Spouse visa questions

Hello everyone,

I’m working on the application for my UK family visa and had a few questions about it. Looking into the application process has unnerved me somewhat! Larrabee suggested I start a new thread to ask others on the forum what they thought.

I’m American and hope to move to the UK in January, together with my British husband and our baby son, who also has UK citizenship. My husband and I have lived together in the US since before our marriage in 2011.

These are some of the things I'm wondering about:

1. My husband has hopefully rented a 2-bedroom apartment for us in London, with the tenancy starting in mid-January. Will a copy of the tenancy agreement be sufficient to demonstrate adequate accomodation and should my name be on the tenancy agreement?

2. We plant to meet the income requirements via cash savings in my husband’s UK savings account. That account only produces annual paperless statements in May each year. Are annual "duplicate" statements sufficient? Or will my husband need to contact his UK bank to obtain a letter stating that account’s balance over a given period of time?

3. I would like to expedite my application if at all possible. Does anyone know about paying the VFS Global Premium Application Centre in New York for what they call the Document Scanning Assistant Service? I don’t find the VFS website tells you that much about how the process works. (I assume I’m making a non-settlement application.)

4. The gov.uk "Family visas" instructions page states that I need copies of any visa or entry stamps in my previous passports. Does this just refer to entry stamps for entry into the UK?

If anyone is able to offer answers to any of my questions, I would be unbelievably grateful.

1. No your name does not need to be on the tenancy, his alone is fine. But you should have something from the landlord stating that you and the child are permitted to reside there once your application is approved. The letter should also state the number of rooms and that your family will be the sole tenants, this is to prove the accommodation isn't overcrowded.

2. You will 100% need a letter from the bank stating that the annual statement is all that is produced and that they verify its authenticity. You will also need some sort of official proof that in the 6 months prior to your application submittal the balance has not dipped below the  £62,500 for even a single day.

3. Do NOT under any circumstances pay to use a Premium center. It's $2,000 extra and really the only thing it does is handle the scanning for you and allows you to keep your passport while your application is processing and it's a massive rip-off. It does NOT speed up the processing time. If you are aiming for the quickest decision, generally within 30 working days then you should pay the approximately $750 "priority" application fee. That fee is paid at the time you submit your application. If you would prefer to have VFS scan your application package then you can pay $100 also once you have submitted your application package and you will then send all of your documents to the scanning hub in NYC and they will all be returned to you once you have gotten a decision made. FYI, a spouse visa is a settlement visa and VFS's website is a nightmare to navigate so don't feel bad that you can't make heads nor tails of it.

4. You aren't looking at the correct visa requirements. There is nothing for a spouse visa which requires you to provide proof of entry. You will send in your entire current passport and the bio pages of any expired passports. If you have previously held a visa for the UK (eg, student, Tier 2) you will provide information about that visa in the application.

2. We plant to meet the income requirements via cash savings in my husband’s UK savings account. That account only produces annual paperless statements in May each year. Are annual "duplicate" statements sufficient? Or will my husband need to contact his UK bank to obtain a letter stating that account’s balance over a given period of time?

The financial evidence must be dated within the 28days before the date of the online application so a duplicate of an old statement won't work if the dates it covers are older than that.
I would ask them to produce an up to date statement covering the last full 6+ months, they should be able to do this for you.

That is so helpful, DanaM and larrabee. Thank you!

There are 2 additional things I just noticed on the spouse visa checklist NYCtoEDI posted yesterday that confused me.

1. Do I really need to provide more than a certified copy of our City of New York marriage certificate as marriage evidence, e.g. an acknowledgement of deposit of a copy of the certificate with the Home Office?

2. How much evidence of my husband's and my relationship do I need to provide if we have a son with a UK passport? Are joint US tax returns and joint US bank account statements necessary/sufficient?

(Not sure how I had the incorrect visa requirements about copies of pages with stamps or visas from old passports in my original post. Thought they were mentioned on the gov.uk family visas partner/spouse summary page.)

1. Do I really need to provide more than a certified copy of our City of New York marriage certificate as marriage evidence, e.g. an acknowledgement of deposit of a copy of the certificate with the Home Office? No, nothing other than the copy of your official marriage certificate is necessary.

2. How much evidence of my husband's and my relationship do I need to provide if we have a son with a UK passport? Are joint US tax returns and joint US bank account statements necessary/sufficient? You will still need to provide proof that your relationship is genuine and ongoing, so chats/texts, photos, proof of current cohabitation, etc from the start of your relationship to the period before your application is submitted. I wouldn't send any bank statements other than those that you are using to prove that you meet the MIR, to minimize any possibly confusion your ECO may have about what is relationship vs what is financial evidence. If you have been living together then you could show proof of that through utility bills, lease, mortgage, etc. I know it seems silly when you have a child but UKVI assumes nothing, so you have the burden of proof

That is so helpful, DanaM and larrabee. Thank you!

There are 2 additional things I just noticed on the spouse visa checklist NYCtoEDI posted yesterday that confused me.

1. Do I really need to provide more than a certified copy of our City of New York marriage certificate as marriage evidence, e.g. an acknowledgement of deposit of a copy of the certificate with the Home Office?

2. How much evidence of my husband's and my relationship do I need to provide if we have a son with a UK passport? Are joint US tax returns and joint US bank account statements necessary/sufficient?

(Not sure how I had the incorrect visa requirements about copies of pages with stamps or visas from old passports in my original post. Thought they were mentioned on the gov.uk family visas partner/spouse summary page.)

1-No. Your marriage certificate is sufficient.

2.Having a child together does not carry nearly as much weight as people assume it does, so do not skimp on your relationship evidence.
Bank statements and tax returns are good. You can also use insurance documents of all sorts, utility bills, home ownership or lease agreements.  Also some pictures of the two of you together and letters cards you have sent each other. If you have been apart for any length of time, they want to see how you have kept in touch.

(Not sure how I had the incorrect visa requirements about copies of pages with stamps or visas from old passports in my original post. Thought they were mentioned on the gov.uk family visas partner/spouse summary page.)

It is mentioned on the family visas partner/spouse page (https://www.gov.uk/uk-family-visa/provide-information)

We sent a copy of the bio page for the old passport, along with all the entry stamps that were in it. As it turned out, only stamps for Paris and Amsterdam were in that passport (all UK stamps were in the current passport) but we included copies of those pages.

The UK cares about post (mail), so joint tax returns, car registration documents, etc., are the things you need to prove your relationship.  We have seen a couple married for 50 years with 4 kids refused because they didn't believe the relationship was genuine.  They didn't send a photo or any paperwork proving cohabitation.  Bonkers, right?

Literally one photo
One or two items of joint mail (originals) for each year you've been living together.  The cover letter of your joint tax returns is the easiest to provide and  ALWAYS accepted as genuine by UKVI. 

Thank you, DanaM, larrabee, burrata and KFdancer! You've all made the application process clearer and less intimidating, for which I am most grateful.

For the relationship evidence, we've been living together since 2008. However, I'm having difficulty getting hold of joint mail going back that far.

I have annual joint home insurance originals with both our names on them going back to 2015 (further back in time than any utility bills I can get hold of) and then some airline itinerary emails for travel together going back to 2010. Hopefully those will be sufficient? (I could also try asking Bank of America to produce a letter stating we've held a joint bank account together for 5 years?)

For the relationship evidence, we've been living together since 2008. However, I'm having difficulty getting hold of joint mail going back that far.

I have annual joint home insurance originals with both our names on them going back to 2015 (further back in time than any utility bills I can get hold of) and then some airline itinerary emails for travel together going back to 2010. Hopefully those will be sufficient? (I could also try asking Bank of America to produce a letter stating we've held a joint bank account together for 5 years?)

Do you have annual tax returns going back to 2008? If so, they will do.

Most people just provide their tax returns for each year, and then maybe a utility bill from that year too, if they have one.

Also, the mail does not have to be jointly-addressed.

You could provide individually-addressed items (preferably from the same month as each other) showing that you both received them at the same address as each other.

Thank you for the very helpful tip about individually addressed mail at the same address, ksand24. That makes things easier.

Also, I'm unsure about 3 other things regarding the application:

1. The travel history requirements: my husband and I traveled last year to the UK, went on vacation in France (flying from and back to London), then returned to the US, spending a few days in London with my in-laws each side of the French vacation. Does that count as one trip to the UK or two trips to the UK to list for my  "most recent" UK trips?

2. We recently sold our apartment in NYC (our permanent address) and will likely have to vacate it before the visa is (hopefully) approved and mailed to me. Is there an option to have it mailed to a different address or to collect it in NYC?

3. Can I submit official pdf copies of bank statements downloaded online (for our joint bank account) if I'll be uploading the documents for my application? The statements look identical to any statement I would have received in the mail.

Also, I'm unsure about 3 other things regarding the application:

1. The travel history requirements: my husband and I traveled last year to the UK, went on vacation in France (flying from and back to London), then returned to the US, spending a few days in London with my in-laws each side of the French vacation. Does that count as one trip to the UK or two trips to the UK to list for my  "most recent" UK trips? Yes those two definitely count as individual trips. I had a similar set, going from the UK to the EU and back to the UK again. You will be in immigration records as two entries.

2. We recently sold our apartment in NYC (our permanent address) and will likely have to vacate it before the visa is (hopefully) approved and mailed to me. Is there an option to have it mailed to a different address or to collect it in NYC? Yes, you can put whatever return address you want on your UPS label, some UPS stores find that challenging so just make sure they do it correctly! There is no option to collect your passport/documents unless you are applying through the Premium service.

3. Can I submit official pdf copies of bank statements downloaded online (for our joint bank account) if I'll be uploading the documents for my application? The statements look identical to any statement I would have received in the mail. The official guidance says if they aren't original they must be stamped. However, it seems that with the requirement to upload now there is almost no way to tell an original statement from an online PDF and many visa applications have been successful using the PDF statements. Now that said, you should make very sure that your online statements do not have a web address printed on the bottom and that they do have the appropriate bank heading and address block as a mailed statement would. If they differ in any way from what you would get in the mail you should have the bank stamp them or get a letter authenticating them.

I’d suggest you print out the statements and have them verified by the bank, the difference in quality between a downloaded pdf and a scanned statement is very obvious and I doubt they’d believe that your pdf statements are in fact scanned mailed statements.

Thank you, DanaM and Burrata.

DanaM, you kindly answered my earlier question about adequate accommodation. Can the letter confiming the number of rooms in our rental and stating that we're sole tenants be provided by the estate agent (broker) handling the rental rather than the landlord? The landlord has proven to be very slow to respond to such requests and I anticipate that it will be significantly quicker if the estate agent provides the letter. My name is on the tenancy agreement so I expect I don't need the landlord's permission to live in the property.