TimNiceBut

The good news is that the medical and interview time is almost upon us (well, me), but things look a little shaky from an I-864 perspective as my wife (the sponsoring USC) is currently out of work. Getting her parents to co-sponsor me is out of the question for various reasons and shouldn't really be necessary as I should have enough assets to make up for her lack of income at the moment. "Should" being the keyword here.

As has been mentioned here multiple times, the requirement re the assets is that they can be turned into cash within 12 months time, correct? I know that London isn't keen on including property, which is understandable and as I don't have much equity in my house this isn't a big deal.

However, I am a bit of a classic car and classic motorbike buff and do have a quite a lot of money tied up in a few vehicles (one that'll stay here for use in Europe and a few motorbikes that will be containered up and shipped to the US once we're settled). According to our lawyers, vehicles are not counted as assets for I-864 purposes which surprises me a little and I can't find any comments or clarifications regarding this anywhere. These aren't vehicles that I need in order to get to work, they're 'collectibles' for want of a better word and thus I could sell them within the 12 month timeframe without any issue and/or taking too much of a hit in the value of the car(s).

It's a bit of a catch-22 for me inasmuch as I'm prepared to sell these vehicles if the need arises but I somehow don't see the point in selling them to put the cash in the bank where it earns little more than 0% if my toys appreciate at the same rate...

Between that and the money I left as a cushion in my consulting company we'd be comfortably over the threshold but it'll be a little tight if the two- and four-wheeled "savings" cannot be taken into account.

Does anybody have any experience with having collectibles of sorts taken into account for the I-864 purposes?

ian-mstm

I don't... but I'm thinking that a letter from your insurance company might be useful - something that states their current value. They are insured, right?

Ian

avanutria

I don't have any experience with this, but it seems to me that cars/bikes would fall under the same category as property...they only have a value if there is a buyer willing to pay that value, and there is no guarantee that you will be able to find a buyer willing to buy them, especially in this market.

Do you have any good friends who would be willing to buy your cars/bikes so you can present the money as assets, and then you could buy them back again after the visa is approved? I've no idea if this is legal or not; probably on the dodgy end of things.

TimNiceBut

They are indeed insured and except for one not-quite-classic one, they're all on classic policies that state the insured value of the cars and bikes. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll bring the registration certificates and insurance documents to the interview .

I don't think that selling them should be too much of a problem, the two cars that make up a large part of the value of the assets are both rather sought after so I'm quite sure that they'd sell within a reasonable timeframe. Especially because for once, I bought them on condition and not on price...

The reason I'm trying to point out that they are collector/hobby vehicles is because that particular market actually hasn't suffered as much as the regular car market, partially for the reasons I mentioned (you don't get anything from the bank for your deposit so people are less reluctant to buy the car they had one their wall in poster form in the 70s or 80s) and also because these cars tend to be bought as a 'want' and not because you need to get to work on Monday morning.

Well, I'm trying to avoid this, simply because it does seem dodgy (even it was legal) and I've also freshly run out of solvent enough friends...

Noorah101

Do you have a Plan B in case the ConOff does not accept the vehicles as an asset?

Rene

TimNiceBut

Plan B - which is also part of plan A - is to get a letter from my accountant to confirm how much money I'd receive from winding up my consulting company at the end of March when my current contract ends. That should already be in the ballpark required.

Plan C would be to sell the two most valuable cars (or at least one, depending on the outcome of plan B) which together with the money from plan B should lift me over the $54k requirement unless the pound tanks completely in relation to the dollar. If that happens all bets are off anyway.

All of the above is a worst-case scenario but one that I need to keep in mind as my wife's job search isn't going to well at the moment.

jeffreyhy

TNB,

Actually, the I-864 instructions do specifically address vehicles as assets. Check it out, with the caveat that those are CIS instructions.

9 FAM 40.41 Notes, N5.6, tells consular officers how they are supposed to treat assets. How the consular officers in London apply those guidelines I couldn't say, perhaps your lawyers do based on experience.

I tend to agree with avanutria about what establishes the value of your vehicles (and a lot of other types of non-cash assets), and disagree with Ian that the insured value is much of a guide.

Regards, JEff

TimNiceBut

Thanks Jeff, I assume you are referring to this sentence: "You may not include an automobile unless you show that you own at least one working automobile that you have not included."

I was aware of that and yes, the vehicles I am referring to are distinct from and do not include the two "get me to work" vehicles.

That might well be the case - I had a look at the notes and I guess it's down to "wait and see". My lawyers seem to be fairly familiar with the way the consular offices work in London, however I also like to do my own research at the same time.

I wasn't disagreeing with her per se and I understand that the agreed (replacement) value does only serve as an indication of the vehicles value; OTOH I'm not too keen on getting several of them appraised professionally if I don't know if they'll be accepted as a convertible asset in the first place.

Bob

Not that I've got any answers...curious minds and all that, you wouldn't mind saying what the motors are?

If you'd rather not, that's fine too

BritishGuy36

Tim - I'm not sure that any of your 'plans' will be acceptable to satisfy the financial requirement of the I-864, although I'm no expert on the matter of course.

But ask yourself: If USCIS London no longer accept house equity (since the market collapsed), will they also accept supposed equity in 'luxury items' such as collectible vehicles? If you move to the USA, won't you be selling them anyway? So why not sell them now?

The letter from your accountant might be your best weapon here. Just to confirm that the 'ballpark' figure you have in mind is £33,000, correct? If your accountant's letter plus cash in the bank that you can show on statements surpasses that figure, you'd likely be ok.

Noorah101

Keep in mind that the assets have to equal 3x the amount you would have needed in income.

So figure the total you would have needed in income. Subtract the amount of cash you have in the bank. Multiply the remainder by 3, and that's how much you'll need to sell the vehicles for.

Rene

BritishGuy36

That seems like a cryptic way of saying:

Noorah101

LOL...maybe. I didn't do the math.

TimNiceBut

Nah, I don't have a problem mentioning what they are, I just didn't want to do the "look at me" thing...

The cars in question are a 1988 Porsche 911 Targa, a 1996 Lotus Elise (one of the first 50 sold to the public) and a 1990 Lancia Delta Integrale. The bikes are a 1974 Laverda SF2, a 1976 Moto Morini 3 1/2 Sport and a 1968 Moto Morini Corsaro Super Sport which is one of less than 100 made and one of three that I'm aware of worldwide - not that this makes it valuable but I like the idea of preserving something that rare.

Well, one of the reasons of asking the question was to get someone else's point of view on these things and maybe some comments based on recent experience . All of can be blind (and often are) to certain issues within our own situation so an opinion or three from a disinterested third party can often help.

I wasn't going to sell the bikes as they're old enough to be easily imported and registered in the US, plus I spent quite a lot of time and money to restore them as "keepers". As I mentioned, the issue with the cars is a bit of a catch-22 situation - if the value of the cars and the money in my company is acceptable to USCIS London then we're fine and I could sell at least some of them, if they're not acceptable then there are additional issues regarding the money (see below) and I'll most likely be stuck here in the UK for at least another year to save up the additional money needed if my wife doesn't find another job in the meantime. The job hunt doesn't look too good as she worked for a four-letter government agency and pretty much everybody else considers her overqualified because of it. Hence, no job, although I understand that the people she worked for are trying to get more funding to hire her back. That can take a couple of years though, judging by past experience. If it looks like I'm stuck in the UK longer than expected I might as well keep my toys a little longer instead of embarking on a hurried fire sale.

There is also the consideration that for the first year or two I expect to travel back and forth a lot between the US and the UK so keeping at least the 911 for journeys around the UK and the continent would be useful.

Yes, the figure I have in mind is the GBP33000 you mention. The reason for the letter from my accountant is mainly to confirm the special tax treatment of the money in my company as I'd be shutting down my company and taking the money out when I dissolve the company. This gets me a lot more favourable tax treatment than just taking the money out of the company now. If they accept that, we should be almost in the clear as that's about 30k right there after tax and that's likely to go above the 33k by the end of March. The three cars listed above alone are worth 20k-25k in the current market so we should be comfortably over the 33k threshold. The problem with the whole thing is that if they don't accept the information from my accountant and/or the value of the vehicles then we're a bit up the smelly brown creek without the paddle - if I have to continue working here in the UK past April, we can't make use of the favourable tax treatment and the tax on the money taken out of the company suddenly doubles, which would put us below the 33k again.

jeffreyhy

TNB,

Speaking of tax treatment, keep in mind that you'll likely be becoming a US tax payer for 2010. Find out how that works and the possible consequences of it.

Regards, JEff