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recognition of Chinese marriage in Spain

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donquixote
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recognition of Chinese marriage in Spain

Post by donquixote » Thu Jan 07, 2021 10:15 am

Hi All

Here's my sticky situation...

I am a British citizen. I met my wife in China in 2004, and we married in China in 2007 and we applied for a settlement visa for her not long afterwards, using a legalised (by a Chinese notary) translation of the marriage certificate.

She applied for and was granted British citizenship in 2010, applying for a visa for China shortly afterwards she effectively renounced Chinese citizenship.

Being a fully paid up citizen of nowhere, I talked my wife into moving to Spain last year in time to secure Withdrawal Agreement rights.

Our Spanish immigration lawyer advised us to apply individually in order to avoid complications of providing evidence of the marriage. We did that and were successful in our applications.

Now all that is done, I am wondering what we can do with the marriage situation. For tax purposes we need to declare marital status, and it may effect joint bank accounts (we already have one) and purchases of real estate, and our ability to establish a small family enterprise (autónomos colaboradores) seems to depend on it.

Our lawyer tells us there's no procedure in Spain that can fix this and the only solution is to go back to the issuing authority in China (because Spain requires a new/up-to-date certificate), then do legalisation things (China is not party to Hague, I think) in Beijing and maybe Madrid.

That's challenging not least because there's no guarantee the local (Inner Mongolian) office would recognise my wife as she has no valid Chinese ID, not to mention the travelling and cost involved. Perhaps we could use agents...?

We would like to find some other solution. We can easily prove nearly 20 years of relationship, and 13 years of marriage through photographs, joint bank accounts etc. We also have no objection to going through a wedding again, but it couldn't be in Spain since our lawyer tells us they won't marry us as we're already married and because it would require a recently issued copy of a birth certificate which would pose the same problem as the wedding certificate (but worse as we don't even have an old copy).

This issues is covered here but without resolution:

europe-immigration-forum/dual-british-i ... l#p1354191

Many thanks for any suggestions.

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