Next thing I knew, I was mixing it with a plain Perle de Lait yogurt and memories of my childhood came rushing back as the taste triggered the process. I was this child between 8 and 12 years old, staying with my grandparents and my uncles and aunts. I was back in their home - everything was so vivid. It was a very moving experience.

For each of us, no matter how many decades we live in our adopted country, no matter how fully integrated we feel, there is this special spot where childhood lies waiting to be called up. The worst thing to do is to dismiss it. The foolish thing to do is to conclude that one is not integrated after all, and that one should move back. As a foreigner, we will always miss things, which means longing for what was left behind. From the deepest rapture to the silliest craving, such feelings are all important because they speak to us about the same thing. We need to cherish these moments and treat them with the utmost respect. This is twice as important for expatriates as it was for Proust. Too often expatriates feel very uneasy about such experiences, blaming themselves for being mushy and having corny thoughts, and end up feeling that all this is ridiculous.

I just hope my testimony can help others grasp this aspect of the life of a long-term immigrant. Such experiences say nothing about your ability to function as a responsible adult in your new culture.

OVERSEAS AMERICANS ARE NOT COUNTED IN THE US CENSUS
I would like to pass along a message I recently received from the organization, Overseas Vote Foundation, and I believe that this is an excellent initiative. I support whole-heartedly any initiative that promotes the rights of American living overseas. This is the text that came in an email from this non-profit organization.

"If you are an American citizen and currently live overseas, or have lived overseas in the past and may still have family and friends residing abroad, then I am writing to ask for your help, because - as I am sure you know -_overseas Americans are not counted in the US Census. And today there is no fact-based estimate of our number. Yet, understanding the size and location of our global population is crucial to improving access to voting, social security, and consular services. Overseas Vote Foundation is currently working with international and domestic organizations in the Overseas Citizens Count Project. Our goal is to determine how many Americans live abroad and how they are dispersed geographically. Please, step up and be counted! It only takes a minute. Really!__www.counting-citizens-abroad.org _And pass this message along to all your American friends abroad. It benefits us all! Thank you
President Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat_ +1(202).470.2480 _susan@overseasvotefoundation.org
www.overseasvotefoundation.org
media:_twitter.com/overseasvote_youtube.com/overseasvote www.youtube.com/overseasvote
_facebook.com/overseas.vote.foundationwww.facebook.com/overseas.vote.foundation

OUR DAUGHTER'S SEARCH FOR AN INTERNSHIP STARTING IN THE FALL
This fall our daughter Lucille is starting her second year at the French business school, Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Rennes, in the eponymous capital city of the Brittany province. Ever since she has known about the second-year internship, she has been looking mainly in and around Paris, where most of our contacts are. The teachers at that school pulled a fast one on the students and changed the rules concerning the second-year internship about two months ago. Instead of alternating two weeks/three weeks between school and the workplace, the students must alternate two days/three days between the school and the workplace. This means that the internship Lucille found in Paris will not be workable. Lucille is totally bilingual and binational French-American. If anyone has any ideas at all for an internship in the area around Rennes, please contact Lucille directly at Lucille.TAQUET@esc-rennes.fr. Here is the website address for the school and the program she is in, International Bachelor Program in Management I.B.P.M., www.esc-rennes.fr/index.php/fr/ibpm. Thank you so much for your help.

OFFICE CLOSED FOR SUMMER VACATION
My office will be closed from the evening of Friday July 22nd until 9am on Monday August 29th. As always, I will be reachable by email for emergencies and important matters. The service I offer of receiving mail for clients will continue while the office is closed. I will let individual clients know how to receive or retrieve their mail during this period.

As usual, there will be no August issue. I wish everybody a nice summer and a good vacation.

Jean Taquet

Q & A

OWNING FRENCH REAL ESTATE ZONED FOR MORE THAN ONE USE

You cannot properly address this situation without understanding the legal grounds for their request. To look at your pied-à-terre the way the tax office sees it: this is a zoning issue that they are trying to address. In their records, your place comprises an apartment on the second floor and a workshop of some sort on the first floor, which they expect a craftsman to be using, and they want to know for what, if anything. The plan d'occupation des sols (P.O.S.) , which is mainly decided by city halls in France, tells the tax office what is lodging and what is commercial space. There are also distinctions between space used as offices, workshops, restaurants, and regular shops. The zoning can be changed, but it is a long and rather difficult procedure.

You have a right to state that the commercial portion of your property is not in use. Indeed, it is extremely important that you do not state that you are living there and that it is now made up of bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and so on. This would mean a drastic change of zoning without authorization, which would put you at legal risk. My impression is that you kept it the way it was when you bought it, and that you use this space for living and leisure activities. In other words, your use of the first floor could be such that the zoning is not challenged; putting some furniture there and using it as a large living room, study, patio, and so on, would not change the zoning.

In short, if you reply that the space is not in use, the tax office can close the file.

This incident illustrates a much bigger issue, however, and you need to decide what you are going to do about it. My question to you would be: "What did you buy?"

I can imagine your look of disbelief, since you know what you bought and you can even describe it. My point concerns the zoning. It is clear that you never intended to purchase a workshop as such and that you had and still have no intention of carrying out an activity in crafts. So there are only two explanations.

• 1 – The title drafted by the last notaire states that this first floor is commercial, and you either did not notice that or ignored it, in which case I would question the quality of the work the notaire did for you with this transaction. The notaire should have explained the situation to you in detail.
• 2 – The notaire, in providing a description of the property, indicated that both floors were lodging and should be zoned that way. If this is the case, the problem is that the tax office does not know about this change in the zoning, which would be odd to say the least.

Is it really worth it to try to fix the situation?

If everything on the ground floor is compatible with an economic activity and the title states that the space is commercial, you might want to keep it that way, so that if you wish to sell or rent the place it can go back to its original use, which would enable you to sell or rent it for more money.

Your choice depends on what you decide is in your best interest, but the bottom line is that I see nothing really bad for you in this situation. It started with a little annoyance, nothing more. There is a potential benefit, and if not, this situation should be relatively simple to straighten out with the tax office.

HEALTH COVERAGE AS A NEW EMPLOYEE

A side comment here: the carte de séjour compétences et talents grants, in effect, all the various types of right to work in France, which mean you do have a choice. You are now an employee and manager of a corporation, and as long as these roles are in line with the project you presented as justification for a visa and later a carte de séjour then you should be OK. I just hope that you checked into this aspect of your situation before creating the corporation.

I believe, however, that you should have looked into becoming self-employed instead. This would have granted you immediate health coverage, and it would have been a cheaper way to start and maintain your business. Even if it turns out that creating a corporation really is the best solution, I am not sure that being a minority shareholder in order to be an employee of your own corporation is the best status for you. If you were the managing director and majority shareholder and you wanted to get paid, you would get a status very similar to self-employed, which means immediate coverage upon registration.

By the way, the main two reasons for setting up a limited liability corporation are (obviously) legal protection from any liability the business could incur, plus keeping your taxable income reasonably low.

Indeed, being an employee is the most expensive fiscal status, since it entails the highest level of social charges and taxation. The only way to benefit has to do with the fact that the amount of salary, which is defined at the beginning, can be as low as minimum wage. This enables the company to keep some cash in reserve.

So, as you can see, the corporation needs to earn enough money to make the creation of a corporation worthwhile, and I am not convinced that it this will be the case for you.

There is a side issue that has some serious consequences. Running a corporation in France is a lot more complicated than in most countries because of the complexity of the legal and fiscal system. For example, the only employers I know who draft their own employees' pay slips are CPAs. A French pay slip is way too complex to be handled by someone who does not have good accounting knowledge. Someone in your situation has to have a good CPA, preferably a bilingual one. This is an extra cost, probably a sizable one, that could have been avoided.

As for your specific issue, related to the fact that you have contributed to the system for months and have not yet secured your health coverage. As a first-time employee in France, you can obtain health coverage after one month of working full time. The employee coverage works like an account where you accrue credit and then use it. The pay slip shows the amount of credit in your account and whether you have enough to get covered. There is an extremely long procedure (it can take years in some cases) to link the social charges the corporation pays with the right to obtain health coverage. But, leaving that aside, you can register for coverage by contacting your caisse primaire d'assurance maladie (CPAM) to submit the documents proving that you qualify. One can submit the file as soon as the first month ends. The most important documents are:

• 1 – A copy of your carte de séjour as well as those of any dependents.
• 2 – Your pay slip to enable the CPAM to check that all taxes have been paid so you are entitled to the coverage.
• 3 – An official translation of your birth certificate, since your French social security number is determined in part by your date and place of birth.
• 4 – An official translation of your marriage license and the birth certificates of any dependents.

It used to be one could walk into the nearest CPAM, submit a complete file and get a statement right away. This was followed by a very long wait to receive the carte vitale, which is the French health coverage card. The length of the procedure was a nuisance, but at least you could document your coverage, which can be extremely important in case of an urgent hospitalization. Today, as far as I know, in Paris you send your file by mail, which leads to two major inconveniences. First, and most obviously, you do not get a statement showing documentation of coverage until they have reviewed and approved your file, which takes a very long time. This delay can lead to serious problems in the meantime - for example, should you be rushed to the hospital and faced with a large bill you would not have proof of coverage.

The second issue may be worse: there is virtually no way that your file will be considered complete the first time. Almost certainly, you will be dragged into a Kafkaesque process where you get a list of more documents to send, which leads to another one and maybe one more. Since you can no longer have the file properly reviewed by a civil servant before you submit it, it will be reviewed from the beginning every time you add documents to it, and every time it is quite possible that the end decision is that there is yet another document missing. French bureaucrats seem to be the world champions at this sort of thing!

To conclude, I am really not sure what the best way is to approach this situation. One would hope that, if you can get professional guidance, asking for coverage will be the fastest way as long as you are extremely careful with the list of documents needed: it is vital to read between the lines concerning which information they are looking for, and not just provide the listed documents.

INCREASE THE RENT BEFORE THE LEASE EXPIRES

The answer is, "Absolutely not, she does not have this right," but that does not explain why.

The first issue is the definition of a contract. It is an agreement on two things: an item and a price. In your case, the item is the right to rent the apartment, and the price is the rent. (Renters also pay condominium charges, la provision pour charges de copropriété, but this, legally speaking, is a reimbursement of predefined expenses.) The next point is that a contract cannot be changed unless all the parties agree. Clearly you do not agree with the change, so the contract cannot be modified. Almost all lease contracts in France contain a provision defining how to calculate the yearly increase of the rent (and only the rent, not charges) on the anniversary of the signing.

The second issue she appears to be raising concerns whether her agreement was genuine: she is claiming that you did things in such a way as to get her to agree against her will. This is a somewhat clumsy reference to les vices du consentement - another heavyweight concept that law students slave over for weeks, if not months. There are only three possible elements that can void the consent of a party to a contract. The first is l'erreur, a mistake; in your case, this would mean she did not know what she was renting to you, which is clearly untrue. The second is la violence, violence, meaning you used a weapon or physical force to coerce her to sign. I doubt this is what she is referring to.

The third element, le dol, is willful misrepresentation. In your case, this would mean that you tricked her into believing things that made her agree to give you a very low rent and that if she had known the truth about the situation and about you, she would never have agreed to rent to you for that amount.

Let's look specifically at the lease you signed with her. She advertised that her apartment was available for rent. She fixed the amount of the rent, along with other conditions. She chose you as her tenant, and over the years you paid the rent she asked for. I do not see anything indicating she thought you were misrepresenting yourself.

The only other grounds she would have the right to change the lease is if she was mentally incapacitated at the time. She would have to argue that she had no idea what she was doing when she put the apartment up for rent. Without getting into a lengthy explanation of what needs to be proved in order for a judge to decide that such a claim is valid, the simple fact that you have been renting from her for decades would make it close to impossible to prove that she was incapacitated all those years ago, and would cast into serious doubt the validity of her claim.

The real explanation is probably a lot simpler. Learning that you had bought an apartment in the building where you live as a tenant must have come as a shock. This made her think, and led her to research the rental market in the neighborhood. She then realized that the amount she had been increasing the rent on the anniversary date did not at all reflect the market increase in the rent. When she saw how much money she was "losing" by renting to you, she wanted to fix the problem right away.

Note that, while she cannot do it right now, when the lease is up and it is time to renew it (which in France is done by staying silent; this is called tacit reconduction), she can ask for a new contract. This is another way to change the contract significantly. She will then have a good chance of getting what she wants, i.e., a rent increase higher than the clause in the contract allows. This is when the real bargaining will have to begin. Your interest is in keeping the increase as low as possible and finding every possible reason for the rent to be below the market rate, while your landlady will look for reasons why it should be above. Now that you are warned that this will happen sooner or later, you can get ready either for a good arm wrestling match or to move out before the end of the lease.

There is one other thing that usually goes without saying, but that I should perhaps point out. Tenants who pay their rent via automatic wire transfer done by their bank might fear that the owner could increase the payment without them knowing. But the fact that your landlady has your RIB (the standard French document presenting banking information) does not allow her to get any amount she wants. All banking transactions require approval by the client, almost always a signed document. So the payment can only be for the amount you signed for. Nevertheless, I would warn the banker to keep an eye on your account. Even better, you could start sending checks to pay the rent.

Please forward this message to all who would be interested in its contents. The information contained in this newsletter is intended as exclusively general information. Therefore, I strongly urge readers to seek professional guidance concerning the legal and tax matters mentioned. This newsletter is intended as a general guide and is not to be taken as professional advice.