may not recognise the marriage. Refugees don’t need a certificat de coutume.

Submitting the file, the interview and the prosecutor

The file goes to the mairie of the commune where the ceremony will be. As a rule the registrar talks to the two of you together; sometimes there’s no interview, for instance if the registrar sees no need for one. If you don’t understand French, you bring an interpreter yourself, and pay them if they charge.

The mairie has to accept the file. But if it sees serious signs of a sham or forced marriage, it informs the public prosecutor. The prosecutor has 15 days to object or not, and can postpone the wedding by up to 1 month, renewable.

Banns and the ceremony

The banns are posted for 10 days at the mairie where the wedding will be held and at the mairie where you or your future spouse live. You can marry no earlier than the 10th day after publication. The card’s example: published on 4 August 2026, the wedding is possible from 14 August. The wedding must take place within a year of the end of those 10 days; only the prosecutor can waive the banns, and only for a serious reason.

The marriage is performed by the mayor or a deputy, in front of you and your witnesses, and after the ceremony you get a livret de famille. In France a religious ceremony before the civil one is prohibited. Card F930 gives no price for a marriage at the mairie, so we don’t give one either.

PACS

What it is and who can sign one

A PACS is an agreement two people sign to organise their life together. It is open “quelle que soit votre nationalité”, whatever your nationality. The conditions: both of age, neither married nor in another PACS, no close family relationship. A foreigner must be the age that counts as adulthood in their own country. There are no exceptions: “Aucune dispense n’est possible”. You don’t have to live together on the day of registration; the shared address is confirmed by an attestation sur l’honneur. After a divorce there’s no waiting period before a PACS.

Mairie, notaire or consulate

• The mairie of the commune of your shared home - free. Come in person, both of you; some communes let you send an online pre-application first. The mairie doesn’t keep a copy of the agreement, it is handed back to you; lose it and you can’t get a copy.
• A notaire - for a fee, and the notaire keeps the original. €101.41 incl. VAT for drawing up the agreement and a €125 fixed registration duty, plus any formalities (notarised copies, annotations in civil records). At least €226.41 in all - that’s our own sum, service-public doesn’t give it as one figure. If the notaire requests your civil status documents for you, their costs for that come on top.
• A French consulate - if you live abroad, free.

A foreigner’s documents

• the joint declaration (cerfa 15725) and the agreement (your own text or cerfa 15726) in French, signed by both of you and including the compulsory wording on the PACS “régi par les dispositions de la loi du 15 novembre 1999 modifiée et les articles 515-1 à 515-7 du code civil”;
• a valid photo ID: passport, residence permit;
• if you were born abroad, a certificat de non-Pacs under 3 months old and a certificat de coutume (with two nationalities, one for each);
• a birth certificate no older than 6 months on the day of registration, with a sworn translation and an apostille or legalisation where required.

For foreigners born abroad, the PACS takes effect towards third parties once it is entered in a separate register of foreigners’ PACS kept by the Foreign Ministry’s central civil status service. Between the partners it is effective from the date of registration.

What a PACS gives you and what it doesn’t

Residence permit if you are not from the EU. Card F31039 puts it plainly: “Le fait d’être pacsé ne permet pas un droit automatique à une carte de séjour « vie privée et familiale ». Le Pacs constitue toutefois un élément d’appréciation en ce qui concerne les liens personnels en France”. In other words, no automatic card, but the PACS is weighed among your personal ties. The prefecture looks at how real, long-standing, close and stable your ties in France are, what you live on and how you have settled into life here. That is its assessment, not a right under the law. A PACS with a French national, with a European or with a foreigner legally living in France all count towards it (F1026, F31039).

Residence permit if you are from the EU or Switzerland. You can get a card as the partner of a French national if you prove at least a year of life together in France and/or abroad. The card is free and runs from 1 to 5 years, but it is optional: “elle est facultative” (F21849).

Citizenship. “Il n’existe pas de procédure d’acquisition de la nationalité française à la suite de la conclusion d’un Pacs avec un Français, à la différence du mariage” (F1026): unlike marriage, a PACS with a French national opens no route to French nationality. How citizenship through marriage works is in the guide French citizenship.

Which cards exist and on what grounds they are issued is in the guide Types of residence permit in France. How to bring a spouse and children to France is in Family reunification in France.

One more practical point: a PACS partner is entitled to days of leave on the birth or adoption of a child (F1026). Maternity leave and benefits are covered in Giving birth in France.

Divorce

Every kind of divorce needs a lawyer. How many depends on the kind: in a divorce through a notaire and in contested court divorces each spouse has their own, while a court divorce by consent can be done with one shared lawyer (F35800, F10567).

By mutual consent, without court

This works if you agree on the divorce itself and on all its consequences. You don’t have to explain why.

1. Each spouse hires their own lawyer: “Il n’est pas possible d’avoir un seul avocat pour les 2 époux”.
2. The lawyers draft the agreement: parental authority, a compensatory payment (whether there will be one), division of property or a statement that there is nothing to divide, surnames.
3. 15 days to reflect; you can sign only after that.
4. Within 7 days of signing, one of the lawyers sends the agreement to a notaire, who files it within 15 days of receiving it. Filing costs €41.20 excl. VAT (€49.44 incl. VAT).
5. This kind of divorce can’t be appealed. It must be noted in the civil status records.

The compensatory payment is settled in the agreement itself: once the notaire has filed it, you can no longer ask for one (F1760).

If one spouse is under legal protection (protection des majeurs), divorce by mutual consent is impossible (F10567). If a minor child asks to be heard by a judge, it can’t be done without court either: the family judge approves the agreement, and the marriage is dissolved 15 days after the decision becomes final.

Worth knowing for citizens of CIS countries. F10567 warns that if the divorce has to be recognised in another country, you should check whether that country recognises a divorce not granted by a judge. Your country’s consulate can tell you in advance.

Court divorces

Living apart can be shown by a separate lease, gas or electricity bills, a statement that you live with relatives, a finding by a commissaire de justice, or witness statements (F10568).

How the procedure runs (F35837). The case is handled by the family judge (JAF). If you both agree to divorce, you can file a joint petition. A €50 tax stamp goes with the petition, unless you receive aide juridictionnelle. The respondent must find a lawyer within 15 days of receiving the petition; without one, they take no part in the proceedings. After that:

1. a hearing on direction and interim measures: who lives where, maintenance for a spouse under the devoir de secours, the children;
2. preparation of the case (mise en état);
3. the parties’ arguments;
4. the judgment. It can be appealed within 1 month of service.

Since 1 January 2021, under the reform in the law of 23 March 2019, there is no conciliation stage any more: a contested divorce starts straight with that hearing (Ministry of Justice, 2025 statistics book).

Which court. The court where the family lives; if you live apart, where the parent the minor children live with is; otherwise, where the respondent lives. With a joint petition, where either spouse lives, as you choose.

What the judge decides. The compensatory payment, where the children live and their maintenance, the right to keep using the spouse’s surname. The compensatory payment (prestation compensatoire) evens out the gap in circumstances the divorce creates and is usually paid as a lump sum. The judge looks at how long the marriage lasted, age and health, qualifications, income and assets, and what each of you gave up in your career for the children. There’s no table of amounts on the official page. Once the divorce is final, it is too late to ask for the payment (F1760). PACS partners and couples in concubinage get no such payment: in a “rupture abusive” all you can do is ask a judge for damages.

What it costs and how long it takes

There is no single price for a divorce: “Le coût du divorce varie en fonction des honoraires des avocats, des biens à partager, des frais du notaire et de procédure” (F10567) - it depends on lawyers’ fees, the property to divide, notaire’s and court costs. Lawyers’ fees are free and fixed in a fee agreement. On a low income there is aide juridictionnelle. The known amounts are in the table at the top of the page: €41.20 for filing, €50 stamp duty, 1.10% on the division of property (or €125 if the property is worth up to €5,000), plus notaire’s costs if you are dividing real estate.

Timing. For a divorce through a notaire the official pages give only the stages: 15 days to reflect, 7 days to send it to the notaire, 15 days to file. For a court divorce there are no recent averages: the Ministry of Justice’s 2025 statistics book says that, at the time of publication, there was no data for 2021 onwards. The figures it does contain describe the old procedure, so we don’t offer them as an answer to “how long”.

Foreigners: which court to divorce in

For EU citizens service-public has a separate page (F36419, EU regulation 2019/1111): a French court has jurisdiction, for example, if you both live in France, if your last shared home was in France and one of you still lives there, or if you file jointly and one of you lives in France.

For citizens of non-EU countries we found no such page on service-public, and the EU rules can’t simply be applied to you. Which court has jurisdiction and which country’s law the divorce will follow, the official pages don’t cover for this case. That’s a question for a lawyer before you file.

A divorce granted abroad

A foreign divorce needs to be noted in French records only if the marriage took place in France or one of you is French. “Si vous et votre ex-époux ou épouse êtes tous les 2 de nationalité étrangère et que vous vous êtes mariés à l’étranger, vous ne pouvez pas faire mentionner le divorce en France” (F38127): two foreigners who married abroad can’t have the divorce noted in France. Most couples from the CIS who married back home don’t need this procedure at all.

If the annotation is needed:

• a divorce in an EU country (except Denmark) - an application to the mairie where you married or, if you married abroad and the marriage was entered in French records, to the central civil status service in Nantes; with it, a copy of the judgment translated by an accredited translator (traducteur agréé), a court certificate that the judgment is enforceable, and extracts from the records;
• a divorce outside the EU or in Denmark - first a check by the prosecutor (vérification d’opposabilité): the prosecutor of the court where you married or, if you married abroad, the tribunal judiciaire de Nantes. They check that the judgment doesn’t conflict with public policy and that both parties’ rights were respected. A lawyer isn’t required, only if you go to court after a refusal. The card gives no processing times.

The Nantes service doesn’t see visitors; it works by post only.

If your first marriage was abroad between foreigners and you remarry in France, no annotation is needed: the mairie will ask for the final divorce judgment with a sworn translation (F930).

See Also

• Moving to the South of France: paperwork step by step
• Types of residence permit in France: which card to pick
• Family reunification in France
• Titre de séjour: residence permit in France
• French citizenship: naturalisation and by marriage
• Apostille, sworn translation and diplomas for France
• Giving birth in France: maternity leave and benefits
• Taxes in France