MCI

This is found under "service Relevé Confiance" and you have to register first to be able to do this. As far as I could tell EDF will ask you every 2 months to send in your own reading and will read the meter themselves once a year. Although you may have signed up to enter your own reading, you cannot send in a reading whenever you feel like. Once you have registered they will send you an e-mail to tell you when you can submit a reading. It is quite a precise period, my e-mail read "Vous pouvez nous transmettre entre le 09/06/2005 et le 22/06/2005 16h30 les chiffres que vous aurez relevés sur vos compteurs." Which I translated as meaning I could send them my meter reading between the 9th and 16th June at 4:30 pm. If you try to enter the reading on the website outside the allocated times you get an message which roughly says "this service is not available". I initially though this meant there was a problem but realised it simply meant that I was trying to make an entry outside the allocated window. Ian

I received this too - it should be travel retail and details the new drive through shop that Speedferries have set up in Boulogne. Order your French duty paid products on line and pick them up as you enter or exit Boulogne. It also indicates that the on board shop is about to open. Ian

My understanding is that what can be included is dependent on whether you are habitually resident in France or not. If not resident the CU can only apply to French real estate property. My understanding also was that you had to adopt the CU before buying the property. To change after purchase and have it affect the property meant that you had to sell the house back to yourselves but under the new CU status - the catch being that you ended up paying the notaire's fees on this 'sale'. We adopted the CU when we bought our house in France last year and signed the CU at the same time as we completed on the house but literally signed the CU first and then went on to sign for the house purchase. If you are habitually resident in France the CU can apply to other assets (moveable property, chattels etc). I do not think there is any need to specify the value of these assets. However my understanding is that the CU does not reduce inheritance tax, it merely defers it so that there is no tax on the death of the first spouse. The surviving spouse owns all the assets so on their death the inheritance tax kicks in on the full amount and indeed could be higher because there will only be one exemption. We went for a CU because it means that on the first death the survivor owns the property totally and no share passes to the children as it would do under French inheritence law otherwise. I have nothing against my children, they get it all when we both depart this earth but when the first of us goes the survivor will still have full control over our French house. Our estate agent explained that without adopting CU whilst you might not think the surviving spouse would be unhappy sharing ownership with your children you may find that one of them has married and their partner would rather they convert their share of the property to cash so there could be pressure put on the surviving spouse to sell. The converse also applies so that if the surviving spouse decided they no longer wanted to keep the French house once they were on their own, it was their choice alone to sell it. Without the CU the pressure could be the other way round then with the surviving spouse wanting to sell and the children who had inherited a share not wanting to. There is more information on this on the French Notaires site at www.notaires.fr and also on the French Property Forum at www.headdonconsulting.com

I am insured with Liverpool Victoria (Frizzell). No need to inform them before each trip and cover is the same as in the UK for a trip not exceeding 90 days. There does not seem to be a limit on the total number of days in a year only on the maximum number of days in a trip. Ian