silvertown

Hi, I am new here and am very glad to have found this resource. I am still working my way through current threads to find out what I can, but I have some specific questions in the meantime:

1. Has anyone used visa advisors, such as ukmarriagevisa.com? I came across them while looking for someone who could help translate the ukba website into layman english, I am having trouble understanding even which visa I need to get for my wife. I just wondered if anyone has good or bad experience with advisors, rough costs, etc. I'd rather work this out myself but the process is very confusing.

2. My wife was previously granted spousal extension of stay, which would have converted to permanent residency had we remained for two years but my work took us abroad, where we have been since and the rules seem to have changed drastically since then. Back in 2004, we were told that had we been married for four years we wouldn't have even had to wait the 2 years (we had been married 3.5, so just missed out). Is there any similar 'exception' these days or do we need to go through another x years of residency to get the stay? I would hope 12.5 years of marriage and two kids is proof of a serious relationship...irony is that my wife had more rights in UK before I married her, since she was on a student visa there (we met and married there but my work took us abroad)

3. The visa website seems to cater for 2 main categories - foreign partners who are in the uk and want to convert to settlement status, or foreign partners that want to join a settled person already in the uk. What about the case where a couple are abroad and want to return together? - I cannot find this at all on the website

Anyone in similar case to 3 know which route we need to take?

Thanks in advance...

As a P.S. I am optimistically aiming to utilise the priority service and get this sorted out by May - am I being ridiculously over optimistic?

englishguygoinghome

Yes, the rules have changed a lot since July 2012. The 4-year ruling and the overall concept of ILE has gone completely.
The priniple still holds that you can add "or is a British Citizen returning to the UK to settle" to any mention of a "settled person". (and see this post for my view on the information on the UKBA webstie and how much you can trust it to be complete: http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...4#post11166214)
Take a look at the BE-wiki in my signature and go through all the requirements, if you can tick all the boxes (finances, language requirement, accomodation plans upon arrival) then you should be able to apply yourself, if not then no advisor will change that

silvertown

I really appreciate this. Your points were so much easier to follow. This whole 'treat every case the same' is very frustrating. I got as far the first paragraph and the point of needing to be employed in the UK and realised this is a dead end for us. We had hoped to go back and settle into a specific area and start our own business. I have enough savings to last 10 years but this seems to not matter. I can take our boys back but their mum can only visit 90 days at a time - its, quite simply, wrong...

Very frustrated...

englishguygoinghome

Keep reading...
There is a savings route: if the kids are all British Citizens then you need to show 62,500GBP in cash in an accessible bank account and prove that you've had the money (in one form or another) for the past 6 months.