Parenting agreement: residence, contact and child maintenance (France)
Published byDocMuse
This document is in French
The PDF you download is in French — that is the language it has to be filed in, so it is not translated. Everything on this page is here to tell you what it says.
A standard form for separated parents, married or not, who agree on how their children's lives are organised: alternating residence or residence with one parent, contact and staying rights, holidays, maintenance and education costs, exceptional expenses. To have their agreement approved, parents apply to the family judge on Cerfa form 16139, free on service-public.gouv.fr, which also offers two model agreements: you do not need DocMuse for this step. Our form lets the parents choose each clause and does not review their situation. Unmarried parents can also have their maintenance agreement made enforceable by the CAF or MSA.
- Made for use in France
- Last updated October 13, 2026
When to use this document
- You are separating in France and want to agree with the other parent on where the children will live.
- You and the other parent want to put alternating residence, holidays and child maintenance in writing.
- You agree with the other parent on contact and school costs and want it all written down before seeing the family judge.
- You need a parenting agreement covering residence, contact and maintenance for your children.
What you fill in
The details the document asks for.
- First parent
- First parent's address
- Second parent
- Second parent's address
- Children (surname, first names and date of birth, one per line)
- Children's residence
- Parent the children live with (if not alternating)
- Agreed rhythm: weeks, weekends, handover days and journeys
- School holidays: how they are shared
- Parent who pays the maintenance (if any)
- Monthly maintenance per child (euros, empty if none)
- Due date of the first instalment
- How maintenance is paid
- How exceptional costs are shared (e.g. in halves)
- Additional terms
- City
- Date
Preview
This document is produced for you. Your answers are typed into it and the finished PDF is yours to keep.
Common questions
- How do parents in France get a parenting agreement approved by a judge?
- Both parents fill in Cerfa form 16139 together, free on service-public.gouv.fr, and send it with the signed agreement and the documents asked for to the family judge (juge aux affaires familiales) of the tribunal judiciaire where either of them lives, as they choose (article 1070 of the French Code of Civil Procedure). The procedure is free and, as a rule, held without a hearing. The judge checks that the agreement protects the children's interests and that each parent consented freely (article 373-2-7 of the French Civil Code), and approves or refuses it without changing it. Once approved, it has the force of a judgment.
- Can the French CAF make a maintenance agreement enforceable?
- Yes, for parents who were not married. Separating cohabitants, or partners whose PACS has ended, with no judgment setting maintenance, can ask the CAF, or the MSA, to give their agreement on the amount of maintenance enforceable force, free and online, through the maintenance recovery and intermediation agency (ARIPA, pension-alimentaire.caf.fr). The ARIPA can also collect the maintenance each month from the paying parent and pass it on to the other: this is financial intermediation, which the two parents can set aside only together.
- Is a French parenting agreement worth anything without court approval?
- It binds the parents who signed it and proves what they agreed, but it does not have the force of a judgment: if one parent stops keeping to it, the other cannot have it enforced by a commissaire de justice and must go to the judge. For maintenance, approval by the judge or the title issued by the CAF allows recovery of unpaid sums. This standard form does not replace a review of your situation; each parent may have it read before signing.
How you can sign this document
- Print it and sign by hand. The signature lines in the document are left blank on purpose — sign on them in ink.
- Sign it yourself with a qualified electronic signature. If you already hold a QES — Evrotrust, B-Trust, StampIT, ZealiD or any qualified provider on the EU Trusted List, on a card, a USB token, in a mobile app or in the cloud — our signing guide explains step by step how to sign this exact file without invalidating it. Step-by-step help, and a way to check it worked
DocMuse sells documents, not legal advice. Acceptance always depends on the recipient's rules and your local law.
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