simonb83

Hello everyone, first of all what an amazing forum!

I am putting together documents for a spouse visa application and the threads have been an invaluable resource, however, there are a few areas where I am still not 100% confident, and so I would appreciate any input people can give.

Some background: I am a British citizen, living in Mexico for the past 9 years. We have been married and living together for past 4 years, but together as a couple for whole 9 years.
We intend to satisfy the financial requirement via the savings route.

1. Applicant Birth Certificate – Does she need to include this? Some people seem to have it in their checklists whereas others don’t.

2. Proof of Relationship - We have not really had a long distance relationship as for the past 9 years we have lived either very close to each other, or together since we got married.

Currently I am planning on including photographs as well as some bills / credit card statements with us both at the same address.

How much do I need to worry about providing proof of communications either from before or after marriage?

3. Proof of Savings

My savings are held in an online HSBC account that only provides online bank statements every six months.
I am going to ask HSBC to send paper copies of statements for the past 6 months. They seem to be well prepared for visa application requests because they have this as an option for “reason for request” and state:

If you require the paper statement for a visa application you will also require additional information which we will send separately.

I assume this will be adequate to satisfy the proof of savings requirements?

Finally, what is the grace period between final date of bank statements and sending visa for processing?

For example if I request statements from HSBC on 1st December, and it takes 5 days for them to send it, plus additional time to have it couriered out to Mexico plus additional time to setup and go to biometrics appointment, at what point will the statements no longer be considered valid?

Thanks so much in advance!

spouse of scouse

Hi Simon, welcome to BE.

I (applicant) sent my birth certificate, can't recall if it was mandatory but the rule of thumb is if you make a statement that your application relies on (such as date of birth) then you should provide evidence of this.

Proof of relationship - your primary proof is your marriage certificate. Add a few 'official' letters/bills such as Council tax, utilities etc showing that you both live at the same address are good (can be in both names, or one/two for each of you showing the same address). A few photos is fine, don't overdo them though. A couple showing you socialising with friends/family and one of your wedding with other guests would be fine. A brief letter from each of you outlining the course of your relationship, ie 'we met in (location) on (date) etc. No need to provide further relationship evidence.

Yes, stamped and signed bank statements for the 6 months prior to making the application - from memory the last month of statements can be no more than 28 days prior to applying, eg if you had statements for July - December inclusive your wife would need to apply by 28 January in order to rely on this evidence - but other posters may be able to verify this. You'll also need to advise the Home Office as to the source of those savings, ie savings from work income, proceeds of sale of home etc. Can't recall if there's a place on the Appendix to write this, or if I added it to the application itself's Notes page.

Best of luck with it all, and I'm sure some more people will be along if anything I've written needs correcting/additional info - not UK people for a while though as it's 1am

simonb83

Thank you Spouse of Scouse.

RE birth certificate, if it might be helpful to include, then will definitely do that.

And as for the date for the savings evidence, I was finally able to find what I think is the relevant paragraph:

In this case, what counts as the date of application? In Mexico, I understand that we will need to take the documentation directly to the VSF center in Mexico City...so is the official date of application the date we hand over documents?

spouse of scouse

I think applications from Mexico are made online, in which case your application date is the date you hit the send button, not when you subsequently take your documents to VFS.

simonb83

Great. That's clear thanks.

Sorry to keep bothering, but as I go through some of the other documents a couple of other questions have come up.

1. For accommodation, we will live initially with parents and are going to provide invitation letter, property inspection report , title registry, council tax and utility bill(s).

Do the council tax and utility bills need to be originals?

2. For financial requirements, we will use savings I have been building up in Mexico. Here the complication is that at the beginning of this year, I got very nervous about the exchange rate and so moved a large amount of money to my UK savings account.

So on my application I am saying that we live together in Mexico, but the proof of savings will be addressed to me at a UK address (my parents).
Will this be a problem? Should I include an explanation of why this is in my letter stating source of funds?

3. After looking at what we have, I am not quite as happy as I'd like to be with the proof we have lived together for the past 4 years.
In Mexico, typically all utility bills are in property owners name, and we rent so we don't have any of those, and due to lack of need/forethought my wife never changed her Bank / mobile phone address from her parents house.

The main "official" things I have are Medical Insurance policies, where I am the policyholder and she is included (although it doesn't explicitly state her address).
Similarly, electronic credit card statements where her name appears on the statement, but I am the main account holder and again it doesn't make explicit her address.

Some options that we have for complementing this are:

• Signed letter from landlady confirming we live together
• Receipts from various electronic purchases she has made
• Flight itineraries for many trips we have taken together
• Numerous boring whatsapp conversations about domestic things relevant to living together

Do you have any thoughts on the best way to make a solid case, given the above?

Thanks

Vadio

You are married, so basically the 'proof' is that you are married (per marriage certificate) and were both in Mexico at the same address afterward. They won't care about flight itineraries, whatsapp conversations or receipts for purchases.

Do you file a tax return in Mexico? Does she get any mail from any government agency?

simonb83

Unfortunately not. Yes I file a tax return in Mexico, however that is just for me and my wife has never filed one.
We have searched through everything and cannot find anything official addressed to her here. The thing was that we live just a couple of streets away from her old house where her Mother lives, and so she never felt the need to update the few official documents that she has.

omario2016

Could you get the local authority to confirm in writing that she lives with you? You could get that officially translated and include in your application? and/or get the landlord to confirm it in writing?

simonb83

I don't think I could get a local authority to do anything...maybe the best we could do is get her national ID card officially updated with our current address...although that would only be valid from the current date.

I am getting my landlady to confirm in writing that we both live here.