Spousal visa proof of relationship and document submission questions

I am applying for a spousal visa to live with my husband in England (I am from the US and currently living there). One aspect of the application that I am struggling with is the proof of relationship. There don't seem to be any "official" guidelines for this and I really want to get it right.

I have numerous chat logs starting from January 2018 (the furthest back that Skype stores logs apparently). After taking several screenshots from each month that we were together it started to feel like way too many pages of logs. I've read that it can be dangerous to submit too much information as it becomes liable to all be thrown out.

Then again, other sources have indicated that you are not meant to give them any actual chat logs and instead include only call logs. Still others have said that you should include chat logs showing timestamps but with the actual message content totally censored so that it cannot be read.

The screenshots that I've taken look like this [nofollow] and this [nofollow] - without the names redacted obviously. Would submitting pages of this get my application thrown out? Given that we were married recently (last month) I want to make it very clear that this is a legitimate relationship. Should I submit only timestamped call logs and boarding passes from our trips back and forth? Any advice is welcomed.

Another area where I am unsure is document submission.  I have read on some website or another that submitting the application and documentation through digital uploads is extremely unreliable and they can sometimes claim that parts of it were never received even though they were uploaded. Is that old information or is that still the case? If I upload everything then where am I meant to send my passport and return shipping label to?

In addition, how, and where, does my husband submit his documentation? Regarding the official copy of register of title, does this need to be a copy within 28 days from the date of application as with the financial documents?

Finally, this is our checklist below, basically an amalgamation of others' checklists we found online. Is this too much? Too little?

Applicant Required Documentation

•    Return Shipping Label
•    Online Application
•    VAF4A Appendix 2
•    Biometrics Confirmation Sheet
•    IHS Surcharge Receipt (when do I make this payment though?)
•    US Passport
•    Passport Photos
•    Contents Letter

Sponsor Required Documents

•    Certified UK Passport Copy
•    Letter of Support
               o    UK Citizen
               o    Employment Details
               o    Address and property details
               o    Relationship history, why we want to live in the UK

•    Accommodation Documents
               o    Land Registry Title
               o    Letter from parents, with certified copies of passports as proof of identity

•    Financial Documents
               o    6 Months of Original Payslips
               o    6 Months of Bank Statements
                                 Stamped at bank

•    Employment Letter
              o    Current Employment Position
              o    Current Salary
              o    Length of Employment & Current Salary
              o    Type of Employment

Proof of Relationship – Who submits these?
•    10(?) Pages of conversation logs(?).
•    Photographs together
•    Marriage License
•    Evidence of Travel to America.
o    Boarding Pass Pictures
o    E-Tickets
o    Passport Stamps

If you took the time to read and help then thank you very much!! I'm so nervous and need to do this right!

Welcome to the forum .

The application process has changed quite a lot in the last few months, most recently on November 7th, so some of your information about how to apply is now out of date.

- you apply online here now: https://visas-immigration.service.gov.uk/apply-visa-type/appendixfm?_ga=2.36423080.908993821.1574530620-128352145.1574425017

- there is no more VAF4a Appendix 2, as it has been incorporated into the new online application form

- you now have to pay about £100 extra if you want New York to scan and upload your documents for you, so you'd be better off just uploading them yourself at home (which should hopefully be working properly now)

- there's even an option now for the UK sponsor to pay a fee (about £100-125) to send their documents directly to Birmingham, England be scanned in there, instead of you scanning them in the US

- I believe you now book biometrics through the VFS Global website and not the online application form

I have numerous chat logs starting from January 2018 (the furthest back that Skype stores logs apparently). After taking several screenshots from each month that we were together it started to feel like way too many pages of logs. I've read that it can be dangerous to submit too much information as it becomes liable to all be thrown out.

In regards to call logs and to message logs, you want to send no more than 2-3 sheets of paper total covering each communication type.

If you have messages from Jan 2018 to Nov 2019 (about 2 years' worth), you want to copy and paste maybe 2 messages per month into a Word document and then crop out everything except the name, date and time. So you should have a list of dates and times on 1-2 pages (maybe a year's worth on each page).

If you have been together since before Jan 2018, you will also need to provide evidence of the communication from before then as well.

For example, here's what 1 year's worth of WhatsApp messages might look like (24 messages, 2 per month):

[/quote]

Would submitting pages of this get my application thrown out? Given that we were married recently (last month) I want to make it very clear that this is a legitimate relationship. Should I submit only timestamped call logs and boarding passes from our trips back and forth? Any advice is welcomed.

It wouldn't get your application thrown out, but sending too many pages gives them more work to do. They don't need to know WHAT you talk about, they just need to know THAT you talked in the first place.

Think of it like an old-fashioned itemised phone bill... you just get sent a list of numbers, dates and length of calls...you don't get a recording of the actual conversation.

Another area where I am unsure is document submission.  I have read on some website or another that submitting the application and documentation through digital uploads is extremely unreliable and they can sometimes claim that parts of it were never received even though they were uploaded. Is that old information or is that still the case? If I upload everything then where am I meant to send my passport and return shipping label to?

It's old information - see the top of this reply.

You upload all the supporting documents (accommodation, finances, relationship evidence), then mail your passport, biometrics receipt, printed online application and shipping label to the scanning hub in New York. The address is on this page:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/usa-apply-for-a-uk-visa/apply-for-a-uk-visa-in-the-usa

In addition, how, and where, does my husband submit his documentation? Regarding the official copy of register of title, does this need to be a copy within 28 days from the date of application as with the financial documents?

Either he mails them to you in the US (by registered courier) so that you scan them in yourself, or I believe you scan the supporting documents you have and he mails his within the UK to be scanned.

In regards to your documents, some things have changed, so this is what you will need:

Applicant Documents
•    Return Shipping Label
•    Contents Letter - not sure if you really need this now that the documents are uploaded, unless you want to list the uploaded documents on it?
•    Online Application
•    Biometrics Confirmation Sheet
•    IHS Surcharge Receipt (when do I make this payment though?) - you make the payment as part of the online application
•    US Passport

Sponsor Documents
•    Certified UK Passport Copy - photo page only
•    Letter of Support

Accommodation Documents
               o    Land Registry Title
               o    Letter from parents, with certified copies of passports as proof of identity

Financial Documents
               o    6 Months of Original Payslips
               o    6 Months of Bank Statements
                                 Stamped at bank
              Employment Letter
              o    Current Employment Position
              o    Current Salary
              o    Length of Employment & Current Salary
              o    Type of Employment
             Optional but recommended:
             - Original job contract
             - Latest P60

Proof of Relationship – Who submits these? - I guess whoever has them, but ideally you probably want all the documents in the same place (i.e. your husband mails them all to you and you upload everything, or you send the relationship evidence to your husband and he mails everything to UKVI for scanning for an extra fee)
•    Marriage Certificate (marriage LICENCE is just the permission to get married, not the proof of marriage)
•   No more than 2 Photographs together
•    Evidence of Travel to America and the UK (and any other countries you've travel to together) for both of you... you don't need passport stamps, just either boarding passes or e-tickets for each trip
•    Any letters or cards sent to each other
•    2-3 Pages of conversation logs, 2-3 pages of call logs, 2-3 pages of emails etc. (depending on how many different types of communication you have), covering the entire length of your relationship

See this post about the new system (biometrics, scanning etc.):
https://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php?topic=97274.msg1289375#msg1289375

You and your UK partner can both upload documents to VFS so he shouldn't need to send anything to the paid UK scanning service, just make sure you aren't both trying to upload at the same time because it won't work that way. Or he can scan and send the docs to you via email, Google docs, etc and you can then upload them. As for what you will still need to send to the NYC Scanning Hub, that is your passport, a UPS return label and envelope (this became a requirement recently), stamped biometrics confirmation page, signed documents checklist, IHS and application payment receipts.

Hello! Thank you very much for responding to my post. Seeing a thorough response is a comfort during a very stressful time.

Could you please help clarify this for me?

If you have been together since before Jan 2018, you will also need to provide evidence of the communication from before then as well.

I have known my husband since September 2017, but during these months we were communicating via Skype and Steam. Skype's logs don't go back that far and Steam unfortunately does not log at all. So those messages are totally lost to us, but obviously it happened - is there a best practice for this situation? Would I make a note of this in my supporting letter or just kind of ignore it?

Sponsor Documents
•    Certified UK Passport Copy - photo page only
•    Letter of Support

Are photocopies of the Sponsor's travel history, as per passport stamps, not useful evidence for the travel history provided as part of the application, i.e. visits to see each other? Was planning on including bio and stamp pages. Is sending the stamp pages not a good idea?

And I'm including photocopies of my bio page and stamps from my previous passport, yes? Showing my travel history, as asked about by the application.

Are photocopies of the Sponsor's travel history, as per passport stamps, not useful evidence for the travel history provided as part of the application, i.e. visits to see each other? Was planning on including bio and stamp pages. Is sending the stamp pages not a good idea?

And I'm including photocopies of my bio page and stamps from my previous passport, yes? Showing my travel history, as asked about by the application.

Not if you have other evidence, which it sounds like you do. If there's a gap that you can't provide any other evidence for then you can send those pages, but otherwise I wouldn't.

As for your previous passport, all you need to send is your bio page. If you are sending pages from your old passport as relationship evidence that's completely fine.

I have another question regarding the chat logs. I've managed to extract messages older than the ones Skype is displaying by accessing my local Skype message database. However, in these archives it is displaying my Skype username which is not visible in the other Skype screenshots. When I made my username, it was meant to be funny and ironic but I'm concerned that the individual reviewing my case won't see it through this ironic lens. To give you an idea, it includes the words "kill" and "666". Yeah, maybe not the best reflection of my character...

So my question is, would it be fine if I censor this username? I could easily edit it out of the HTML in this file I'm screenshotting from. Should I leave it in and pray that they find it as funny as I did 4 years ago?

Cellae,

I'm not at all qualified to make you feel reassured, but if I had to guess, I'd say that's the kind of thing you can explain in your (the applicant's) cover letter. You can put that kind of thing in context. I don't know how they make the character assessment down the line, whether they can weigh things like 'kinda creepy usernames'.

Hey Cellae,
would be interested to know if you were able to obtain 'all' the historical screenshots of your skyping. I am trying to do the same, but is has proven to be nearly impossible to scroll back any more than 6 months inside of the skype application. I found a tool on the microsoft forums that allows an export in text of everything which is very functional, but I am wondering if a list of the calls in plain text format will be allowable by the visa forces. Have you checked this with them already?

With thanks, and good luck to you

Hey Cellae,
would be interested to know if you were able to obtain 'all' the historical screenshots of your skyping. I am trying to do the same, but is has proven to be nearly impossible to scroll back any more than 6 months inside of the skype application. I found a tool on the microsoft forums that allows an export in text of everything which is very functional, but I am wondering if a list of the calls in plain text format will be allowable by the visa forces. Have you checked this with them already?

With thanks, and good luck to you

Hi there. I'm assuming you were able to export the Skype archives and view them in HTML format. On these pages it does display the Skype logo and an export date. In my opinion (as someone who has not been approved or rejected yet, bear in mind) these logs seem totally fine to use. Yes, they are more easily tampered with, but if your chatting/call logs seem believable and genuine I doubt they'll count it against you.

However I would say probably do not rely on that solely for the majority of your logs. If you have data from other sources to supplement it that would be better. Anything from Discord, Whatsapp, Snapchat, whatever, I'd add that on as well.

Also, have you tried scrolling up in the Skype webapp instead of the desktop client? I found that this was less laggy and took less time to scroll up to view the entire history. Skype should keep your logs from approximately the last 2 years so the majority of those chat logs should be accessible that way.

Good luck!

I don't know if it's allowed now with the changes, but if it helps....my husband and I took screenshots of lists of emails we sent each other as well as chat and call logs. And of course, several photos starting from when we met through our relationship up to our wedding. We even sent the letter I sent him proposing! That was probably overkill, but hey, I'm here. lol.

About the marriage certificate thing....take note which state you are from. I got married in Florida and its official title is Marriage Record, with the license and certificate on the same page. Which is different than Pennsylvania I think...pretty sure my sister had to have our priest send her license application into the state and they got something else back.