Initial Fiance visa application advice

Hi all, right in the middle of organising our submission to be sent in just after the 24th April to coincide with having the full £62,500 of fiances under my control for 6 months. A quick question:

Do they just take into account the lowest point your account has hit in that 6 month period regardless of in and out goings from the account ?

My Example would be I had £105,000 at the very start of the 6 months. I spend £40,000, have another £10,000 come into the account and then another £10,000 goes out again. By the end of the 6 month period my account has not dipped below the £65,000 mark (£62,500 being the point I just stay above). Am I looking at this in the correct way ? Am I OK to have large fluctuations in the account as long as the boundary of £62,500 isnt broken at any point in those 6 months ?

Yes, that's right.

Hi all,

As we get closer to the end of the month when I will be sending my bank statements to the US to be attached to the application form I thought I would double check that our document checklist seem accurate to the more knowledgeable eyes on this forum! I have highlighted in orange any questions regarding the points:

Applicant:
- 2 Passport sized photographs
- Application form
- Appendix 2 financial requirement
- Letter of introduction
- Passport
- All previous passports
- stamped biometrics confirmation letter (once attended)
- shipping details


Sponsor:
- Copy of passport (certified)
- Letter of introduction/support
- Copy of Decree Absolute - Is a certified copy of this be sufficient or do I need an original?

Financial Requirement:
- 6 months of current account statements printed by the bank - I will have had the full £62,500 under my control for the required 6 months.
- Letter from employer I am disabled and do not work, do I need to address this in the application as I am using my savings to qualify for the financial checks ?
- Official letter from his banking institution - Should I get one just as a precaution even though the bank will be printing them?

Evidence of Accommodation:
- Supporting letter from my parents as we will be living with them
- Picture of the house
- Land Registry document for the house - My folks own the house outright so there are no mortgage papers etc. Will the land registration document suffice and does it need to be certified?

Evidence that we have met/ongoing relationship:
- 2 Photos of us together
- 3 Plane ticket/receipts of my travels to US to visit applicant - As far as acceptable evidence goes does this have to be the boarding pass or can it be the e-tickets we received by email?
- 3 Plane ticket/receipts of applicant travelling to UK
- Print screen of emails received from applicant - We have dated for over 3 years but rarely email eachother as we Skype all the time. Should we just forgo these and stick to Skype screenshots?
- Print screen of Skype conversation and calls - As stated above we use Skype all the time and are in contact an embarrassing amount (a log for the first 2 years when exported into word come up to some 734 pages). From what I understand people tend to stick to taking several screenshots of small snipets (10 messages or so)rather than sending entire logs. For a 3 year relationship how many screenshots should we provide and should they show anything specific ?

Evidence that we intend to marry:
--Booking of appointment to give notice to marry
--Confirmation of our marriage ceremony at local registry office
--Receipt of marriage ceremony booking
--Engagement ring receipt
Apparently this is useful to have evidence of but as we have no idea when my fiancee will be able to travel and when we can get married I am unsure how I can get anything thats particularly useful for this section. The wedding rings we will be using are family heirlooms, our registry office cant give me any real evidence without dates etc. Any advice on this front would be great.

Certified copy of divorce decree is perfect (you'll find the original is on file with the courthouse anyway)

For savings, you genuinely just need the six months of bank statements.  You don't need anything from his employer as that will just muddle things.  As long as the statements are printed from the bank, you are good to go.  But some people feel better having them stamped/signed on each page or a letter to go with them.

You can take out of the photo of the house, not needed.

Land registry is all you need (well, with the letter from your parents).  Doesn't need to be certified.

We recommend only a couple of pages of evidence for contact.  So if you've been together for 3 years, maybe have a year of contact on each page (3 in total), so maybe two shots per month.  Whatever fits on a page worth.  No need to send huge stacks of evidence.  E-tickets will be fine if that's what you have.  I would send a page or so of emails in addition to the Skype calls but do what you are comfortable with.

They'll know that you can't have anything firm from the registry office without the visa.  All you need to show is that you are making plans - which is exactly what you have.  So you're good here too.

Wonderful, and as an overview of the order of things it should be:

1. Apply online.
2. Book Biometrics.
3. Receive physical copies of UK statements etc.
4. Attend Biometrics
5. Submit package of evidence within 5 days of biometrics.

Is the 5 day window for submitting the evidence after the biometrics counted from the day of posting ?

1.  Receive copies of UK evidence
2.  Submit application/book biometrics (you can complete this online and save but don't submit until you have EVERYTHING in hand)
3.  Attend biometrics
4.  Send it all off to Sheffield within 5 days

Ah ok, good advice! Is there a priority service for these visa's ?

Ah ok, good advice! Is there a priority service for these visa's ?

Yes, currently taking about 5 weeks and costs £551.  That may stretch a bit longer as we approach the summer rush (hopefully not).

Just reading the advice you give about the 3 pages of Skype evidence I am a little confused about how I might be able to fit even 2 pieces of evidence per month over 3 years onto 3 pages ?

As far as I am aware all I can show is our chat log which also shows calls made along with their duration. One screenshot may include maybe 5 messages and a couple of calls at a push as its displayed on the screen, and I would imagine maybe 2 of those would fit on 1 side of A4 ? Using those indicators that would mean 6 screenshots in total which really only cover perhaps a couple of hours of contact per screenshot, is that sufficient if they are spread over the 3 year period? Am I missing some conventional way of displaying Skype chats/call logs in a better way ?

Oh and THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THIS HELP!

Try Googling how to show a Skype call log.  You don't want to show content.  Think 1990's contact.  All you would have is a phone bill with a phone number, the date, time, and how long the conversation was.  That's what you want for your evidence of communication.  I know others have been able to pull this type of info from Skype.  I'd look at Google or do a search on the forum.

More random questions! (Thank you all so much yet again for your patients)

Is this the correct Appendix 2 financial form we need to fill in for our application for a Marriage Visa (settlement)?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/270484/VAF4A-Appendix2.pdf

Yes, that's the correct Appendix 2 form .

OK a little worried here. I have just tried to access my Skype history and its only giving me back to July 2016 and no further. I have backed up chat logs from the start of our relationship (November 2013) but that only covers up until September 2014 whihc leaves this huge gap in contact proof. We have 2 sets of tickets proving long 2-3 month visits during that time. Will this be Ok ? Should the gap be addressed in the personal statement ?

Stress.

dont stress. like you said yourself other ways to prove contact during those times. you can include it in the additional information of the applications or in a letter of introduction. Thats were I pointed out important things i wanted the eo to know. so its up to you how to handle it, but don't panic.

OK a little worried here. I have just tried to access my Skype history and its only giving me back to July 2016 and no further. I have backed up chat logs from the start of our relationship (November 2013) but that only covers up until September 2014 whihc leaves this huge gap in contact proof. We have 2 sets of tickets proving long 2-3 month visits during that time. Will this be Ok ? Should the gap be addressed in the personal statement ?

Stress.

Have you looked into ways of accessing your previous Skype history?

It seems there is a way to access logs from more than 1 year ago:
https://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-desktop-client/View-1-year-old-messages/td-p/569899
https://superuser.com/questions/977927/how-to-recover-3-year-chat-history-on-skype

What dates were your visits to each other? How much of that missing period do they cover?

Did you send any cards or letters to each other in the missing time? What about emails sent to each other?

From what you've said, at the moment, you have:
November 2013 - September 2014 = chat logs
September 2014 - July 2016 = ?
July 2016 - Present = Skype logs

Thats correct Ksand24 for the period of September 2014 - July 2016 we have no Skype logs at all, a terrifying 22 month gap (for a 3 year and 6 month relationship) in our main means of communication.

During the gap we have the following flight evidence:

1 - December 13 - 31st 2014 fiancee visits London
2. March 24th - 1st June 2015 I visit Philadelphia
3 August 9th - 3rd September 2015 fiancee visits London
4. Feb 8th - 1 May 2016 - fiancee visits London and also brings our dog max to live in London permanently. We only have the outbound ticket for my fiancee for this visit for some reason, hopefully that wont cause problems but we do have all the dog documents and receipts.
5. November 2nd - 4th January 2017 - fiancee visits London.

Emails wise we have a few but we rarely if ever use emails to communicate and when we do they tend to have no subject as we are just emailing quick pictures while out and about.