Partner (spouse) Visa documents and questions

Hello and thanks in advance for any useful suggestions.

My partner is (hopefully) returning with me to the UK later this year. We had been planning on a proposed civil partner visa (a fiancée visa but for a civil partnership) and were hoping that Scotland (where we’d be moving initially at least) would have legislated for mixed-sex civil partnerships by that point. This week we realized that Hawaiʻi’s civil unions count the same, so we are off to rather hurriedly get a somewhat unceremonious civil union tomorrow so that the paperwork there is not holding up anything. It’s nothing we weren’t going to do anyway, but the timing has drastically changed. So the situation as it stands now is that we are looking to get what is effectively a spouse visa, although I think the UK government prefers the term partner for what we shall be.

We have some questions and then some assumptions about what will be needed. We may have over-proven various things. We have gotten as far in the online application as we can get without paying.

What we have:
- A copy of our lease – in both our names and signed
- Rental insurance with both of our names (only digital)
- Cell phone bills with both of our names (only digital)
- Scan of my passport
- My partner’s passport
- Local (Hawaiʻi) IDs with the same address
- Many photographs of us together with family / in the same place
- Letters and postcards between each other
- Plenty of proof of cohabitation at two addresses – inc. things like voter registration and USPS postal forwarding
- Vet bill for cat with both of our names on it

What we are planning to have:
- A letter outlining the timeline of our relationship (just have to write it)
- Civil union certificate (in a few weeks)
- Letter inviting us to live with my parents with accompanying land registry document and mortgage statement

Things we could get but are less sure about:
- Letters from those that know us confirming that we are indeed a couple
- Itineraries of travel together beyond the dates already listed in the application

Financial:

This is a whole other set of confusion and possible problem, as one might expect.

As I am a student and my partner’s income does not count, we are very lucky that my parents offered the amount of money required for the savings threshold. This is a true gift but was made very obviously to fulfill this requirement as well. Does it matter that it is the exact amount required (plus other money I had in that account)?

We are waiting for it to be in the account six months, which will happen in early July, to submit the application.

As a student in the US, I maintained a UK bank account at my ‘home’ address (with my grandparents) and the statement will be addressed there. Could that be a problem?

I realize I have to write a letter stating the source of these funds – quite simply a gift from my parents. Would it be wise for them to write one too or is that too much information?

And I have smaller but not insubstantial savings in the US, although they have moved between two bank accounts in the six month period. Is it worth submitting these documents too?

Other questions:

Are we right in thinking we should be proving we lived together? This seemed necessary when we thought we were applying for the proposed civil partner visa but maybe not so much now? It is also for only a year and a half, although we were together as a couple for another year before that, living apart. Should we prove this period through message data?

We only have one document sent through the post addressed to both of us at the moment, probably two once the bank statement arrives for our joint account. Is this enough? We have things like election mail that is addressed to each of us at the same time but not joint.

What content, if any, is allowed to be digital? I know it is all scanned anyway, aside from my partner’s passport, but is submitting digital bills useful? I presume bank statements have to be scans and not ‘official’ PDFs?

And I am not sure if you will have any knowledge of this, but does the fact we are moving to Scotland initially pose problems relating to our having a mixed-sex civil partnership that is not recognized in Scotland, given that immigration is dealt with by the UK government?

Sorry if this is too much information. The nature of these applications seems to spawn many questions. Thanks again.

Welcome .

Okay, so the documents you need are:

Applicant Documents
- US passport
- Application form barcode
- stamped biometrics letter (stamped at your appointment)
- return shipping packaging and return shipping label
- receipt for priority processing if using

Sponsor Documents
- copy of photo page of UK passport
- Sponsor letter of support outlining how you meet each requirement of the visa (eligibility to be a sponsor (your UK citizenship), how you meet the financial requirement, where you will live together in the UK, and a short, factual history of the relationship (no more than 1 paragraph, facts only, no feelings), and why you are now choosing to settle in the UK together).

Accommodation Documents
- Letter inviting us to live with my parents with accompanying land registry document and mortgage statement
- Parents Land Registry Document
- Parents' latest original mortgage statement, if they have mortgage

Financial Documents
If you are using Category D: Cash Savings:
- 6 months of personal bank statements showing that at least £62,500 has been held in an account in your name for a minimum of 6 months.
- a letter from your parents confirming that they have gifted you the money and that you will NEVER have to repay it

The balance in your account cannot have fallen below £62,500 for even 1 single day in those 6 months or the visa will be refused. If that one account shows the required savings, you do not need to provide evidence of any other savings in other accounts.

Relationship Documents
- certificate of civil partnership registration
- no more than 2 photos showing ONLY you and your partner, no one else (to provi you have met each other in person)
Evidence of Living Together:
- Annual tax returns showing your address
- rental lease
- utility bills (original, mailed documents, not digital)
- any other evidence you have of living together if you can't provide original utility bills
Evidence of Regular Communication during periods where you have NOT lived together
- boarding passes for flights to see each other
- Letters and postcards between each other
- screenshots of email inboxes, call logs, message logs showing communication

Other questions:

Are we right in thinking we should be proving we lived together? This seemed necessary when we thought we were applying for the proposed civil partner visa but maybe not so much now?  It is also for only a year and a half, although we were together as a couple for another year before that, living apart. Should we prove this period through message data?

The fiance/proposed civil partner visa and the spousal/civil partner visas have NO requirement that you must have lived together in order to meet the requirements, HOWEVER, if you have lived together, you do need to prove it to show your relationship is genuine.

So, you provide evidence of living together for 1.5 years, by way of a lease, utility bills and tax returns.

Then you provide evidence of regular communication covering the 1.5 years you did not live together, by way of boarding passes/flight tickets, letters, cards, and emails/call logs/message logs (no content, just a list of dates and times)

The ONLY visa where you MUST have lived together for at least 24 consecutive months (2 years) before applying is the 'Unmarried Partner' visa, where you have been living together as if you are married, but have no intention of ever getting married or registering a civil partnership. In that case, in lieu of getting married, you have to prove your relationship is 'akin to marriage'.

We only have one document sent through the post addressed to both of us at the moment, probably two once the bank statement arrives for our joint account. Is this enough? We have things like election mail that is addressed to each of us at the same time but not joint.

You don't need any joint mail if you don't have it. Just send individual mail instead.

What content, if any, is allowed to be digital? I know it is all scanned anyway, aside from my partner’s passport, but is submitting digital bills useful? I presume bank statements have to be scans and not ‘official’ PDFs?

Digital bills cannot be considered. Only mail that you have physically received at your house will be considered, because electronic bills do not prove you were both living there to receive it.

And I am not sure if you will have any knowledge of this, but does the fact we are moving to Scotland initially pose problems relating to our having a mixed-sex civil partnership that is not recognized in Scotland, given that immigration is dealt with by the UK government?

I'm actually not sure. I can't seem to find anything on mixed-sex civil partnerships relating to the visa rules... the guidelines just seem to refer to 'civil partnerships' without specifying.

The guidance for providing evidence of your civil partnership is:

Evidence of Marriage or Civil Partnerships
22. A marriage in the United Kingdom must be evidenced by a valid marriage certificate recognised under the laws of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
23. A divorce in the United Kingdom must be evidenced by a decree absolute from a civil court.
24. A civil partnership in the United Kingdom must be evidenced by a civil partnership certificate.
25. The dissolution of a civil partnership in the UK must be evidenced by a final order of civil partnership dissolution from a civil court.
26. Marriages, civil partnerships or evidence of divorce or dissolution from outside the UK must be evidenced by a reasonable equivalent to the evidence detailed in paragraphs 22 to 25, valid under the law in force in the relevant country.

and this document expands further:

Overseas marriage and civil partnerships

A marriage or civil partnership which has taken place overseas is recognised where:
• the type of marriage or civil partnership is recognised in the country in which it took place
• the marriage or civil partnership was properly conducted to satisfy the requirements of the law of the country in which it took place
• there is nothing in the laws of either person’s country of domicile at the time of the marriage or civil partnership which prevents the marriage or civil partnership being recognised
• any previous marriages or civil partnerships of the couple have broken down permanently

Thanks for the response. It is very reassuring that we are almost there.

I realize the civil partnership avenue is certainly less knowable - only 42 people got a civil union in Hawaiʻi last year, so there really aren't that many people doing so, at least here. We're pretty confident that it should count, given that Hawaiʻi civil unions are listed in "Schedule 20 to the Civil Partnership Act 2004" as recognized as a UK civil partnership in the UK. Hopefully the Scottish divergence in that law does not effect immigration law but we'll have to wait to find out.

That leaves only the proof of a relationship from before we were living together to work out.

For the messages, is there a good way of presenting message logs without content? Listing messages per day could be tedious but obviously worth it if required. We primarily used signal, and I still have the messages on my laptop, but I don't think it has a convenient export function for such data.

And we should take representative screenshots of actual conversations? Just, say, five or so across different months?
We have no call logs as both of our phones (with such logs on) were either lost or wiped since then, which is a shame. I hope that isn't necessary.

We also have a captioned picture of the two of us (with our places of residence!) as a photo in a story from a prominent regional newspaper from before we were living together, which is undoubtedly helpful.

As for any other proof, we were somewhat proximate (in a neighboring state) for a while at the beginning of our relationship. I am wondering if something like google's tracking data for location would be helpful to show repeated visits between each other?

And finally, for now, should we only provide two photos of us with nobody else in the picture, as opposed to photos of us in groups and so on? How about photos from our trips together to show those?

Thanks again!

For the messages, is there a good way of presenting message logs without content? Listing messages per day could be tedious but obviously worth it if required. We primarily used signal, and I still have the messages on my laptop, but I don't think it has a convenient export function for such data.

And we should take representative screenshots of actual conversations? Just, say, five or so across different months?

If you're covering 1.5 years of messages, you want to include maybe 3 messages per month, giving a total of 54 messages, and you should send no more than 2-3 sheets of paper total with all the messages on them.

So, you just need to pick 1 message every 1 to 1.5 weeks, take a screenshot, paste it into Word (or similar), then crop out all but the name, date and time, so that you have a list, or a block of messages on the page. You should be able to get about 20-30 messages on 1 sheet of paper.

We have no call logs as both of our phones (with such logs on) were either lost or wiped since then, which is a shame. I hope that isn't necessary.

You can only include what you still have available to you. If the messages cover the whole 1.5 years, then it won't matter that you don't have call logs.

We also have a captioned picture of the two of us (with our places of residence!) as a photo in a story from a prominent regional newspaper from before we were living together, which is undoubtedly helpful.

I probably wouldn't include that as it's not needed.

As for any other proof, we were somewhat proximate (in a neighboring state) for a while at the beginning of our relationship. I am wondering if something like google's tracking data for location would be helpful to show repeated visits between each other?

I've never heard of anyone using tracking data before, so I'm not sure if that can be used.

Normally you would provide things like plane, train or bus tickets showing you travelled.

And finally, for now, should we only provide two photos of us with nobody else in the picture, as opposed to photos of us in groups and so on? How about photos from our trips together to show those?

The only requirement for photos is that you show you have met in person one time. So, you send 1 photo showing the two of you together in the same place. No one else should be in the picture.

I actually normally recommend sending 1 photo of you together at the beginning of your relationship, and 1 photo of you together at your wedding/civil partnership ceremony, just to show relationship progression.

All they need to do when they process your application is tick a box saying they have seen 1 photo of you together. You don't get a bigger or better tick for sending more photos.

Okay. So if I'm reading your reply correctly, the general strategy is strong evidence but not an abundance of it.

The difficulty we'll have with proving travel is that aside from one overseas trip together by plane before we were living together, almost all of our time together was facilitated by driving, for which I have no receipts that would adequately prove such travel, hence the possibility of tracking data showing trips. I'm not sure what else would work, although the newspaper article does incidentally show a picture of us on a train, traveling together.

For, say, my partner coming to move in with me, we don't have plane boarding passes any more (although in retrospect we should have saved them). Is a booking confirmation adequate?

It seems like much of this evidence needing to be paper is awkward in this age of digital communication and even digital boarding passes!

Okay. So if I'm reading your reply correctly, the general strategy is strong evidence but not an abundance of it.

It's not a strategy, it's just following the required evidence guidelines.

You need to show:
- that you meet the financial requirement (bank statements and evidence of source of funds)

- that you have somewhere to live in the UK (Land Registry, letter from parents etc.)

- that your relationship is genuine (civil partnership registration, 1 photo of you together, evidence of living together, evidence of regular communication while living apart)

The difficulty we'll have with proving travel is that aside from one overseas trip together by plane before we were living together, almost all of our time together was facilitated by driving, for which I have no receipts that would adequately prove such travel, hence the possibility of tracking data showing trips. I'm not sure what else would work, although the newspaper article does incidentally show a picture of us on a train, traveling together.

Forget about the newspaper article. What you need is evidence of the two of you communicating with each other.

If you don't have evidence of travel because you drove, then don't worry about it. Just explain in your sponsor letter that you drove to see each other X times per week/month.

As I mentioned above, you can only provide evidence if you have it. If you don't, then there's nothing you can do - you just use something else instead.

- Time spent together in person is the strongest evidence, but you have been living together, so that's covered most of it already.
- After that, just include any boarding passes, flight confirmations, any other travel tickets you have
- Next down the list is letters/cards, so include those if you have them (if you don't, don't worry)
- Next is the calls/messages/emails... again, just include what you have

For, say, my partner coming to move in with me, we don't have plane boarding passes any more (although in retrospect we should have saved them). Is a booking confirmation adequate?

Yes. Boarding passes are ideal because they prove you actually boarded the plane, but a lot of people don't have them anymore, so they just include emailed flight confirmations instead.

It seems like much of this evidence needing to be paper is awkward in this age of digital communication and even digital boarding passes!

If you have digital boarding passes, you could always take screenshots and include them.

Thanks! We shall collect as much of this as we can and see how it goes. Nothing looks particularly difficult for us which is a relief. The evidence of communication is probably the most vague part, but we'll manage.