We duly turned up at the Montauban prefecture for our "carte de sejour" rendezvous. We met a charming young woman called Marie Line who went through our dossiers and accepted everything without question, though she did think I should have supplied a copy of our tax "avis" for Val's dossier as well as mine, so she photocopied them herself.
She did advise that tax returns were almost essential if looking for a 10 year carte as they can save a lot of paper work. By chance we had taken copies of our original cartes de sejour which expired in 2008 and she said they were very useful as basically she would renew them under the same number. For justicatif de domicile she took only the latest EDF bill (I had 10 copies covering 5 years!).
The only problem was taking my finger prints - it seems I may have a criminal career as my prints are very worn!
If you do not want to take original tax avis, you may download certified copies from the government web site, but ensure copies of almost everything else in duplicate!
Clearly different prefectures and even agents have different requirements, so be prepared for all eventualities; we have lots of unlooked at copies to be ditched now, but the time spent was worthwhile. We should have an SMS in 4-6 weeks telling us to collect our cartes (all things being equal...)
comments to taglines82@gmail.com
