naomijmoore

Hi,

I am the main applicant on a gsm visa but my long tem boyfriend is also on the visa. We have been living together for over 3 years and have council tax bills etc. How much evidence is actually required though? Will council tax bills and a joint bank account suffice?

Thank you

naomijmoore

Hi,

if we have say 12 months of bank statements do we need to get each one certified?! It will cost us a fortune!

sooperlids

We had all our forms certified by our Bank Manager. It didn't cost anything. Hopefully you have an accommodating one too?

FionaandAndrew

if your bank statements are colour rather than black and white you can just scan them, no need to certify (I think), someone correct me if I'm wrong.

spilko

You don't need to certify bank statements, only birth certificates, passport pages etc.

Items used to show evidence of residence at a particular address or joint commitments can just be a photocopy (they dont even need to be colour).

spilko

You dont need to supply every statement, just show joint commitment for at least 12 months... i.e. one a year old and a current one would do fine.

naomijmoore

Thank you Spilko,

that has been very helpful and certainly does make more sense. I'm a little concerned that we have insufficient defacto evidence (council tax bills, joint bank account, joint membership) but I guess if the department has a real problem with this then they will contact us for further proof.

spilko

We felt the same, as we hadn't fully combined our accounts and all the house bills were in my name (as it is my house and all bills were paid by direct debit from my account). We had only very recently opened a joint account/credit card.

If you have had a joint account for 12 months, evidence of joint names on utility bills, joint memberships etc for 12 months then you will be fine.

We were asked for additional info and had to supply evidence that we both lived at the same address for at least 12 months. We therefore sent in individual bank statements, letters from the Inland Revenue etc to show that although we didn't have many joint commitments, we were recognised as living at the same house by various "bodies" for a period greater than 12 months. That might be worth considering.

We got our visa very shortly after we submitted the additional info..

Steve

naomijmoore

Great stuff - thanks very much! Your situation does (did) seem very similar to ours (it is my OH house and most bills in his name). We do have the council tax and joint bank account though so hopefully should be ok.

You got any other areas of immigration expertise!?

spilko

Not sure if getting through it once qualifies me as an expert

I just tried to make it very clear exactly what our situation was and why the evidence provided showed that we met the criteria. Also made sure everything was structured well and all evidence was clearly indexed and labelled.

Good luck.

naomijmoore

So,

I think I am right in saying that my OH and I will need to write piece each on the details of our relationship - when/how we met and details of our life since. Am I right?

Thank you!

spilko

Yes definitely.. Each of you needs to write a personal statement.

sooperlids

Our agent told us a joint statement was fine, so long as it was signed & dated by both of us.

Chris N Lora

Does anybody have advise on the above subject.

Question 1 form 10 .... when we submitted our Online Visa Application on Saturday it asked us to download a PDF form 10 and complete the form and send it to the APC along with Defacto evidence.
When we tried the link there was nothing to fill out just info on what you could use as evidence.

We uploaded colour copies of phone bills, council tax, home insurance and our Kids birth certs etc onto the site ..... Do you need to send certified copies within 28 days? or has anyone uploaded the evidence online and been successful with their Visa?

Any advice would be appreciated

nevsy

Provide as much evidence as you can ie. a couple of bank statments, concil tax tv licence, utility bills a couple for each year is more than enough.They mainly just want the last 12mths but if you can prove longer all the better.

Nevsy