Val_Douest

Message in your Inbox, Peter. Regards, Val

I thought I'd posted a reply earlier but it seems to have got lost in the ether. Hope this one works and apologies if it turns out to have been duplicated! We have found 'Taxation in France' by Charles Parkinson very useful. Our copy is dated 2002 so there may be a newer edition. It is published by PFK(Guernsey) Limited, (Tel 01481 727927) and the ISBN is 0-9511991-5-3. There are sections on creating a tax holiday, tax planning through trusts etc etc and lots of useful information on the financial aspects of retiring to France. Hope this helps, Good luck - Val

We have found "Taxation in France" by Charles Parkinson extremely useful. Our copy is dated 2002 and there may well be a more recent edition out now. It is published by PFK(Guernsey) Limited (Tel 01481 727927)and the ISBN is 0-9511991-5-3. Among many other things it has sections on Taking up Residence in France (creating a tax holiday,tax planning through trusts etc) and Retiring in France. Hope this helps! Good luck, Val

There have been several mentions in previous postings of the danger posed to fosses septiques by antibiotics. Does anyone know how one can protect the fosse if antibiotics are prescribed? Going behind the bushes until all the tablets have been taken doesn't really seem a viable option and I hate the idea of having to interrogate guests and send them packing to the nearest public loos on main drainage! Helpful suggestions appreciated - Val

Hi - someone else had the same problem earlier this month and received lots of helpful advice in this section of the forum. Just look for 'Displaying planning permission' posted by Sue56 on 3rd July and hopefully it should tell you all you need to know. Good luck Val

I have just done a search of the Pets part of the Forum - including the archives - using the keyword Spain and there are several helpful things in there including a thread entitled 'France - Spain - France' which would be worth a look. Val

I don't know what - if any - regulations there are regarding the movement of animals from Spain into France but we have driven several times from France to Spain and back again and there now appears to be no indication of the exact border let alone any customs checks of any kind. So I can't think that anyone would actually know whether you were bringing them in from Spain or not unless they were very conspicuous. In the border areas of the Pyrenees there are always French cars and Spanish cars to-ing and fro-ing; we usually go to Spain via Bagneres de Luchon or Bossost (signposted to Spain off the motorway between Tarbes and Toulouse). Of course it would be wise to find out whether there are any restrictions but purely from a practical point of view I don't see how they would be enforced. Good luck! Val

We have about 15 vines - several different dessert varieties - planted along a mesh fence. We moved in late last October and apart from giving them a rather tentative prune in January they've really been left to their own devices. They have now grown enormously and are looking very healthy but a bit wild and woolly. All of them now have many bunches of little grapes. Should I remove some of these to let the remaining ones develop, and if so should I do it now? Thanks for any advice, Val

Some time ago I posted a question about making a simple Will in France. Lots of helpful replies, and eventually we went along to see the Notaire who dealt with the house purchase and also arranged the change of our marriage regime to a Communaut Universelle. The idea was to obtain from him a simple form of words which we could use as a basis for holographic wills. We were surprised when he told us there is no need to make Wills. Because of our marriage contract, all property will pass to the surviving spouse on the death of the other. Because of French inheritance law, all the property will then pass in equal shares to our children on the death of the remaining spouse - exactly as we would wish anyway. In other words, because it is all cut and dried, there is no point in reiterating this in a Will. This advice has since been confirmed by another Notaire. I realise our situation is fairly straightforward (only marriage for us both, 3 children of the marriage - no other children) but there may be others in a similar position and with a Communaut Universelle who find it reassuring. If so they would of course still be well advised to check with their Notaire; there was no charge for the consultation, presumably because he is an employee of the state rather than an independent professional as in the UK. Having had a father who died very young in England without having made a Will, and having seen the problems this created for my mother, I have always had a horror of intestacy but am now reassured that things are very different here in France.

We found a reasonable selection of all kinds of haberdashery including curtain heading tape in Mondial Tissus in Ibos (Tarbes). This is in 65 and a bit far away but I'm pretty sure it is one of a chain so there may be a branch near you. Good luck! Val

Don't know where you are living in the UK but if you are in the North West then I would recommend Roy Trevor (based in Warrington). They moved all our house contents, some into a smaller house locally, the rest into store and then to SW France a month later. They even took the vintage car in a covered trailer behind the van! Nothing damaged, nothing lost, a very competitive price and helpful friendly service throughout. They do several runs a week to France and Spain so can take part loads too.

This is our first spring in France and although we don't have a vegetable plot I have ideal spots to put some plants in grow bags against a wire field fence. I'm thinking of peppers, aubergines, courgettes and melons...but I can't find grow bags locally (65). Does anyone know if they exist here and if so where I could find them? Or can someone suggest an alternative - could I just make holes in bags of potting compost?

We brought our cat over by car last Autumn (from Cheshire almost to the Pyrenees). We did start to look into the flying alternative as we were told that Air France would accept a small cat carry box as hand luggage. I would then have flown with him from Manchester to Paris and from there to Pau where the car would have met us. What stopped us from pursuing this further was being told that I would have to remove him from his box in the airport and carry him through the metal detectors. As he is a big strong cat and would have been terrified we decided the risk of losing him doing this outweighed any possible advantage (and he also has a legful of metal pins which would probably have set off the detectors!). We made the mistake of installing a dog crate in the back of the car so he wouldn't be so cramped. The passing cars and lights terrified him and he was quickly returned to his box where he was much happier. We parked in a very quiet corner of the Services areas a couple of times but he was not hungry or thirsty and did not need to use his litter tray. We started mid-morning, crossed via the tunnel (where he could be with us all the time) at around 4.00pm and stayed the night at a prebooked hotel (one of the B&B chain which are generally quite happy about pets in rooms). This worked well; with litter tray and food in the bathroom, and his basket upstairs in the sleeping gallery, he was perfectly happy. We left after breakfast and with a couple of stops we were at our new home by early evening. He was actually used to a lead (needed during temporary accommodation during the previous month) and tolerated expeditions on this over the next few days until we judged it safe to leave him to go out on his own. He is now well settled though we have kept his rabies jabs current just in case. The journey went much better than we expected. Of course none of us enjoyed it and there was some plaintive mewing for parts of the journey but he did doze a lot of the time - the vet advised against sedatives. I'm sure the cats will take it all in their stride if you are with them and if they are kept quiet and shielded from the lights of passing cars. Good luck! Val

We have a large patch of lilies (the big white ones - arum?) which seemed very healthy until about a month ago when they developed large brown areas which became slimy and rotten. On closer examination the plants were fairly well covered with small beetles (bright scarlet with black markings). I sprayed everything with a pesticide and took all the rotten bits off - the lilies are recovering though they look very battered and I don't think we will have many flowers this year. I can't see any more beetles on the plants but there are thousands elsewhere in the garden, [particularly on the virginia creeper). Does anyone know if these are in fact lily beetles, and if so should I be planning mass murder all over the garden? I hate to kill anything unnecessarily - a neighbour suggested the damage might be from frost and we did have some cold nights around that time (65) but nothing else seems to have been affected in the same way. Any advice/suggestions welcomed! Val

We need to make French wills to complement our English ones (we are now resident in France but have properties in both places). Our situation is very straightforward as we have had our marriage registered under the French regime, have three children of our marriage and no other children or previous marriages. Because under the French regime all the property of the marriage is communal, it will all pass to whichever of us survives. After that either survivor would wish everything to be divided equally among the children (or if any of them should predecease the surviving parent, then that share would pass to any children - none at present - instead). All that fits in quite tidily with the French inheritance laws. We would be quite happy with simple holographic wills handwritten in French and deposited with our Notaire. However, our French is probably not good enough to use for a legal document and we don't want any complications creeping in through unwitting ambiguities; our Notaire speaks no English. It seems somewhat over the top to engage a bilingual solicitor for such an apparently simple task. Has anyone in France come across the sort of form used for uncomplicated wills in the UK, usually available from stationers? Or can anyone recommend someone who would translate a very basic will from English to French in words which woiuld be acceptable here? I know that in England there is a whole separate legal language - maybe that is not the case here and for a holographic will perhaps ordinary French is OK if the meaning is clear. Any advice or shared experiences will be very welcome. We need to update our English wills and our solicitor wants to refer to property covered by our (as yet nonexistent) wills in France.

We live about half an hour's drive from Pau and over Christmas we made a trip to BdeL with some visitors. We were amazed at how busy it was, thronged with skiers and queues for the lifts. Friends say it is busy all year round as it is popular as a spa and with summer visitors because it is pretty and there is a fair amount going on. I guess it depends what you are looking for: we were pleased to go back north to the quiet countryside where we live, where the weather (away from the mountains) tends to be better. But if you want a bustling little town with summer and winter interest I think it has a lot going for it - and of course you are only half an hour's drive from Spain! Hope you find what you are looking for, Val

We have had recent experience of this 'qualifying years' situation with reference to the UK state pension. My husband retired from a Government Lab in January at the statutory retirement age of 60. His pension forecast from the DSS tells him that he has paid contributions covering 41 of the 43 years necessary to qualify for the full state pension which he will receive at 65.If he meets certain conditions (which include not spending more than half a tax year abroad) the missing years will be automatically credited to his pension account. We have checked and anywhere outside the UK - including the EC - counts as abroad for this purpose.Depending when we move to France this may or may not be significant, and the amounts involved are small (about 1 - 2 per week) but no-one wants to miss out on anything unles they have to.