Pregnant and need answers for long term stay in France

For a long stay visa you need to have health insurance that will cover you in France, your ordinary insurance in the US does not cover this. Since you are not married I'm not sure whether or not you can be added as a dependent on your boyfriend's health care (someone will have to confirm).

If you do buy expat health insurance and get a long stay visa, you might also want to look into registering your relationship legally in France - it's called PACs and it's like a civil partership. After one year of being PACsed you can normally get a residency permit with work rights. Without being PACsed or married you won't be allowed to work unless you go through the process of an employer sponsoring you (quite difficult) and returning home to apply for a work visa.

To get a long stay visitor's visa, you need to have private health insurance for one year - normally you would need to get an "expat health insurance" policy. Your boyfriend won't be able to put you on his health coverage until after you are married or PACS'd - and even that can take some time. You'd also have to check with the insurers to make sure they will cover your maternity costs, as many won't on the first year of a policy.

Once you are in France on a visitor's visa, you need to have lived together for at least six months before you are eligible to change your status without having to leave France to re-apply for a visa. Getting married is probably the easier approach. Getting PACS'd is a possibility, but some prefectures require you to have lived together legally for a full year before they will let you PACS and being PACS'd isn't the guarantee of receiving a change in status that being married is.
Cheers,
Bev

Best of luck Meggie, I can understand how stressful things must be! If it helps, I was already pregnant when I took out health insurance here and the MAAF were fine about covering me straight away. I hope you manage to get your plans in motion!

Honestly if you are thinking about getting married at some point in the future, I would go to the justice of the peace in the US and just do it. It will make your lives a lot easier. The PACS is also possible, but the problem is that you can't get PACSed in the US so it doesn't help your visa situation. We got married in NYC on paper, several months before we had our actual wedding, and then had the marriage validated by the French consulate. After that it was easy to obtain rights, medical coverage, etc., though there was still some paperwork, as always.

qiubuo said:

Honestly if you are thinking about getting married at some point in the future, I would go to the justice of the peace in the US and just do it. It will make your lives a lot easier. The PACS is also possible, but the problem is that you can't get PACSed in the US so it doesn't help your visa situation. We got married in NYC on paper, several months before we had our actual wedding, and then had the marriage validated by the French consulate. After that it was easy to obtain rights, medical coverage, etc., though there was still some paperwork, as always.

Click to expand...

The one catch in getting married in the US is that you then have to apply for and receive your livret de famille through the Consulate before you can apply for your spouse visa. The spouse visa is nearly automatic and only takes a few days to get after you attend the interview. But the livret de famille can take a "few" months - from the apostille for the marriage certificate to waiting until the marriage is recorded in the French spouse's birth record.
Cheers,
Bev