ID for French pension

A question about : ID for French pension

I am hoping somebody in this board may have experience of this issue.
Thanks to working in France for a year many moons ago I get a tiny French pension each month.
Every year I have to return a form duly signed to prove that I still exist. Up till now this has been signed at the Register office without any charge or any difficulty or delay.
Now I have moved areas and the local RO will not do this.

I tried getting the form signed by the Vicar ( I know another churchgoer has done this for her German pension), but the French authorities will not accept this.
Their letter says ( no accents, sorry)
L'attestation d'existence que vous m'avez fait parvenir n'est pas valuable car ce document a ete etabli par une personne non habillee ( ! )
...... Vous trouverez ci-joint un nouveau justicatif a me retourner complete, date et legalise par l'autorite competente de votre pays de residence ( mairie....)

I do understand the French, so please don't translate it for me.
Any advice as to where I can go to get this done successfully, at minimal cost?

Best answers:

• I've completed this type of form for a couple of my clients at the CAB, done them for 2/3years now, successfully, so you could try your local branch.
• I don't fully understand the French, but hey ho ...
  Commissioner for Oaths?
• Sorry for confusion and thanks for the replies.
  The form needs to be validated by the competent local authority. Mairie in France = local town hall, but every small town has one.
  I tried asking at the help desk of our borough council and was told they could not do this and I would need a solicitor. Nor would the Registrar do it.
  Further online enquiries showed a Notary public would be the person.
  One wanted to charge Ј100 + VAT, another would do it for Ј50.
  As the pension is only Ј300 pa before tax, ie about Ј22 pm, I was beginning to feel it wasn't worth it.
  In theory any solicitor is a commissioner for oaths, and the cost of swearing an oath is Ј5. Have you ever known a solicitor do any thing for Ј5? And would their office stamp be accepted in France?
  As I have failed once, I did not want to risk another attempt by using CAB, Chesky. I too am a volunteer, but nobody at my bureau had any confidence that it would work. I need the form signed and stamped in a way that the French authorities will recognize and accept. I hoped the vicar would be ok, as for a passport, mais non!
  A further attempt at my local town council offices looks promising. The Town Clerk was on leave, but her PA said if I go back on Monday she is sure it can be done, for free.
  So I will report back on Monday.
• How about your doctor? A chartered accountant? A teacher?
• On thAt basis that's why I opted for the vicar. He had an official church stamp, which a teacher wouldn't have. It's not the same as a passport.
  I don't want to send it off on spec and be turned down again. I think the town clerk is my best bet.
• Yes, do let us know how you get on. We have English friends who live in France, and they say there is the French way of doing things, and the French way of doing things, ie nothing else is acceptable. Nothing else can be considered. Vraiment, you say that some other way exists? No, that cannot be possible. They (the French authority in question) have never heard of any other way of doing things, so it cannot exist.
  I exaggerate slightly, of course, but one year this family were not going to be in the village on the date on which everyone goes to the Mairie to say they'd like their child to have a place in the local school, and gives the date of birth etc. So they went to ask about what to do. Nothing could be done. If they didn't register on that day, they probably wouldn't get a place. No, they couldn't complete the forms beforehand and ask a friend to give them in: they couldn't be given the forms to post, no, there was no other way than to turn up at the Mairie on that date ...
  My friends swore that no school planning would be done until after that date, even if the Mairie knew, for example, that in the previous year the first year had been larger than usual, and was likely to be just as big in future years, they wouldn't plan for any more places than usual in the second year until after everyone had been to the Mairie. Even if they knew - by other means - that there were going to be physically more children than could be fitted into the school, nothing would be done until after Registration Day, at which point the school would go 'zut alors, what shall we do, all these little darlings from Year 1 are going into Year 2, and we can't fit them in, and we have just as many new little darlings arriving for Year 1 ....'
• Exactly this.
  It has to be right.
• So far, so good. The Town Clerk, back from leave, signed and stamped my form, so just need to post it off and hope it is acceptable in France.
  Don't know why I didn't go there in the first place, but was told firmly at the reception desk at the borough council that they do not do this sort of thing.
  Good job we have a local council, just like a Mairie, in fact.
• I can't see why it wouldn't be fine, as you say it is the equivalent of the Mairie.
  I was talking about this with DH, and he says in the UK we may have rules and jobsworths, but we're generally able to apply common sense (which is of course rarer than that sounds). I did say that in France, they don't need the application of common sense so much, because that's the only way anyone knows, so it never occurs to anyone to try any other way.
  Another funny story from my 'French' friends (although I'm not sure I'd have laughed, but they've got to that stage ...): their teenage DD was getting very bad marks in French throughout the school year, although previously she'd been 'very good', and she is extremely bright and communicative.
  The end of year report said "I wish I had known earlier that N could speak French, I would have given her better marks."
  It turned out that N had had to complete a form at the start of the school year and her French teacher noticed that both her parents were English. French teacher therefore assumed - on zero other evidence - that N would not be able to speak French, and marked her work accordingly.
  Only late in the year did this teacher overhear N chatting completely fluently to her friends in the school corridor and check the actual situation: N was born in France, spent a year in the UK before starting school, and has lived over there ever since. At home, one parent has always spoken French and the other English. The French speaker has people wondering which part of France they're from rather than whether they learned their French in England or in the USA.
  (Actually I suspect N's French is better than her English, which is excellent but slightly accented and with some spellings and phrasings which suggest the francophone background. I will never forget the two year old "Moi, je not want that.")
  Sorry, rambling a bit. Here's hoping the form finds a happy reception 'a la belle France' (and apologies for the lack of accent there ....)
• I am curious that the girl was getting low marks for French. In my teaching days we gave separate marks for listening, reading, writing and reading skills. It was perfectly possible for a native speaker to get high marks for speaking, but to do less well on the other skills. Their grammar and spelling could be horrendous, and marks could be lost for not actually answering the question set in reading and listening tests.
  Not easy to be bilingual at school, though an excellent base for a future career in many fields. Bilingual children I have known have always amazed me with their ability to switch so readily between the two languages.
• DH says it's the classic case of pupil achieving expectations: low expectations = low marks regardless of achievement or effort.
  Yes, that girl will go far. She had an oral exam on French literature, and was asked about some famous French author's attitude to X in one of his works. She had not read the work, but took a deep breath and launched forth with great confidence with what she presumed a French author of that era would think about X. Got very good marks too, probably from the confidence with which she spoke as much as anything.
• One of my favourite successes in French GCSE was a pupil who spoke brilliantly about her trip to Spain with the youth orchestra. She told me afterwards that none of it was true.she had had to drop out, but had prepared what to say if asked.
• if you are going to lie, then you might as well make it a big one!
• Whilst I never encouraged a pupil to lie, a French oral is a test of spoken French, so as long as a suitable answer was given, I was happy.
• Small local solicitors' firms will do this kind of of thing for Ј5 or so in cash. I got a certified copy of a will done for Ј5 including the photocopying and a friend of mine who worked as a process server for a while often had statements sworn on the same basis. Don't automatically knock them!
• Update
  My French pension payment came into my account today as normal, so I presume they received my paperwork and it was acceptable.
  Result - and for free.
• In Scotland local authority councillors sign documents such as this. Our council has a signing session in the morning with a councillor on duty, where people can turn up to get documents signed.