Spouse visa - with adoption

Hello,

We're hoping to make our settlement application in the next month, so I'm now at the point of pulling my hair out and worrying about all the details! So far this forum has been invaluable - thank you so much.

Quick rundown: Living in the US and wish to come home. British husband (me), American wife. Two sons who are my wife's biological children. As of last year, I have successfully adopted them, and now appear as the father on their birth certificates. At this point their bio-father is not legally tied to them in any way at all.

Reading through Appendix 2 - should I list myself as their father? This is now the case legally, however I wanted to double check. I was planning on including the adoption decrees, as I had not even met my wife when they were both born, so I assumed that might look a bit fishy! I imagine this will also help prove that our marriage is genuine 

I'm hoping to get them British citizenship once we're home. As I understand it, I cannot do that at the moment as I was a resident in the US when the adoption went through. I'm a British citizen by birth.

Any advice appreciated - this whole process so far has been exhausting, but I think we're getting there!

Welcome to the forum .

I would look into getting your adopted sons’ British citizenship in the US again, because my aunt, who is British-born but has lived in the US for 40 years, adopted 3 US-born children while living in the US.The older 2 are automatically British and qualified for British passports right away (they have never lived in the U.K.), and the youngest needs to be registered as British first before she can get a UK passport.

The thing is that if you don’t get their UK citizenship sorted before you move, they will each need child dependant visas for the U.K. and you will need to show £24,800 annual income to sponsor all 3 visas instead of £18,600 for just your wife’s visa, and you’re looking at paying almost £10,000 for all 3 visas, instead of only around £3,300 for your wife’s visa.


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Okay, doing a bit of research, it looks like your adopted sons wil not automatically qualify for UK citizenship (as you were not living in the UK), so you will need to register them as UK citizens before you can apply for UK passports for them.

This registration can be done from the US and it costs £1,012 per child. Unfortunately, it can take up to 6 months to be processed, but you will save yourself over £6,000 in visa fees compared to doing it in the UK.

Cost of registering them as British in the US = £2,024 plus passport fees

Cost of registering them as British in the UK= about £8,500 plus passport fees (£6,000-6,500 in visa fees for them to move to the UK to start with, then £2,024 for the citizenship registration once they are living in the UK)


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Thank you so much for the reply, I really really appreciate it I'll discuss it with my wife. That's a big chunk of money. Thanks again!