Guarantor for a Student in France: What a Parent Abroad Signs

This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change and individual situations differ. Always confirm the current position with a qualified professional before acting.

Your daughter has a place at a Paris grande école, or your son is starting a master’s in Lyon, and somewhere in the flurry of enrolment emails an estate agent has sent you a PDF called acte de cautionnement with a note saying it needs your signature by Friday. You are in Surrey or New Jersey. You do not know what you are guaranteeing, for how long, or whether the agent is allowed to ask you for the three documents it wants. The French finance ministry published a six-point guide for students this summer. This is the version for the parent who pays, written from the texts the guide relies on, with the parts that only matter when the family lives outside France.

The guarantee you are asked to sign, and how to get out of it

A word on vocabulary first, because the French uses one root for two things. The caution is the person who guarantees, in this case you. The cautionnement, or acte de cautionnement, is the document you sign, and we call it the guarantee deed below. It is governed by article 22-1 of the loi du 6 juillet 1989, the statute that governs every lease of a main residence in France. By signing it you promise to pay what your child does not: rent, charges, repairs at the end, and the costs of recovering them.

Three things in that article protect you. The deed must state the rent and how it may be revised, must reproduce the paragraph of the article that tells you how to withdraw, and must carry the acknowledgement wording required by article 2297 of the civil code, failing which the guarantee is void. Since the 2022 reform of the civil code that wording no longer has to be in your handwriting, so a scanned or electronically signed deed is fine. If the deed gives no duration, you may end it at any time by written notice, registered post in practice. The withdrawal takes effect at the end of the lease period running when the landlord receives it, which for a one-year furnished lease means at most a year’s exposure after you write. And the landlord must give you your own copy of the lease.

The documents an agent may ask for, and the ones it may not

Two lines in the neighbouring article, 22-2, matter more to a parent abroad than to anyone else. A landlord may not make you co-sign the lease itself as a condition of letting to your child: you can be a guarantor, you cannot be forced to become a tenant. And the documents that may be demanded of you are a closed list fixed by the decree of 5 November 2015: one identity document, one proof of address, proof of your occupation, and proof of income such as recent payslips or your last tax assessment. The decree says in terms that copies are acceptable, that documents may be written in French or translated into it, and that amounts may be converted into euros. A P60, an HMRC tax calculation or a US Form 1040 with a translation is therefore an acceptable document, whatever an agent’s first reaction.

Your child’s own file follows the same decree. For identity, a passport or national identity card, French or foreign, a driving licence, or a residence permit, and the landlord may ask to see the original. For address, the last three rent receipts, or a signed statement from whoever has been housing them. For occupation, a student card or an enrolment certificate. For resources, payslips or internship allowances if any, the letter awarding a grant, or the last tax assessment. The ministry’s guide points to DossierFacile, a free State service whose staff check the file, tell the student what to correct, and issue it as a single verified PDF or link, which is worth an hour of your child’s time before the first viewing. What may not be asked, of you or of your child, is a bank account number before signing, a photograph, a criminal record extract, a medical file or a certificate of no outstanding credit. A landlord who asks anyway risks a fine of up to €3,000, or €15,000 for a company.

Visale: the State guarantee that can replace a parent abroad

Here is the practical problem the texts do not solve. Nothing in the decree lets an agency refuse a guarantor because he lives abroad, but a landlord chooses between applicants freely, and many will not take a guarantee they would have to enforce in a foreign court. The answer the State built is Visale, a free guarantee from Action Logement that covers unpaid rent and damage for a tenant under 30, students included, whatever their nationality. On Action Logement’s own criteria an EU student needs a student card and a passport. A student from outside the EU, which since Brexit includes a British one, needs a long-stay visa or residence permit marked étudiant that is already valid on the day of the application, so the Visale request cannot be made before the visa’s start date. The wording is the visa long séjour valant titre de séjour, the VLS-TS. A student on the temporary VLS-T issued for stays of under a year, which is what many exchange students hold, should check with Action Logement before relying on Visale, because that visa is not a residence permit.

For a student the guarantee is granted without any income test up to a rent of €1,000 a month including charges in the Paris region, and up to €840 or €680 elsewhere depending on the area, on the current service-public.fr thresholds. Above those figures a resources test applies. The student applies online, receives a certificate, and the landlord accepts it in place of a parent. Two cautions. Some landlords still refuse Visale, occasionally because they prefer a person they can pursue, more often because they have never used it and do not understand that the State pays first and chases the tenant afterwards, so a short explanation from the agent helps. And where the landlord insists on a parent anyway, nothing stops you signing as well. Our Visale piece has the landlord’s side of it.

One more rule in article 22-1 cuts the other way. A landlord who has taken out rent-guarantee insurance may not also demand a personal guarantor, on pain of nullity, except where the tenant is a student or an apprentice. So a student flat is the one case where an insured landlord can still ask you to sign. In practice the rule is close to unenforceable in a market where the landlord holds all the cards, since a family that objects simply does not get the flat, and few tenants ever discover whether the landlord is insured at all. Its real use is later: if the guarantee is ever called and the tenant was not a student when the lease was signed, the deed may be void.

The ministry’s six checks, and what each one means for a parent

The viewing: what to look at, and whether the rent is even legal

The ministry’s second tip is the one a parent cannot do by proxy, so it is worth briefing the child. Open and close every door and window. Look for damp, which shows as dark patches or mould on walls and ceilings. Check the insulation and look at the radiators. Test the sockets, the taps, and the state of the walls and floors, because anything not written down at the inventory will be charged at the exit. Then the question the guide asks that most families do not: is the rent lawful? In the tense zones a landlord may not freely raise the rent between two tenants or at renewal. In Paris, Lyon, Villeurbanne, Lille, Bordeaux, Montpellier and a growing list of others, the town hall also publishes a reference rent per square metre for the address, and the rent may not exceed the upper reference. Our Paris rent-cap barometer found nearly half of listings over the ceiling this year. A student who can quote the reference rent at the viewing has a bargaining chip that most applicants do not.

Deposit, agency fees and reservation cheques: the legal ceilings

Three sums change hands on the day and each has a ceiling. The deposit, dépôt de garantie, may not exceed one month’s rent excluding charges for an unfurnished flat, under article 22, or two months for a furnished one, under article 25-6, which is what most student lets are. It cannot be asked at all if the rent is paid more than two months in advance. It comes back within a month of the keys being handed over if the exit inventory matches the entry one, and within two months otherwise, and a landlord who is late owes a penalty of 10 per cent of the monthly rent for each month begun.

The agency’s fees to the tenant are capped twice: they cannot exceed the landlord’s share, and they cannot exceed a figure per square metre of habitable surface. Since the order of 17 July 2025 that figure is €12.10 in the very tight zones, Paris and its inner suburbs among them, €10.09 in the other tight zones and €8.07 elsewhere, plus €3.03 per square metre for the entry inventory when the agency does it. For a 20 square metre Paris studio that is a maximum of €242 for the file, visit and lease, and €60.60 for the inventory. Anything above that, or any fee for the exit inventory, is unlawful, and service-public.fr has a calculator. The ministry also warns against a chèque de réservation to hold a flat before signing: nothing is owed before the lease exists, and a landlord who asks for money to take the flat off the market is asking for something the law gives him no right to.

What the lease must say, and the documents that must come with it

A French residential lease is not a free-form contract. Since 2015 it must follow a compulsory template, which differs for unfurnished and furnished lets, and from 1 October 2026 a new template applies to every lease signed or renewed, so a lease produced this autumn on last year’s form is already out of date. Article 3 lists what it must contain. The landlord’s name and address and the agent’s, the tenant’s name, the start date and term, the words bail d’habitation, and the description of the flat and its annexes. Then the works done since the last tenant, the rent, how it is paid and how it may be revised, the rent the previous tenant paid if he left within the last eighteen months, and the deposit. Since 1 January 2024 it must also carry the flat’s twelve-digit tax identifier, which a landlord finds in his own online tax account, and asking for it is a quick test of whether the person you are dealing with owns the flat at all.

Article 3-3 then lists the technical file that must be annexed: the energy certificate, the lead report for pre-1949 buildings, the natural and technological risks statement, the noise report near airports, and the electricity and gas reports where the installation is over fifteen years old. The ministry adds the rest of the bundle: the information notice on tenants’ rights, the entry inventory, the list of the flat’s connections to television and broadband, an extract of the building’s règlement de copropriété where there is one, and a copy of the Anah agreement if the flat is let under one. Last comes the tenant’s insurance certificate, which your child must buy before the keys are handed over and which costs a student a few euros a month. If the flat is rated F or G the lease must say so. A G-rated flat has been unlawful to let since 1 January 2025 and an F-rated one follows in 2028, which our DPE guide explains, and a student in a G flat can demand the works or leave.

The entry inventory, and the ten-day window most students miss

The état des lieux d’entrée is the document that decides, a year later, whether the deposit comes back. It is drawn up with both sides present, on paper or electronically, and the tenant gets a copy by hand or by email. What the ministry’s guide stresses, and what a nineteen-year-old will not do unprompted, is the follow-up. Under article 3-2 the tenant has ten calendar days from the inventory to ask the landlord to add anything missed, and the whole of the first month of the heating season to add the state of the radiators, which cannot be judged in September. If the landlord refuses, the tenant can go to the commission départementale de conciliation, which is free and needs no lawyer.

The parent’s job is to have the child photograph every wall, floor, window, appliance and tap on day one with the phone’s date stamp on, and to email the file to the agency within the ten days with a short list of anything the inventory omits. That email is the cheapest insurance you will buy all year.

Flat-shares: how far your guarantee reaches

A colocation under article 8-1 is a flat shared by at least two people who each have a lease with the same landlord, and it comes in two forms: one lease signed by everyone, the bail unique, or a separate lease per room. The difference falls on you. Under a single lease the tenants are jointly liable for the whole rent, and so is each guarantor, so if a flatmate stops paying, the landlord may come to you for her share. When your child leaves, the statute limits that exposure: solidarity ends when a new flatmate joins the lease, and in any event six months after your child’s notice takes effect. Six months of someone else’s rent is still real money. Where the choice exists, individual leases put a wall around your liability, and the guarantee deed for a single-lease colocation must in any case name the tenant it covers, or it is void.

One more point from the ministry’s guide that families miss: a boyfriend or girlfriend who moves in without being on the lease has no rights in the flat, whatever they contribute to the rent.

What the landlord owes your child, and what your child owes back

Articles 6 and 7 of the 1989 law set out the two sides, and the ministry’s sixth tip is a summary of them. The landlord must deliver a decent home in good repair, ensure quiet enjoyment, carry out repairs other than the minor ones the tenant takes on, and may not object to changes that are not transformations, so a bookshelf is fine and a knocked-through wall is not. Refusing a tenant because of origin, sex, disability, family situation or sexual orientation is a crime under article 225-2 of the code pénal, punishable by three years’ imprisonment and a €45,000 fine, and the foreign-sounding surname on your child’s application is exactly what that article exists for.

In return the tenant pays the rent on the date agreed, keeps the flat and, if furnished, its contents in order, uses it as a home, does the small repairs, allows works needed to bring the flat up to the decency standard, and holds the insurance. A parent abroad cannot do any of those things, which is why the guarantee exists. What a parent can do is make sure the rent leaves a French account by standing order on the first of the month, because under the template that applies from 1 October the lease’s clause résolutoire bites after six weeks of arrears rather than two months.

Our view: the law is on the student’s side, the market is not

Read cold, the French tenancy statute is one of the most protective in Europe for a nineteen-year-old with no income: a closed list of documents, capped fees, a capped deposit with a penalty for late return, a free conciliation body and a free State guarantee. The ministry’s guide is accurate and worth its eight minutes. What it cannot say is that in Paris, Lyon or Bordeaux in September the landlord has at least forty applications for one studio. The law’s protections only bite once your child has been chosen.

The foreign family’s disadvantage is not legal, it is practical: an agent who has to weigh a guarantee enforceable in Manchester against one enforceable in Nantes will take Nantes. Visale exists precisely to remove that disadvantage, and the single most useful thing a parent abroad can do is to have the visa in hand and the Visale certificate issued before the first viewing, so that the file lands complete. Everything else in this piece is about not overpaying once the yes arrives.

FAQ: guaranteeing a student let in France

Can a French landlord refuse me as guarantor because I live abroad?

The law does not say a guarantor must live in France, and the 2015 decree expressly allows translated foreign documents. But a landlord may choose among applicants, and many prefer a guarantor they can sue in a French court. Visale, the free State guarantee, is the usual answer.

Is a British student eligible for Visale after Brexit?

Yes, as a non-EU student, provided the long-stay student visa valant titre de séjour or the residence permit is valid on the day of the application. The request cannot be made before the visa’s start date, and a student on a temporary visa for a stay of under a year should confirm eligibility with Action Logement first.

How long does my guarantee last?

For the term written in the deed. If none is written, you may withdraw by written notice at any time, with effect at the end of the lease period in which the landlord receives it. In a flat-share on a single lease you also remain liable for six months after your child’s departure unless a replacement joins the lease sooner.

What is the maximum deposit and agency fee for a student flat?

One month’s rent excluding charges unfurnished, two months furnished. Agency fees to the tenant are capped at the landlord’s share and at €12.10, €10.09 or €8.07 per square metre depending on the zone, plus €3.03 per square metre for the entry inventory.

Can the landlord make me sign the lease itself?

No. Article 22-2 of the 1989 law forbids a landlord from requiring a parent to co-sign the lease as a condition of letting. You may be asked to guarantee it, which is a different document with different consequences.