Stepchild coming to the UK

[dazzle]

Hello everyone,

Can anyone give any opinions on this situation please.

I am British and I have a wife from Cameroon. We have been married for a little over 4 years and we have 2 children together. We've been living in the UK since December 2012 and my wife is on a spouse visa under the 'old rules'.

My wife has a child from a previous relationship, who is 10 years old. Since she was 5, she has been raised by her maternal grandparents in Cameroon. This is when my wife first left Cameroon.

The father of the child disappeared during pregnancy. He is not on the birth certificate and has not been seen since. My wife and I have been financially providing for her, by sending money to her grandmother through WU.

Now that we're settled in the UK, and the grandparents are soon retiring, we are starting to think about my step daughter coming to live with us. What are our options? Adoption? Child visa? Should we wait until my wife hopefully has ILR next year? I think there will be many routes for us to take, but if someone can point us in the right direction it would be great.. thanks

[vinny]

See also sole responsibility.

[dazzle]

Thank you Vinny. It seems a little more complicated than I thought. Having been through a spousal visa refusal, I know that plenty of evidence will be necessary. Particularly thanks for the reference to SET7.8 What is sole responsibility? I assume this would be applicable if I didn't first attempt to adopt the child as an inter-country adoption, where there would be many other hoops to jump through.
Do you think it would be wise to first apply for a visit visa for the child, so that we build up some recent history of physical contact? Then perhaps after a couple of visits we go for a settlement visa - and could this be done in-country?
We can show Western Union receipts that we have been supporting her. The father isn't on the birth certificate. We can show the age of the grandparents and get them to write letters stating that they are about to retire. Both have blood pressure problems. Grandmother has not been 100% well lately - they are just generally getting too old to look after her. Is there any other evidence you can think we might need? Getting official documents in Cameroon can take forever so it would be good to get started.
The reason she didn't come to Europe with us at the start, was because we've done a lot of moving between countries and it wouldn't have been fair on her. We decided to wait until we were settled.
Thanks

[josue]

dazzle We are in the same situation and reading many posts here ,I have no answer yet
My wife is british ,I am from cameroun and a son 10years still living in cameroun
I will appreciate any help