Registering a PACS at a French consulate

The PACS, the French civil partnership, can be concluded abroad at a French consulate, between two adults of different sex or of the same sex, as long as at least one of them is French. It organizes the couple's common life and takes effect on the day it is registered.

Who can conclude one

Both partners must be adults or emancipated minors, neither married nor already in a PACS, and not closely related. You declare your common address in a sworn statement included in the joint declaration form; you do not have to live together on the day you file, but you commit to it.

The file and the appointment

You send the consulate competent for your place of residence the joint PACS declaration, the sworn statements of no kinship and of common residence, the PACS agreement and the supporting documents, either in person or by mail. Service-Public's simulator lists the documents for your situation.

Once the consulate confirms the file is complete, you book the registration appointment. Both partners attend; the consulate registers the PACS, gives you a receipt and returns the signed agreement, which you keep.

What happens next

The consulate sends notices to the registrars who hold your birth records so they can be updated. If one partner is a foreigner born abroad, the PACS is recorded in the register kept by the central civil status service in Nantes.

A receipt, an updated birth extract or a document from that service proves the PACS later.

Booking at your consulate

The network gives one email address per consulate for the registration appointment. Louisiana residents write to Houston, which handles PACS for New Orleans:

Changing or ending a PACS

The consular post that registered the PACS is the one that records any change, wherever the partners live later.

Both partners must agree, and the change goes in a written agreement in French that cites the number and date of the original registration and carries both signatures; form cerfa 15791*01 gives a model.

You can file it in person or by registered mail with acknowledgment of receipt, with your IDs or copies of them. The change applies between you once it is registered, and against third parties once it is noted on your birth records.

A PACS ends with the marriage or death of a partner, or with a declaration of dissolution, joint or unilateral. The dissolution, too, is registered by the authority that recorded the PACS.

Official sources: PACS.

Details checked against the official pages on October 6, 2026.