Well lots of great info here guys thanks, we posted our documents yesterday weighting in at almost 8lbs. Guess we'll see what happens now.
I have to say, I'm curious as to what is causing the documents to be that heavy - even mentioning all the things you sent, I don't get how that can add up to 8lbs.
Remember though, that before your application is seen by an ECO, someone in Sheffield might have to go through it, rearrange the documents and take out anything unnecessary. So it could be that half of your documents are not even seen by the person processing your visa.
We both provided 12 months bank statements, I have two accounts so that weighed it down a bit.
Assuming your accounts were savings and not income, they will ONLY consider the most recent 6 months of bank statements for each account... so you sent 12 months of statements that no one will look at, which means that's 1 lb (or more?) you could have got rid of immediately.
There's six different benefits so we couldn't send in just one page to show that besides a few of the benefits changed within the last 12 months so we included the older benefit letters to show the older amounts on my sponsors 12 months bank statements.
The only thing that matters is current and future income, so the old benefit amounts are irrelevant.
So, all you need to show for benefits is the most recent letter for each, stating the entitlement for 2016/2017, along with at least 1 bank statement showing those amounts being paid in.
The other 11 months of her bank statements, along with your 6 months of savings are purely to see incomings and outgoings, to make sure that after paying rent and council tax, you'll still have enough to live on after the visa is granted.
The SU07 form is two pages so whether we need it or not it's miniscule so we threw that in.
It will only be considered if you are applying as an Elderly or Adult Dependant Relative... which you are not, therefore it won't be looked at.
I've had two previous divorces so there's a bit more papers.
But a divorce decree is only a couple of pages long, right? So, that's about 4 sheets of paper or so?
We sent in 40 pics of us together and screenshots of our chat history every week for the last 14 months.
Only 1 photo is needed, since it is only to show you have met in person at least once. The photo should be of just you and your wife, no one else in the picture. If you like you can send 2 photos, one at the wedding and one from another time in the relationship.
Only 2 pages of chat history should be included - just take a few screenshots of dates and times (two per month, maybe) and paste them together onto 1-2 pages. It's like sending a phone bill... they only need to see that you talk regularly, not what you talk about.
Even one screenshot per week would only add up to 60 screenshots, and showing dates and times only means you could get maybe 10 on a page... so that's 6 pages, or even just 3 pages if you print double-sided.
We've included everything our solicitor asked us to on her appendix we've got it in perfect order and separated with dividers.
I hope they gave you good advice as we've seen several solicitors who don't really know what they are talking about giving advice that is completely incorrect and, had it been followed, would have resulted in a visa refusal.
We didn't go with the minimum requirements I wasn't brought up that way if you wanna do the minimum well expect minimum results back.
With UKVI, the opposite is true - as long as you send the minimum
required documents, your visa will be issued... and the less you send, the easier their job is and the faster they can process the visa.
The visa is processed as a 'tick box' application - they go down the list in front of them, tick off each document on the list, and issue the visa. No personal opinions come into it.
If you've sent a ton of documents that aren't needed, then they can't consider any of them as they won't be on the tick list... so they have to dig them all out, put them to one side and only look at the absolute required documents.
Maybe 2 pics and one sheet of chat history and a few pages of all our other financial, housing, benefits, savings and relationship would have been enough but we don't have the time or money to hope that was enough and if not try again.
It definitely would have been enough.
I've been on the forum almost 10 years - I've advised on hundreds, if not thousands, of spousal visa applications. Less is more, believe me - I have witnessed first hand exactly how many pages of each document are needed to get the visa approved.
The extra documents are unlikely to affect the visa outcome but they don't half make things difficult for Sheffield to go through them all. Nothing you can do about it now, but I hope the excessive documents don't delay your application processing time.
You don't want the visa to be refused because they didn't see one of the required bank statements from the last 6 months, as it got mixed up in all the extra documents you sent.