When uploading documents to the VCAS website, the following categories are offered in which to present 'Optional documents'. (This title is confusing, since the documents don't appear to be optional, but I'll ignore that.)
- Proof of Identity / Travel History
A lot of the headings don't seem meaningful, but I assume that's because the same generic form is used for other visas besides the spousal visa. (When we submitted the fiancée visa it was through the American website which was much more intuitive.) But I'm particularly confused by:
- Should the evidence of the sponsor having sufficient savings/income to support the applicant be uploaded under 'finances', or 'sponsors'?
- Where should our relationship history go? 'Life Events'? 'Status'? 'Other'? (And how much is relationship history really needed for extending a fiancée visa into a spousal visa - would the fact that we were granted a fiancée visa, our relationship was satisfactory to the immigration officer such a short time ago, and we've got married since, be evidence enough, or is it worth repeating a bunch of it?)
Also the form required us to say (indeed, wouldn't let us progress unless we ticked the box, even when the words said that is was optional) that we would provide evidence of:
Items of correspondence addressed to [applicant] and [sponsor] at the same address as evidence you have been living together since your last grant of leave in this category, or from the date you first started living together, covering the last 2 years
Letter signed by the owner of the property you live in stating that you have permission to live there
You only need to provide this evidence if:
you are exempt from meeting the income threshold
you are responsible for some housing costs such as rent, mortgage or council tax
Neither of these things really make sense for it to demand, firstly since we've only been together a few months on our fiancée visa and not having a BRP she hasn't really been able to get a bank account or any of the other kind of postal evidence that would satisfy them, even if they didn't want it for 2 years when we've only been together for 5 months. The second one practically says outright that we don't need this evidence since we're meeting the income threshold and still living with my parents, but still required us to tick a box saying we would provide this evidence before we were allowed to proceed through the form. I'm willing to assume these are both just artefacts of a badly made website, but I would appreciate any extra reassurance about them! (The latter is easy to provide a signed letter of, it's the fact that they then require "
Proof of property ownership from the owner of the property you live in, such as a mortgage statement" which would be more tricky, since the house is no longer mortgaged but apparently the deeds are looked after by a bank somewhere.)
