Unmarried partner visa

I’m about to start the process of getting a visa for my OH to live in the UK with me. We have been in a ‘marriage like relationship’ (yes, that is the definition…) for 2 years so can apply under the new rules. So we’re now trying to pool together all our evidence.

Has anyone been through this process before? Any dos or don’ts in hot to apply for this? I’m keen not to get rejected due to an error in application so any advice is appreciated.

I almost got a green card before splitting up with my ex.

I’d suggest being prepared for it to take absolutely ages.

Hope it goes well

Dated photos work wonders to establish relationship longevity. That’s easier with a phone and social media post. Son2 has a Russian girlfriend who is here on a postgraduate student visa. And we’ve looked into visas.  I think is just a case of establishing relationship credibility. They’ve seen everything and will know all the pitfalls and tricks.

As per Tired,  records of joint activity are key (Ive done this twice, once to get my missus into the UK and once to get me into the USA)  And keep hold of everything, bank statements, bills, council tax, invoices etc (preferably with joint names on them) when we went for renewals they seemed to have different criteria of evidence and time frame each time! Good luck.

Do you have a joint bank account? Do you live together, and have you for 2 years? Do you have any shared bills?

When I got married, we looked into all these things and we just didn’t have enough proof to meet the criteria (we’d been together for 5 years as students, but only spent 1 year living together with joint bank accounts and that just wasn’t enough to meet the burden of proof). It’s only got harder since then.

We submitted a big dossier just for our marriage visas – joint bank statements, proofs of address, all sorts.

Feel free to get in touch with me  about it if you like – we did ours right at the start of Theresa May’s and it was absolutely awful. Good luck.

*Theresa May’s hostile environment policy

Theresa May’s hostile environment caused one of my best work colleagues ever to just up and leave.

Good luck OP.

It’s all a bit skewed to favour the rich. If you have a big salary and have the money to pay for a face to face visa application it should all be relatively straightforward. Yes you need evidence that it’s a genuine relationship. My advice would be pay extra for the in person application and take lots of evidence with you to your appointment. If you go for the postal application be prepared for a long wait for a response.

If you want an in person appointment, you’re likely going to have to pay over the odds for it. The appointments go live at midnight each night and just get snapped up in seconds. You can sometimes get them through a solicitor if you pay more but obviously, proceed with caution.

Thanks everyone for the advice. We spoke with a solicitor today and they said it sounded viable, but recommended applying with them to make sure the evidence was best presented. This was IAS, I’ve done some reading online and there’s a lot of bad words said about them.

We have been in a relationship for two years, mostly apart but with lots of extended visits. So plenty of plane tickets!

Do you have a joint bank account? Do you live together, and have you for 2 years? Do you have any shared bills?

no joint finances. We moved into an annex a couple of months ago so we had somewhere to be. That’s our only cohabitation (apart from extended visits) but all the bills etc are included so we don’t have those.

they loosened the requirement to have had to have lived together, that’s the only positive, if there’s a work or religious reason. Work should be good enough for us, but we would need to back up the relationship and cohabitation side lots.

Any thoughts? Any solicitor recommendations or is it best to try direct?

Lolz, we couldn’t meet the living together requirement so we got married! And then had the stress of the visa application. But my husband applied for it from outside the UK, and did it all himself – just had a sponsorship letter from me and a bunch of financial statements. But, he is an attorney so is used to doing that sort of methodical paperwork.

Things we noticed: the NHS payment bit is a total PITA. You get about 2/3 of the way into the visa application and then you have to go to a separate site and pay for the NHS, which gives you a code to put into the visa application so you can continue it. Except the NHS thing is buggy AF and doesn’t always work. If it rejects your payment 5 times, you have to start the entire visa application again. It rejected our payment 5 times, and forums suggest this is not unusual. So probably take screen shots of everything you do so you can refer back to the info if you lose it.

If you have to print out or copy any info for an identity confirmation meeting or whatever, make sure you have a nice fresh printer cartridge. They get funny about pale copies.

Make sure you make everything match exactly, everywhere. Use your middle name consistently, don’t use it in one place and not another. They got iffy with us about that too!

In the end, it got approved first time. But I know of people whose partners were coming from other countries who had a lot more trouble.

Good luck!