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Since the 2000s, binational couples have faced the same problem: that of the right of residence of the foreign partner. While some of these couples have to deal with more difficulties than others, they are all confronted with increasingly restrictive policies towards immigrants in France. These couples are compelled to reveal their personal life to state institutions (Prefectures, consulates and courts) in order to obtain a residence permit for the non-European partner, mainly when he/she comes from non-Western countries. This apparatus produces differentiated couples and subjects defined along racial and gendered lines: “suspicious” vs. “true”. Foreign men find themselves suspected of being potential “emotional crooks” in search of legal papers. French women, on the contrary, especially when they are older than their partner, are likely to be judged as naive victims who often accumulate marital dissymmetries seen as additional evidence of a fake union. Building upon materials used in my PhD dissertation and collected from different and same-sex binational couples, this article analyses the implementation of this apparatus of suspicion aiming at classifying, verifying and judging the presumed authenticity of these couples.