Child benefit in France: who the allocations familiales actually cover

The headline rule on fiche F13213: allocations familiales require at least 2 dependent children under 20. One child doesn't open this benefit (other CAF prestations have their own rules — this page covers the allocations familiales line specifically). Amounts are income-banded and published by the CAF; we don't reprint figures we haven't verified against the current barème, and the fiche's simulator is the honest calculator.

Source: service-public.fr — Allocations familiales (fiche F13213), read 10 September 2026.

The fiche's foreign-national branch states the conditions: you must have your habitual residence in France, or stay in France more than 9 months of the year (consecutive or not) — and you must also meet conditions tied to the regularity of your stay, meaning the residence-permit side of your file feeds the benefits side. Your child must also reside in France: leaving the country for more than 3 months — even alone — suspends the allocations, with exceptions the fiche lists for cross-border studies or medical care with regular family returns, language stays and vocational training abroad.

Source: service-public.fr — F13213, conditions de résidence, read 10 September 2026.

The pattern across borders: Germany's Kindergeld (covered here) pays per child from the first; France's allocations start at two children with a residence-and-regularity gate. For coordination cases — one parent working in one EU country, family in another — the EU family-benefits rules decide which country pays first, a topic the fiche links onward. And as ever, the residence permit that makes your stay "regular" usually carried an insurance requirement to get issued — the file feeds itself.

Source: service-public.fr — Allocations familiales, read 10 September 2026.