French Court Overturns Refusal to Bring Moroccan Man’s New Wife to France
A Moroccan man legally living in France remarried in Morocco eight days after his second divorce. The Vaucluse prefecture suspected a marriage of convenience and refused to let his new wife join him. The Nîmes Administrative Court ultimately overturned the decision.
Just eight days separated two events in the life of this Moroccan national: his divorce, pronounced on September 20, 2022, and his third marriage, celebrated in Morocco on September 28. Legally settled in France, the man, born in 1970, had married a fellow Moroccan born in 1989. Three months later, on December 30, 2022, he filed an application for family reunification to bring her to live with him.
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His marital history drew the attention of the Vaucluse prefecture. The man had already divorced once, in March 2006, before remarrying in January 2017. His second marriage ended in September 2022, just before his new marriage in Morocco. The administration also noted that he had acknowledged a child from his first marriage in 2012.
Another factor cited by the prefecture was the age difference between the newlyweds, which was nearly twenty years. The administration viewed these circumstances together as signs of a marriage entered into to facilitate settling in France.
On August 3, 2023, the prefect therefore rejected his application for family reunification, finding that it amounted to a “misuse of procedure for the sole purpose of migration.” The Moroccan man challenged the decision with the interior minister, then brought the case before the Nîmes Administrative Court in January 2024.
The court dismisses suspicions of fraud
In its ruling issued on October 3, 2025, the court noted that the burden of proving fraud lies with the administration. The judges examined the prefecture’s two main arguments: that he had remarried eight days after his divorce and that there was a substantial age difference between the spouses.
In the judges’ view, these circumstances were not enough to establish that the marriage was fraudulent. The prefecture had relied on the applicant’s marital history without providing concrete evidence calling the sincerity of his new marriage into question.
The court also noted that the interior minister, ordered to respond in July 2025, remained silent during the proceedings. The applicant had also met the legal requirements for family reunification in the case.
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The court overturned the prefecture’s refusal as well as the rejection of the appeal made to the Interior Ministry. It ordered the Vaucluse prefect to grant the Moroccan wife family reunification within two months of notification of the ruling, unless circumstances change.
The state was also ordered to pay the Moroccan national 1,000 euros in legal costs. The ruling therefore found in his favor after more than two years of efforts to bring his third wife to France.
