mpisol1

Hello,

I am currently living in Brazil (have been here since February), and will be moving to Portugal in December with my Brazilian wife.

We previously lived together in Portugal (she was on a student visa at the time), so I have a NIF, Certificado de Registo de Uniao Europeia, and PT bank account.

We are aware of all the documentation required for her to get a Cartao de Residencia, but after doing some reading online, there is a question mark over the marriage certificate required.

From what I have read, in some cases, they ask for a document saying the marriage has been attested or registered in the country of origin of the EU citizen (in this case me). However, after calling the embassy here in Sao Paulo, the UK don't issue such a document anymore.

My question is the following - can we use our Brazilian marriage certificate (we have the "complete" version, apostilled, issued only a few days ago), or do we have to get married in Portugal, or "register" our Brazilian marriage certificate in Portugal.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Max

BritInParis

You can’t legally married twice so that’s a non-starter and you haven’t been able to deposit your foreign marriage certificate in the UK for several years now. Someone else may be able to advise further.

Red Eric

There's a member on here who's British, married to a Brazilian and who went through this process a while back. Assuming the SEF always acts in a consistent manner, an apostilled certificate less than 6 months old and verified by the PT embassy in Brazil appears to fulfil their requirements.

See these posts :
SEF / impossible documents
SEF documents for (de-facto) partner of Brit

Hope that helps for the time being - I expect he'll be around sometime soon and will notice this thread and respond in person

Loafing Along

The British Consulate should be able to give you a "Sworn Affadavit" for a fee if you take along a certified translation of your certificate. this may be acceptable.
Alternatively dig deeper with the SEF here (https://www.sef.pt/pt/Pages/homepage.aspx ) . They coordinate all foreigner residence documentation. One thing you will need to take care about is the police certificate issued in Brasil for residence purposes here is only valid for 30 days so get it as close as possible to your date of departure and after having all other documentation clarified.

mpisol1

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the help.

I spoke today to both the British and Portuguese consulates in Sao Paulo.

The Portuguese consulate told me initially that I would have to get the transcription of our marriage from the British Consulate. I told them that they no longer do this, so they said that I need some sort of documentation proving that the marriage is legal in the UK.

The British Consulate said the best they can do is sign and stamp the Sworn Affidavit, a document written by me confirming my marital status. They also offer a signed and stamped letter saying that they don't validate/ recognize foreign marriage certificates anymore.

After calling the Portuguese consulate again to see if they would accept these two documents (affidavit and letter), they told me that they had misinformed me previously, and we will only need the apostilled Brazilian marriage certificate. Apparently, the transcription of the marriage certificate by the EU nationals consulate is only necessary for Portuguese nationals (although from what I have read online that doesn't seem to be the case).

As I am not entirely convinced by their answer I will be calling SEF directly to see what they say.

Naaling

Your apostilled Brazilian marriage certificate is all that SEF will require. You won't even need to have it translated into Portuguese! If you go over the 6 month validity you can get it recertified at the Brazilian Embassy in Lisbon.

I assume the Embassy is giving you the run around because you are applying for the free visa to bring your wife to Europe. I was in a similar situation in Bangkok. It would seem that it is standard prctice among all of the EU embassies to demand a document that they know you can't get..The intention is to discourage people who are acting on impulse or illegally.
You appear to have got past that, so you should not have any problems. I ended up having to pay 60 Euros for a normal tourist visa. When they started to process the application, it took them a whole 15 minutes to realise that we were genuinely married and that my wife was in fact entitled to a free visa.They immediately refunded the 60 Euros.

liveaboard

Get every document you can while you can. Paper is good, bureaucrats love paper, it's like food for them.
You feed them paper and they let you pass.