GemmaLouiseWilliams23

Hello all,

I am a British Citizen, my husband is Canadian, we have two young children who have dual citizenship. We are planning to move back to the UK and are trying to meet the requirements for the spouse visa for my husband. I am a stay at home Mum, so meeting the minimum financial requirement through work is going to be tough. I am in the middle of my college certificate which has been canceled indefinitely due to Covid 19, and after being a stay at home Mum in Canada for the past 5 years that we have lived here, I have no Canadian based job experience. I have been applying for jobs for the past few months with no luck.

We are hoping to get home using our savings and assets to meet the £62,500 savings requirement. We have savings, are going to be selling our house etc. which would still put us below the minimum £62,500.

My question is we have my husband's retirement savings through his current job, this puts us over the financial requirement, but it is a defined benefit not an RRSP.

Does anybody have experience with this or can confirm that we would be able to use this to get my husband's visa via the savings route?

Thanks so much,
Gemma

SanDiegogirl

You can use pension's money when you are receiving the pension i.e it is regular income, not when it is still in the fund.

You could liquidate the pension and use the cash as savings.

GemmaLouiseWilliams23

Thank you SanDiegogirl for your reply.
I have looked into liquidating my defined pension and it looks like I will be given LIRA (locked-in Retirement Account) for the value. From my understanding I can not access these funds unless I turn 55 or I become a non-resident of Canada.

Does anyone know if a LIRA will be acceptable for the savings requirement?

Can you become a non resident before you leave Canada or how does this happen?

SanDiegogirl

Unless this LIRA account is a 'cash account' - immediately available

According to the info below the funds cannot be cashed out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked...rement_account