An address, and evidence for it

Studio Marchand SASU is being set up. Its founder plans to put her parents' address in the articles while she looks for premises, and has set aside 1 200 € for formation costs. The commercial code does not ask for an address: it asks for evidence of a right to occupy. Before you read: what exactly must be produced, and when?

Evidence of a right to occupy, not an address

Article L123-11 of the commercial code sets the requirement: every legal person applying for registration at the commercial register must provide evidence of the right to occupy the premises where it establishes, alone or with others, the registered office of the business.

The verb is to evidence, and its object is the right to occupy. Stating an address in the articles is therefore not enough: a right over the premises must be established, whether a lease, a title deed, a domiciliation contract or otherwise.

The text anticipates the business whose office is abroad. The requirement then bears on the premises where it establishes the agency, branch or representation set up on French territory.

The words alone or with others open sharing from the outset. Occupying premises with other businesses does not displace the requirement of a right to occupy; the second paragraph organises that case.

Before the articles, not after

The sequence often surprises founders. The public service page puts it plainly: the company's registered office must be fixed before the articles are drafted, since its address must be stated in them.

Domiciliation is therefore not a formality settled at the same time as filing the application. It comes before the articles are written, which themselves come before the application for registration.

The same page recalls that domiciliating a company is compulsory and is an indispensable precondition to registration. There is no registered company without an office.

Stating a convenience address while waiting for something better therefore means writing into the articles something whose occupation cannot be evidenced — and having to amend the articles when the real move happens.

Shared premises, opened by decree

The second paragraph of article L123-11 expressly opens sharing: domiciliating a legal person in premises occupied in common by several businesses is permitted on terms set by decree in the Conseil d'État.

The text does not merely refer to the decree for form. It states what that decree must settle: the equipment or services required to evidence the reality of the domiciled legal person's registered office.

The word reality carries the purpose of the scheme. A shared address is allowed only on condition that something real is there, which the third module sets out in relation to the domiciliation contract.

Three routes are therefore open to a company being set up: having its own premises, establishing itself at the home of its legal representative, or using a domiciliation company. The last two are the subject of the modules that follow.

The three routes differ in cost and in duration, which is what makes the choice structural. The first assumes a property commitment, the second a window that can be short, the third a contract whose content is regulated.

What they share lies elsewhere: each must produce evidence of occupation that stands up at the registry. It is not the comfort of the address that decides between them, but the title one can produce with the file.

Reading the requirement this way also explains why registries reject files that look complete. The address is there, the articles are signed, and yet nothing in the bundle establishes any right over the premises named in them.