Lingering questions for ILR (SET M)

We've reviewed the application in paper format and online and just want to clarify a few things.

1) My husband's salary is above the required threshold and has had his job for over 6 months. I make under the threshold.
We understand that we just provide evidence of his income and not mine. So corroborating bank statements, payslips and employer letter?
Do I just act like I don't work then? It seems a bit duplicitous to make it seem like I'm unemployed. This didn't come up previously for FLR where we had provided evidence of both of our incomes and both individually met the threshold.

2a) Regarding previous parking tickets and speeding tickets - I got a speeding ticket in Illinois in probably 2013. I can't get the driving record to support that as my Illinois license has since expired. Instead I ordered a NY one as that was my last residence. It is basically blank so doesn't show that I had a speeding ticket that carried over. Do I declare the speeding ticket even though I can't remember exactly when I got it and have no evidence of it?

2b) Also I got a parking ticket here in the UK a couple of years ago. I paid it immediately so does that effectively cancel it or do I declare that as well? Also a couple of DART charges but my husband was driving my car at the time. All paid of course. I just want to be as transparent as possible as these things did happen but don't want to be unnecessarily scrutinised and possibly delay or jeopardise my application.

3) When we applied for FLR, the evidence of cohabitation just had to be spread evenly throughout the 2 years. We’re seeing now that it's from set months previous to the date of application? Where can we find exact info on this? We’re planning to apply in late January.

Welcome .

1) My husband's salary is above the required threshold and has had his job for over 6 months. I make under the threshold.
We understand that we just provide evidence of his income and not mine. So corroborating bank statements, payslips and employer letter?

Yes, that's right.

You provide:
- his payslips
- his bank statements
- letter from his employer
And it's also recommended to send:
- his job contract
- his latest P60

Do I just act like I don't work then? It seems a bit duplicitous to make it seem like I'm unemployed. This didn't come up previously for FLR where we had provided evidence of both of our incomes and both individually met the threshold.

Yes, you should pretend you don't work, because they only need to see 1 income... they don't care what your income is, or whether you work or not, as long as your husband's income meets the requirements.

It's not duplicitous, it's providing only the information they require and not complicating the application with unnecessary documents. So, you just enter his employment details and not yours.

The issue with providing both your employment details is that it means you also have to provide two sets of financial documents... for no reason at all, because they only need 1 set. It also means more chance of making mistakes with the documents... because both sets of documents have to meet the requirements exactly, which means more chance of the visa being refused because of a silly error in a document.

2a) Regarding previous parking tickets and speeding tickets - I got a speeding ticket in Illinois in probably 2013. I can't get the driving record to support that as my Illinois license has since expired. Instead I ordered a NY one as that was my last residence. It is basically blank so doesn't show that I had a speeding ticket that carried over. Do I declare the speeding ticket even though I can't remember exactly when I got it and have no evidence of it?

2b) Also I got a parking ticket here in the UK a couple of years ago. I paid it immediately so does that effectively cancel it or do I declare that as well? Also a couple of DART charges but my husband was driving my car at the time. All paid of course. I just want to be as transparent as possible as these things did happen but don't want to be unnecessarily scrutinised and possibly delay or jeopardise my application.

The old paper form says you do not need to declare speeding tickets or parking tickets, so if this is still the case for the online form, then you don't need to mention any of them.

3) When we applied for FLR, the evidence of cohabitation just had to be spread evenly throughout the 2 years. We’re seeing now that it's from set months previous to the date of application? Where can we find exact info on this? We’re planning to apply in late January.

There's no set specified months... the months you need to provide documents from are calculated based on them being evenly-spaced. So it's up to you to work out which months you must include, in order to make sure they are evenly spaced.

For FLR(M) this was every 4 months (6 documents divided evenly over 2 years), but for ILR, you must cover the last 2.5 years, so that means they must be spaced every 5 months (6 documents divided by 2.5 years).

If you are applying in late January 2021, your 5-monthly spacing will be:
July 2018
December 2018
May 2019
October 2019
March 2020
August 2020
January 2021

So, you will need 1 document in each name from each of the above months.

Thank you so much for your help. It definitely has put my mind at ease. I've been stressing about this for months so not long now until it's done.

If you are applying in late January 2021, your 5-monthly spacing will be:
July 2018
December 2018
May 2019
October 2019
March 2020
August 2020
January 2021

So, you will need 1 document in each name from each of the above months.

Hi it's me again.

Just accumulating the correspondence evidence and have this so far:

July 2018 - NatWest joint mortgage statement
December 2018- Council tax joint bill
May 2019- Lloyd's Bank joint statement
October 2019- HMRC tax statement (husband); GP letter (mine)
March 2020- Virgin Media letter (husband); HMRC tax statement (mine)
August 2020- Lloyd's Bank joint statement
January 2021-

Just double checking what we are meant to provide for January 2021 except recent bank statement showing income and employment letter? I thought we are meant to have just a total of 6 sets of documents. Sorry if I'm missing something.

Just double checking what we are meant to provide for January 2021 except recent bank statement showing income and employment letter? I thought we are meant to have just a total of 6 sets of documents. Sorry if I'm missing something.

You can provide any suitable document that you have received in the post in the month of January 2021.

If you need to, you can upload your latest bank statement (as long as it was received in the mail) to both the Finances and the Residence in the UK sections so that you are using it for both the financial requirement and the cohabitation requirement.

The requirement is 6 documents in each name, but the majority of people provide 7 documents, in order to cover the full 2.5 years (so July 2018 right up to Jan 2021, rather than July 2018 to August 2020).

Thanks for clarifying. Would it be okay to reuse a category like bank statement for January 2021 because we have used bank statement/document three times already?

Also we found it quite difficult to furnish documents for these specific months. Would it have been sufficient to use September 2020 instead of August 2020, for example?

Thanks for clarifying. Would it be okay to reuse a category like bank statement for January 2021 because we have used bank statement/document three times already?

You need at least 3 different sources in total, so as long as you have at least 2 other sources, you can reuse bank statements as many times as you need to.

For example, if all your documents are individually addressed, you might use:
- 1 council tax bill
- 1 water bill
- 10 bank statements

Or if they are all jointly addressed you might use:
- 1 council tax bill
- 1 water bill
- 4 bank statements

Also we found it quite difficult to furnish documents for these specific months. Would it have been sufficient to use September 2020 instead of August 2020, for example?

It depends on the spacing of your other documents. If you can list them all here, we can work out which months will work best.

Thanks so much, ksand24! I really appreciate you answering my questions, no matter how obtuse.

We have two large filing boxes of documents that I am reluctant to dive back into, so I am hoping what I listed above meets the requirements. Thanks again.