Unmarried partner visa questions

[alexlondon]

I am a British citizen who has been living with my non EEA girlfriend/partner for 2 years now. We want to apply for an unmarried partner's visa. Theoretically it should I think be a relatively simple case however I have a number of questions.

1 Neither of has been married before. How is one supposed to prove that, or is it OK if we just state that?

2 I own my own house and have repaid the mortgage. What evidence can I provide that this is the situation. (The deeds of the property are kept with the building society and I think they charge a couple of hundred pounds to retrieve them which I'd rather not pay if possible).

3 I don't have a job and live off my savings/investments. Will it be sufficient to demonstrate my financial independence to show my bank account statement which shows cionsistent balances over £100k ?

4. As a part qualified accountant she should find it very easy to get a job once she has the visa and associated work permit rights.

5 She moved in with me in July 2004 after completing a masters degree at University here. Since then she has been here on a student visa studying for her ACCA accountancy exams which she will shortly complete. However she was a bit slow in changing her police registration to my house. This was changed in Nov 2004 , before that the hard evidence that she was living with me in Croydon is a bit thin - She has a travel insurance letter dated August 2004 at my address, but becasue we weren't in the perhaps more typical situation of renting a property, we don't have joint tenancy agreements nor bills etc. We do have bank records of my providing her financial support/housekeeping money on a weekly basis from July 2004 onwards. In August -Spetember we went on holiday together to Spain She has passport stamps I have credit card records showing I was in Spain at the time, though don't have passport stamps of course given my British passport. We have plenty of photos of this and other holidays, though they are currently in digital form. From November 2004 onwards there is more evidence of her living at my address as she registered with the doctor, had her bank statements and mobile phone statements sent here etc. However its only when we started investigating the visa situation that we started getting joint bills etc.

Should we wait until Nov 2006 to make the application given the relatively thin evidence that she was living with me from July 2004 or would we be OK to make an appointmnet for September 2006? - The main disadvantage of waiting is that she is keen to start working and this would delay her getting a job for a couple of months.

6 For about 6 months in early 2005 I was travelling overseas whilst she was continuing her studies and living at my house. It would be possible to deduce this absence if you examined my passport carefully. Would it be normal for the visa people to examine a partners' passport in such detail or would they just be concerned to confirm that i am British citizen etc? If they did would this be a reason for denying her the visa?

7 We can get letters from freinds and family testifying to our relationship, are these worthwhile getting?

8 All our photos are in digital format. Is it worth ngetting some printed out? Should we think about taking them along on alaptop? How can we demonstate the date they were taken (This is information carried on the EXIF date file of the photo? Are photos important/worth bothering about?

9 Any advice as to other information we should put together or other tips.

Many thanks

Alex



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