al150n

I'm re-married with 2 children with my new husband & we have applied for 136 skilled indepenent visa for just our immediate family (the 4 of us). I also have 3 older children who live with the father who we are not applying for.

We received a letter from the Department of Immigration asking us to undertake health & character checks & it is listed for just the 4 of us. Our agent has now informed us that we will need to get medicals done for my older 3 after saying last week we didn't have to. On one of the last pages of the letter it says You & all members of your family unit, regardless of whether or not they are migrating with you, must undergo a medical (clinical) examination. Now we read this as our family unit being those living under our roof but does that include my older 3 even though they don't live with us?

We are quite concerned about this as although I have contact with my kids once a fortnight I'm not on speaking terms with my ex after an extremely messy divorce & there is no way he would allow them to have the medicals done & even if we could manage to get them done behind his back there is no way on this earth he'd let me even look at, let alone lend me their passports to take to the medicals.

Has anyone else had to get medicals done for children that don't live with them & who they are not applying for? Do we actually have to have medicals done for them? Will it cause problems with our application?

I think hubby is going to try ringing Immigration tonight & speak to them directly about it. Obviously we are rather concerned as this could bring our application to a complete stand still.

Thanks for any advice!

Alison

Australia_bound?

Hi Alison is a few threads already on this issue. Think you need some legal statement drawn up to resolve this. Good luck

NikiL

The general consensus seems to be that if you have parental responsibility for them, then it will be expected that you must have the medicals done. There is some debate as to whether or not you needs xrays for the over 11s, welshtony gave me some fantastic guidance that indicates strongly that you don't, however we took the wimps way out after hearing a fair few who were told by the CO they required them & decided to get them done just in case.

In our case we have my OH's youngest who isn't getting a medical, and we have a stat dec from her mother refusing consent for the medical due to a court order allowing indirect contact only.

I suspect the majority of advice will be to get them done when you have contact. The xrays, if you need to get them done will be a different issue. We have an absolute nightmare finding anyone who would allow us to get the eldest xrayed without a passport - we found one but they cost the earth! So we're now waiting (post medicals) for a replacement passport as she lost the original, to then get her xray done & we can finally get the meds on there way to LCU. One way around it could be a citizen card if they're old enough as they generally want photo ID - one place told us to bring the 14 year olds driving licence as that would be acceptable but you may have the same problem there as it requires a utility bill from him as proof of their address & he would need to sign it.

Best of luck, don't envy you this one.
Niki

vlooi

As I understand it, all children under 18 must have medicals whether they are migrating or not as you will be next of kin should their father dies.

I so understand your concerns and frustrations; my husband has to travel overseas and thousands of miles to another country in the coming weeks to take his child (15 years old) for a medical as his mom does not want to cooperate.:curse:Then we also hope to have the visa is granted before he turns 16 as that will imply a police clearance as well...Can be another airticket and ££££!

Good luck! You have my sympathy!

al150n

Thanks for the replies!

I've just spent the last few hours trolling through threads on here & hubby is now emailing our agent. I only have contact every other Saturday & that is a bit hit & miss depending on whether my ex feels I should see my kids or not. My ex was physically, mentally & verbally violent towards me throughtout my marraige & divorce & it still carries on, he even threatened me & damaged my car while I was pregnant with my daughter when I dropped my kids off on one occaion. When I collect my kids I don't get out of the car & wait for them to come out. If I need to let him know about a day I can't make or something then I have to tell my kids. There is no way I can approach him for either medicals or a stat dec so hubby is emailing our agent to find out if I can take evidence of my ex's behaviour to a solicitor (or use my divorce solicitor who has all the records) & do a stat dec myself saying that I can not get them done because of his behaviour towards me.

Alison

JAJ

This issue is discussed in the wiki article:
http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Medica...ating_Children

Katsmajics other half !!!

i drew up a stat dec for my son from previous relationship who did not have meds done.

He was on the application but we did not do his meds DIAC asked for more info so i went to solicitiors and got a stat dec sorted for £5, we emailed it across to them on the Thursday and the following Monday we had our VISA.

Good luck.

PM me if you want more info

al150n

Thanks guys.

Hubby emailed our agent last night & she has replied this morning asking if it's ok to forward our email to our CO. I'm going to ring the court today & see if I can get copies of all of the various court orders & ring the police station to see if I can get details from them of all the incidents that were reported with regards to the assaults/harassment. We moved house in May & figured we didn't need all my divorce paperwork anymore & shredded the lot other than the most recently/relevant court order as we didn't think we'd need to again so I'll also have to get back in contact with my hopeless solicitors to get copies of some of the stuff.

Alison

al150n

Well I spoke to my ex husband this evening, first time we have spoken in years & he was fine about my kids having the medicals done!!! & happy for me to have their passports for it!!! I now need to ring the medical place tomorrow & see if it's possible for us all to go on the 4th Jan as it now means there will be 7 of us I also need to write a letter to the kids school as it is the day after the younger 2 go back & they will need to leave early but my ex says he'll ok it if the school ask him.

I did speak to my kids before I spoke to him to let them know about the application as we hadn't said anything to them so far & that we may be moving to the otherside of the world & not one of them seemed at all bothered about Mummy moving so far away

On another note I rang my old solicitors yesterday to ask for my file & they rang back today to say it's been destroyed even though the last time I went to court was less than 3 years ago :curse: I've checked with the law society & they are meant to keep records for 6 years although most keep them for about 10 years so I know have to go through the complaints procedure in the hope that they simply couldn't be bothered to look hard enough & they do actually still have it but also because of the hassle & stress it has caused trying to track down information over the last few days :curse:

Alison

Katsmajics other half !!!

Blimey out of the two ppl you thought you would have probs with it turned out to be your solicitor.......i reckon they just couldnt be arsed to look for it.

You want to tell them your going to take it further and see what they do.

Good news about your ex tho.

al150n

Spoke to my ex last night & apparently he's been looking in to it & can't see any reason why the kids need to have medicals if we're not applying for them. He now wants proof of it, fair enough I guess but not sure he'll accept it. Does he honestly think we'd be paying out an extra 500 odd quid for their medicals just for the sake of it??? Also he doesn't know anything about what goes on in our lives so would I really ring him to inform him of our plans? I never told him I was pregnant with my younger 2, didn't tell him I was getting married again, certainly wouldn't have informed him about our application if we could have helped it. Oh well nothing we didn't expect, thought the first phone call was all to easy

Oh & as for the flammin solicitors :curse: I complained to the Law Society who told me how to put in a complaint & amazingly my file reappeared!!!

Alison

vlooi

Good luck, this is going to be an uphill road...Remember about the statuatory declaration which might be an option if all else fails. What about referring him to the DIAC website or print him soom proof. But as we all know who are dealing with difficult exes, it is many times just a power thing and not about the issue at all

al150n

I've printed a copy of the letter from the hospital where we're having the medicals done & hubby is going to print copies of the emails from our agent requesting them. We're also going to print off copies of the info from the immigration board & highlight the relevant bits. We've already got a solicitor to draw up a letter to send to him & a stat dec just in case & we've finally got all my divorce paperwork from my old solicitor to back up how he can be.

If I know him he's mentioned it to a friend who has little or no idea about what's involved & hasn't actually looked in to it. I've known him for long enough to know that he gets a snippet of information that's not necessarily correct & will give you the impression he's a bleedin expert on the subject. You should have heard all the advice he gave us last week about the immigration process as a friend of a friend has done it & he's looked at emigrating to Oz as well

Alison

vlooi

Seems that you've done your homework anyway!

Hopefully you do not have to deal with Mr. Know-it-all for to long anymore!

al150n

After such a messy divorce we weren't expecting a smooth ride of it. You should see the size of the pile of divorce paperwork we may have to send to Oz

Alison