Getting legal

During our visa process, we were told that we would need to get a French driver’s license since we were planning to stay in France longer than 90 days. But we were in luck because South Carolina was one of nine states that had a deal with the French government to allow its citizens to just transfer one license for another. Since Jean, with her advanced French language skills, took on most of the bureaucratic tasks, I decided to get our driver’s licenses.

On a warm day in November, I headed to the Sous-Prefecture (a bit like the county seat) in Arles. I met with the helpful attendant who told me that, even though South Carolina indeed had an agreement with France, I would have to apply for the transfer. She gave me the multiple forms (in French, of course), and I headed back home. We filled out the forms (note the “We”), took new passport photos and I headed back to Arles.

Everything was in order - but wait…Just how would the French bureaucrats know what our SC driver’s license said? The only way, of course, was to provide them with translations. But not just ANY translations…These needed to be translations provided by an authorized French DMV translator. I found an authorized translator in Avignon. It turns out that it was an American who had become “authorized” and charged thirty-five Euros per document.

So, two weeks later, I headed back to Arles for the third time and presented my “authorized” and translated SC driver’s licenses. The lady took our SC licenses and gave us temporary French licenses to use during the 90 days or so it would take to receive our real licenses. (Before we left SC, we were advised to get a second SC driver’s license just in case….this was good advice since no one acknowledges the authenticity of the temporary ones.)

Now, let’s move on to the next DMV requirement: La Carte Gris. This is the equivalent of the registration in the US. Jean took this one on….

When we bought the car from the owner of our house, we all felt we had filled out the appropriate documents and were golden. Not so fast. The transfer form was the wrong one. So we got the new one and sent it to the previous owner (who, BTW, lives in the US). It came back a few weeks later and we sent it via the Marie to the Sous-Prefecture. We were hopeful that everything was correct this time. Not so. The previous owner had made a couple of errors when completing her portion of the document and had applied white-out. It turns out that you can’t use white-out on the form. So we sent a new form back to the US that the previous owner completed. When we received it, Jean took it back to the Marie with all of the other paperwork and they sent it on to the Sous-Prefecture again.

A few weeks later, we were notified that there was another problem… The husband of the previous owner had died the year before. His name was still on the OLD Carte Gris. How could the French government possibly know if his wife was the SOLE owner of the car? So we had to get a French notary public to validate that the total ownership of the car indeed went to the wife of the deceased and no one else owned it. We got all the forms signed and decided this time to take it directly to the Sous-Prefecture in (guess where?) Arles. We arrived at 12:20 and were told that office closed for the day at 12:15.

So a couple of days later we went back, getting there early, waited for two hours, and then received the temporary version and were told that the real one would “come soon.” Voila! Two weeks later, not only did the Carte Gris appear but also our French Driver’s Licenses. Finally, we are street legal!


The attractive streel legal couple!