Five weeks with her French husband, then an OQTF: this Moroccan woman gets everything annulled

The Moroccan national had married a Frenchman on 10 September 2024. Holding a long-stay visa serving as a residence permit as the spouse of a French national, valid from 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2026, she joined him in France on 7 June 2025.

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But their shared life quickly came to an end. On 15 July 2025, just over a month after her arrival, the Moroccan woman left the marital home and filed a complaint the same day for physical and psychological violence by her husband. The complaint was subsequently dismissed without further action.

For the Moselle prefecture, the brevity of this period of cohabitation constituted one of the elements justifying calling her right to stay into question. In an order dated 6 January 2026, the prefect revoked her long-stay visa, considering in particular that there were indications suggesting that she had entered France in order to settle there for a purpose other than the one that had justified the issuance of her visa.

The decision went much further: the Moroccan woman was also served an obligation to leave French territory within thirty days, had a destination country designated and was given a two-year ban on returning to France. She petitioned the Strasbourg Administrative Court to have the order annulled.

The court dismisses the prefecture’s suspicions

In its ruling of 16 July 2026, the Strasbourg Administrative Court notes that, despite the dismissal of her complaint, the documents in the case show that her departure from the marital home was linked to her husband’s behavior toward her. The court specifies that she could only grasp the nature of this behavior after their married life began in France.

The judges also find that her entire family lives in Morocco, where she had held a stable job since 2019, and that she had no ties in France. Even though their shared life had been very brief and the Moroccan woman now wished to remain in France, the evidence in the case did not allow, according to the court, the presumption that she had used her spouse-of-a-French-national visa to come and settle in the country for another reason.

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The court therefore annulled the revocation of her visa and, consequently, the OQTF, the decision designating the destination country and the two-year ban on returning. However, as her visa had expired on 31 May 2026, her request seeking to compel the prefecture to return it to her had become moot. The State was also ordered to pay her 1,200 euros in legal costs.