Preparing Application for US wife moving to UK on Spousal Visa

Hi,


My fiance and I are preparing our documents ready to submit her Spouse visa application after our wedding in a few weeks time. This blog has been so helpful to us already, it's been so refreshing to read stories of people successfully negotiating the process and reading advice others have received has made the process seem (slightly) less daunting 

My fiance still lives in the US and I live in the UK. I have held a job for over 6 months that satisfies the financial requirement of the sponsor.

We were hoping we would be able to get some help on our specific situation, in particular what to put down for our accommodation details.

I currently live with two housemates in a 3 bedroom house on a one year tenancy contract. The contract is up in September, but my fiance and I will get our own place together when she moves over (so hopefully before September!). In this case, what would be the best thing to put down for our residency? I can ask my landlord to sign a letter saying they are happy for my fiance to live here, and based on what I’ve read that would be fine under the “maximum occupants” rule, but would they require evidence that we have somewhere to live for a longer period of time (especially if the process ends up dragging on)?

 I read something on the Gov website about inspections on houses if applying for a visa for someone to live in a property with three different households (i.e three people who are all unrelated). Is that relevant for a Spousal visa?

Our other option is that my Mum owns her own home so she could write a letter and we could get the land registry document for her house. It seems to be the more straightforward option but her house is 150 miles away from my work, would this cause any issue/ look unusual for the visa process?
The reality is that once we have the visa finalised we will sort out a place for ourselves but we can’t put that address down because we have no idea what that address will be yet, but I could work remotely from my Mum’s house on a short term basis if required.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give us!

A letter from your landlord describing the property (number of rooms and occupants) is fine.  I don’t think you need a housing inspection.  Do you rent the place with friends or do you rent the individual room?

Great thanks. We rent the place together, i.e.  we have a joint tenancy agreement on the whole property between the three of us

Thanks again KFdancer, we really appreciate all help and guidance we can get as we work through this process.

I’m going to look into this with my landlord. On rethinking this I’m leaning towards using my Mum’s address instead. Do you/does anyone know if there will be an issue with 150 mile distance between the accommodation I put down and my place of work? I’m wondering if this might be an easier approach for us, unless it would affect the strength of our application.

Bump.

Does anyone have any advice for us? We'd be very grateful for any guidance.

Personally I would use where you actually live as oppossed to your mother's home.  Why are you worried?  People do this everyday.    Yes, they could question a 150 mile each way commute.  No need to go there. 

Personally I would use where you actually live as oppossed to your mother's home.  Why are you worried?  People do this everyday.    Yes, they could question a 150 mile each way commute.  No need to go there.

I agree.

Why complicate things by essentially pretending you live 150 miles from where you work (which would be questioned), when you already live close to your work in a shared house (which would not be questioned)?

All you need to do is provide evidence that your wife has permission to live in the shared house with you. That's it. Nothing weird or unusual about that - people in your living situation apply for visas all the time with no issues.

Thanks both for your replies and the reassurance, means a lot.

Just had a conversation with my landlord and she said she'll sign a letter I draft for her, so looks like we're good to go!

Would you mind looking it over before I send it to her?

Would you mind looking it over before I send it to her?

Feel free to post the letter here. 

Hi guys, what do you think of this?
I can't take any credit because I have shamelessly copied from ksand24 from a different thread- but reworded to be a tenant rather than a homeowner.

As ever, thank you so much for your help.


To the Entry Clearance Officer,

I am writing to give permission for [Sponsor] and his wife [Applicant] to live at [address], when [applicant’s] visa has been granted. The property has 3 bedrooms and 1 living room, and there will be a total of 4 adults living in the property, so there will be no overcrowding.

I have included a copy of the tenancy agreement as proof that [Sponsor] is currently renting the property from me.

Yours Faithfully,

[Landlord]

Hi guys, what do you think of this?
I can't take any credit because I have shamelessly copied from ksand24 from a different thread- but reworded to be a tenant rather than a homeowner.

As ever, thank you so much for your help.


To the Entry Clearance Officer,

I am writing to give permission for [Sponsor] and his wife [Applicant] to live at [address], when [applicant’s] visa has been granted. The property has 3 bedrooms and 1 living room, and there will be a total of 4 adults living in the property, so there will be no overcrowding.

I have included a copy of the tenancy agreement as proof that [Sponsor] is currently renting the property from me.

Yours Faithfully,

[Landlord]

Perfect.  I would just add that the person signing is the homeowner.

Hi everyone, it’s been a while since I last posted but since then I’ve successfully been to the States and got married. My wife (still getting used to saying that!) has changed her name and got her new passport so we’re looking the send off our application in the next week or so!

We were both hoping you’d be able to help us with a few quick questions in the meantime:

Proof of relationship

We have collated the following as evidence of our relationship. Do you guys think this will be sufficient? Is there anything else we should add? We have never lived together (or in the same country) so we don’t have any joint bills or bank statements to send off.

Marriage certificate
Photos of applicant and sponsor together (4 spread over the course of our relationship)
Airline reservation confirmations, and boarding passes for the most recent trip  (7 transatlantic trips between us)
Whatsapp messages between applicant/sponsor
Birthday and other holiday cards between applicant/sponsor

We use Whatsapp to communicate daily. I exported our entire history to a .txt file and then we plan to give examples of a few messages sent every few months. The messages just come out in the form below. I think I’ve read on here before that they don’t need to see message content, just proof of the messages being sent, so will the below be enough or would screenshots of messages from my phone across random dates be better?

[03/03/2017, 11:32:29] Husband:
[03/03/2017, 12:38:40] Wife:


Using a passport card

We are planning to do a normal priority application (as opposed to the “gold” package). My wife has a passport card to allow her to travel to/ from Mexico without her passport book. We are a bit unsure about how travelling internationally works whilst our application is under review. Does anyone know if her using that card whilst the application is being reviewed (and before getting the book back) would negatively affect the application?

Finally, my wife is unsure if there’s added benefit to her sending an additional letter of intent, written on her behalf (outside of my own to sponsor her and the “additional information” section of the online application)?  We’ve seen a few different opinions on this, and would love some insight.

As always, thank you so much for all your help!

For the relationship evidence, just send 1 or 2 photos.  Perhaps the earliest one and the most recent.  Officially, you only need one (to prove you've met in person and it's not a forced marriage).

Just use the boarding passes, not the reservation booking, etc.

Is your Whatsapp history log screenshots?  If so, that format should be good (and you are right that you should not include message content).  I'm not sure if every few months is okay, it depends on how long the relationship is and how much you need to evidence.  How many pages of messages do you end up with?

Passport card:  Your wife should be fine to use this to travel to Mexico.  The only thing she can't do while waiting for her decision is travel to the UK.

Your wife can include a letter, but it is not a requirement (the sponsor letter is required).  Usually, the applicantcwould write one if there was something unusual in their application that needed explaining, or if they just wanted to provide a concise roadmap (contents list) of the application.

Great, thanks jfkimberley. You live in a very nice part of the world! I've a got a few friends who live that way but they all just want to talk to me about rugby at the moment.


I wasn't very clear with the plane confirmations. For most of them I don't have my boarding passes (because I used electronic ones/ didn't plan for visa evidence at the time!) so I will send the boarding passes for the recent ones and booking confirmations for the earlier ones. Sound like a plan?

For whatsapp I could take screenshots of our whole chat history and paste sections into a word doc.
We've been in a relationship for two years and use whatsapp everyday, so as a text file the messages would run into hundreds of pages (at least!)
I was thinking some every few months just to show that we have been in regular contact throughout the two years.

Thanks for the guidance, much appreciated!

Great, thanks jfkimberley. You live in a very nice part of the world! I've a got a few friends who live that way but they all just want to talk to me about rugby at the moment.


I wasn't very clear with the plane confirmations. For most of them I don't have my boarding passes (because I used electronic ones/ didn't plan for visa evidence at the time!) so I will send the boarding passes for the recent ones and booking confirmations for the earlier ones. Sound like a plan?

For whatsapp I could take screenshots of our whole chat history and paste sections into a word doc.
We've been in a relationship for two years and use whatsapp everyday, so as a text file the messages would run into hundreds of pages (at least!)
I was thinking some every few months just to show that we have been in regular contact throughout the two years.

Thanks for the guidance, much appreciated!

Oh, I misunderstood and thought you were using both boarding passes and booking confirmations/receipts for each flight.  Really just the boarding pass is typically used.  If you don't have that, don't worry about it.  They're not a requirement.  Just include the ones you do have.

You're on the right track with your WhatsApp messages.  Since you've used it so much for the duration of your relationship, just showing a few communications every month or so, spread out over the two years is perfect.  The aim is to show ongoing contact between you and your partner for the length of the relationship.  You've got that.  And remember: they just need to see that there were messages between you.  They don't need (or want) to see what the messages say.