Question about proof of relationship

[sluvsj]

Hello. I'm a US citizen and my husband is an Italian citizen. We live together in the US but we want to move to the UK. I am going to apply for the EEA family permit and I have a question about how to prove that my husband and I have a legitimate marriage. We have been in a loving relationship for about 8 years and we just got married in February. We don't have any children. We have a marriage certificate, bank statements, but believe it or not we have only a few photos of us together. We have a photo from when we first started dating, a couple with friends, and a couple from our marriage. We don't have a facebook or any other kind of social media. What else can we use? Thank you for any help.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also changed my last name to my husband's on my ID and social security card if that would help.

[chaoclive]

Hello. I'm a US citizen and my husband is an Italian citizen. We live together in the US but we want to move to the UK. I am going to apply for the EEA family permit and I have a question about how to prove that my husband and I have a legitimate marriage. We have been in a loving relationship for about 8 years and we just got married in February. We don't have any children. We have a marriage certificate, bank statements, but believe it or not we have only a few photos of us together. We have a photo from when we first started dating, a couple with friends, and a couple from our marriage. We don't have a facebook or any other kind of social media. What else can we use? Thank you for any help.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also changed my last name to my husband's on my ID and social security card if that would help.

Why do you need this? It's not required if you're already married. We just added our original civil partnership cert (in your case it would be a marriage cert) with our documents. We didn't provide any pictures etc. for my civil partner's EEA FP application last June.

[sluvsj]

I was under the impression you needed to prove your marriage is not one of convenience. I read about other married couples getting their permit application denied because not enough proof was shown. Although If I only need a marriage certificate that would be great. Is this a recent change?

[chaoclive]

I was under the impression you needed to prove your marriage is not one of convenience. I read about other married couples getting their permit application denied because not enough proof was shown. Although If I only need a marriage certificate that would be great. Is this a recent change?

I don't think it was ever an actual requirement to provide proof of the relationship being genuine. You're right that they have rejected people based by saying that their relationship was not genuine. However, I think the reasons for his are deeper than just not providing enough evidence as all that is actually required is your marriage cert (according to the directive).

We only provided our CP cert in 2014 but other people may be able to provide more guidance.

[chaoclive]

I was under the impression you needed to prove your marriage is not one of convenience. I read about other married couples getting their permit application denied because not enough proof was shown. Although If I only need a marriage certificate that would be great. Is this a recent change?

See here: https://www.gov.uk/family-permit/docume ... st-provide
3. Documents you must provide
You must provide:
a valid passport
1 passport-sized colour photograph
evidence of your relationship to your EEA family member, eg marriage certificate, civil partnership certificate, birth certificate or proof that you’ve lived together for 2 years if unmarried
your family member’s valid passport or national identity card (or a certified copy if you can’t provide the original)
proof of your dependency if you’re dependent on your EEA family member

[sluvsj]

I was under the impression you needed to prove your marriage is not one of convenience. I read about other married couples getting their permit application denied because not enough proof was shown. Although If I only need a marriage certificate that would be great. Is this a recent change?

See here: https://www.gov.uk/family-permit/docume ... st-provide
3. Documents you must provide
You must provide:
a valid passport
1 passport-sized colour photograph
evidence of your relationship to your EEA family member, eg marriage certificate, civil partnership certificate, birth certificate or proof that you’ve lived together for 2 years if unmarried
your family member’s valid passport or national identity card (or a certified copy if you can’t provide the original)
proof of your dependency if you’re dependent on your EEA family member

I was also concerned because we recently got married and the FAQ in the sticky says:
"If you recently got married, you might want to add a letter or some evidence to show this is a genuine marriage and not one for immigration purposes."

We'll include a letter along with the above requirements just to be sure. Thank you for reassuring me.

[chaoclive]

[/quote]
I was also concerned because we recently got married and the FAQ in the sticky says:
"If you recently got married, you might want to add a letter or some evidence to show this is a genuine marriage and not one for immigration purposes."
We'll include a letter along with the above requirements just to be sure. Thank you for reassuring me.[/quote]

Definitely include a letter and, if you like, you could add one of your joint bank statements or something like that if you have it. That should prove that you have been together for quite a while. I don't think you have anything to worry about!

[sluvsj]

We have been using the same joint bank account for several years now so that won't be a problem for us.
I have been very nervous about it but I feel much more confident now. Thank you very much!

[DMY]

Hi There,
I had such experience when i was married in Spain 2010.I applied for entry permit visa after 10 days of Marriage and i was denied that my marriage was inconveniencing but i proved to the visa officer that my marriage was real not because of immigration issues because i hold my EEU residency in Spain.However I sent all the documents back the same day i got refused with letter to the visa officer that my marriage was abused and same time i included all greeting cards,letters from partner,flight ticket from UK to Spain and all pictures we took since we started the relationship with all our conversation via skype and text messages to proof to the visa officer.Anyway i got my visas after 4 days of this proof.To your case,i would advice you to get many evidences in anyway to convince the visa officer,such as family pictures,greeting card gifts, and so on. i hope that will help

Goodluck