Why was my birth certificate rejected in France for being too old?

Reader Question: I used my US birth certificate as my ‘justificatif d'état civil’ but it was rejected for being too old and not being official. What should I do? 

French birth certificates come in two main versions: long-form (copie intégrale) and short-form (extrait). 

Short-form certificates only contain information about the person it applies to, whereas longer versions contain additional information about a person’s parents.

However, you can sometimes obtain extrait avec filiation, which are short-form versions that also contain parental details – often used by French citizens for administrative purposes.

When signing up to join France’s social security system Assurance Maladie, the Caisse primaire d'assurance maladie (Cpam) requires a birth certificate containing information about the applicant’s parents.

There are a number of other instances where you may be required to provide a copie intégrale version of your birth certificate rather than a simple extrait. 

Always check in advance the version needed, as you will typically need to specify that you need a long-form version when making a request for a copy.

Recent version typically required 

It is also worth noting that in most cases, French authorities require a recent version of the document, typically from within the last year or as little as three months when renewing a French passport.

This is because French documents typically contain civil information on them (deaths, marriages, civil partnerships, births, etc).

For those with non-French documents, they must therefore obtain a new copy of the document in question, officially signed and dated from within the period. They cannot send copies of official older documents, or if they do they will be rejected.

Copies of official documents are available, typically through official documentation services.

For example, if you were born in the UK you can obtain an official copy of your birth certificate from the General Register Office (GRO) – exact details differ depending on the location of the birth. 

For American citizens, you typically have to obtain the copy through the vital records office of the state you were born in – more information is available here. 

While some online services offer to obtain the documents for you, they either typically need to go through these services anyway, or are scams and will not be able to get the documents for you. 

Note however some services that offer to ‘apostille’ documents that require it may be legitimate, charging extra for this service. 

This may be useful for documents not obtained from official record-keeping agencies, as they may not always come with official signatures (birth certificates usually do, however).

Translation sometimes needed

Also remember that in some cases, documents must be translated into French to be accepted, or otherwise apostilled if not already officially signed.

This is not typically the case for documents required when signing up for Assurance Maladie, with originals in English usually accepted (though in practice the rule is not always consistently applied). 

For more information about translating documents in France, read our article here.