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My husband came into the UK with me from France on an EEA family permit and now has a 5 yr residence permit. We are separating after 2.5yrs in UK (3.5yrs married) and my understanding is that he could legally continue to live here on his current status provided we stay married and I continue to 'exercise my EEA treaty rights' by staying in the UK. The catch is that I am very keen to move back to Canada as soon as possible with our toddler. I have read that if a divorce is granted, he would qualify to apply for a Retained Right of Residence. I am therefore prepared to stay in the UK therefore until a divorce is finalised and he can apply for this.

My questions / fears are:
After divorce, do I need to remain in the UK while his new application with UKVI is being processed?
If he's rejected and I am still in the UK, can he then switch to using access to our child as a new route to staying? (there is currently no court order stating that access must take place in the UK)
If he's rejected and I've already left the UK, could I be made to return?

Basically, my goal is to get my son and myself to Canada asap to start a new life (with husband's permission letter of course) but also to keep husband happy and support his desire to remain in the UK as much as I can without risking that he will use our son as a means to stay here. He has never said that he wanted us to stay in the UK because he'd miss his son but has casually mentioned the access option as another means of his being able to stay here. I'm very worried that if the Retained Right of Residency isn't successful I may be forced to remain in the UK for access purposes just so that he could stay.

ANY SIMILAR EXPERIENCE OR ADVICE YOU CAN OFFER WOULD BE APPRECIATED!

Why do you fear ROR might fail? He will be able to retain his right after divorce.

Hi, that would be wonderful. He does appear to tick all the 'boxes' to qualify (and I'm very hopeful!) but our experience in the past is that they want you to jump through hoops to prove everything time and again with a different result each time. We got the EEA family permit in France and then applied for residence permit soon after arriving in UK, just for convenience as they advise, and then he received a rejection and request to leave the country letter. We applied again with new documents and he was finally approved after an unlawful delay.

He's now accepted a permanent job but my concern is that he has worked as self-employed for the past year. I'm worried they will use that against him if he hasn't done everything perfectly regarding his taxation and reporting. He's very private about his affairs and even though his English is so/so, has not involved me in this.

If his tax payment has not been up to scratch, that has nothing to do with his EEA status, and certainly not UKVI's job. There shouldn't be a problem with retention of rights application in this case, as it's a singh case, it should go pretty smooth without any troubles.