Okay, so the relationship requirements for the different visa types are:
Spousal visa (FLR(M)):
- you must be legally married
- your relationship must be genuine
- you do not need to have lived together at all, but if you have lived together, you provide evidence of this for the 'genuine relationship' part
Unmarried Partner visa (FLR(M)):
- you are not legally married and have no intention of marrying
- because you are not married, you must show that you are in a relationship 'akin to marriage' by proving that you have lived together for 24 consecutive months before applying for the visa
- you show this by providing 24 months of evidence of living together
Very few people can qualify for an Unmarried Partner visa because it requires both partners to be legally living in the same country on other visa types and living together for 2 years before applying for the visa.
So, most people end up going the fiance or spousal visa route because there is no requirement to live together first.
To be more specific: my partner and I will have been together for 3 years at the time my current Tier 4 visa expires. I'm an American doing my PhD, he's a British citizen. We have not lived together during this time for a variety of reasons. If, at some point before my visa expires, we got married, would that be sufficient to get a family visa? Or would it not work because we would have to both be married AND ALSO have lived together for 2 years? Is there any immigration benefit to getting married vs. establishing 'unmarried partner' status?
If you get married, it doesn't matter if you have never lived together, as long as the relationship is genuine.
In fact, if you have never lived together and your visa expires before you will have the chance to live together for 2 years, your ONLY option in order to qualify for a family visa is to get married.
Additionally, if I then wanted to eventually try for ILR, would I have to prove that my partner and I lived together for those 5 years as well? Or would it be OK if we lived in different cities for periods of time? One of the issues is that we're both working in fields with extreme job scarcity (and for him, jobs tend to be 1-3 year contracts), and we both have to be prepared to move where the job is.
Alternately, if I move in with him on paper - get my name on the lease, pay some bills, have mail sent there - but end up also renting a room in the city I'm working in to stay in (for as long I have to be there), would this be justifiable??
Once you have the spousal FLR(M) visa, you do have to show you have lived together for the entire 5 years (well, for the last 2 years of the first FLR(M) and the whole 2.5 years of the second FLR(M)) - you do this by proving that you have both received mail at the same address as each other for the entire time. If you did properly live apart at all during that time, you would have to show VERY GOOD reasons why you could not live together... for example, one of you is deployed overseas with the military, or sent to work overseas for their UK employer, and the other cannot join them.
In terms of living in different cities for jobs, it would depend on your personal circumstances... for example, if you officially both resided at an address in one city, and all your mail came to that address, but one of you worked away during the week, this probably wouldn't count as 'living apart', it would be like temporarily travelling for work.
You would need to show that your relationship continued while you were apart though, by way of emails, phone calls, messages etc. to show you weren't just married 'for the visa'.
Basically, I want to know if family visas are an option for me at all or if I'm going to have to stake the future of my relationship on landing and keeping a job that will grant me a Tier 2 Visa, and take that route toward ILR.
If you're married, then a family visa is your best option, because your visa would be tied to your partner and not your job.
If you're not married and have not lived together before, then you would have to secure a Tier 2 visa in order to stay in the UK after your Tier 4 ends.
Your 5 years to ILR would start when you got either the Tier 2 visa or family visa. However, if you got a Tier 2 visa then later switched to a family visa, your 5 years to ILR would start again from scratch.
Plus, for ILR on a Tier 2 visa, you may well be required to earn at least £38,000 per year... but for ILR on a family visa only requires a household income of £18,600.
Also, if you are married to a UK citizen, you can apply for UK citizenship as soon as you are granted ILR, but if you are not married to a UK citizen, you have to hold ILR for 12 months before you can apply for citizenship.
The obvious benefit for me of a spouse/partner visa is that it allows me to do freelance work, which would (a) enable me to choose to live with or closer to him and (b) tide me over if I don't manage to get a job in my field, or if I'm between jobs.
As Tier 2 visas are difficult to secure and there's no guarantee you will manage to remain employed on a Tier 2 for the full 5 years, or meet the salary requirements for ILR, I would say your safest option is to marry and apply for FLR(M).
