Hello all,
I hope someone can help me with this question. I am an EU citizen and I am planning to move to Brussels very soon with my wife and our baby. My wife is Brazilian and we are legally got married in Brazil. I have heard that some communes are quite bureaucratic when you try resister a non-EU family member. I know that some communes do require that your foreign marriage certificate to be translated and legalised by the Belgian consulate where the marriage certificate was issued. Also the certificate can not be more than 6 months old. I would like to avoid all these hassle because it could take many months to get it sorted out in Brazil. Did anyone face a similar situation ? Is there a commune that would accept our original marriage certificate as it is ? Thanks for any input.
Commune Registration
The acceptance of documents not in French/Dutch/German can come down to individual commune officials, so it is impossible for anyone to predict here what the commune official who deals with your registration will do. Anecdotal evidence is useless too, as it has no relevance to your registration, so ignore anyone posting they found registration easy / difficult.
If you wish to, you can apply for an EEA Family Permit for your wife before travelling to Belgium. This is a sort of visa which is given to dependents of EU nationals and it is always free - it should be a pre-clearance method of proving marriage and should make registration easier but still no guarantees, simply because if you have a Belgian issued EEA Family Permit, to obtain it, you have to prove you are married. However, as Brazilian nationals do not require a visa to enter Schengen, you could equally just land in Schengen land and register immediately at the commune.
I really think you are worrying to much about it though. EU nationals have just as much difficulties with commune officials accepting / not accepting official foreign documents which are not in French/German/Dutch.
Your wife should eventually be issued with an F card, the F card designates a dependent of an EU national who is not themself EU. You will be issued, if you want to purchase it (not obligatory for EU nationals), with an E card for and EU national. Baby I assume is EU too. The F cards take about 5 months, technically it means your wife shouldn't leave Belgium whilst waiting for processing of the F card (delay is to check neither of your are claiming benefits in Belgium which would cancel your wife's right to exercise her EU treaty rights).
schoolmum wrote:The acceptance of documents not in French/Dutch/German can come down to individual commune officials, so it is impossible for anyone to predict here what the commune official who deals with your registration will do. Anecdotal evidence is useless too, as it has no relevance to your registration, so ignore anyone posting they found registration easy / difficult.
If you wish to, you can apply for an EEA Family Permit for your wife before travelling to Belgium. This is a sort of visa which is given to dependents of EU nationals and it is always free - it should be a pre-clearance method of proving marriage and should make registration easier but still no guarantees, simply because if you have a Belgian issued EEA Family Permit, to obtain it, you have to prove you are married. However, as Brazilian nationals do not require a visa to enter Schengen, you could equally just land in Schengen land and register immediately at the commune.
I really think you are worrying to much about it though. EU nationals have just as much difficulties with commune officials accepting / not accepting official foreign documents which are not in French/German/Dutch.
Your wife should eventually be issued with an F card, the F card designates a dependent of an EU national who is not themself EU. You will be issued, if you want to purchase it (not obligatory for EU nationals), with an E card for and EU national. Baby I assume is EU too. The F cards take about 5 months, technically it means your wife shouldn't leave Belgium whilst waiting for processing of the F card (delay is to check neither of your are claiming benefits in Belgium which would cancel your wife's right to exercise her EU treaty rights).
Thank you very much schoolmum. I think that option to apply for EEA family permit before travelling is going to help. The Belgium Consulate, here in London, do not mention that the marriage certificate needs to be translated or legalised.
Again, thanks for your good feed back.
Regards,
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