Flrm Unmarried Partner Query

[larry75]

Hi, I am a british citizen and my girlfriend is from New Zealand. She is currently here on a tier 5 youth mobility visa and we are in the process of applying for her FLRm unmarried partner visa. I just have a couple of queries regarding our application and would greatly appreciate it if anyone here had any advice or similar experiences they could share.

My main query is regarding Maintenance requirements. I went self-employed in october of last year and don't really have any proof of my income apart from bank statements that show money going into my account. is this enough? As i went self-employed so late in the tax year i have not been required to do a tax return yet and therefore have no official documents proving my income. My partner can prove that she is earning around 15000 pounds a year and we have around 4500 in our personal and joint bank accounts. will this be sufficient proof of maintenance funds? The only other thing i can think of doing is to provide copies of all of my invoices but not sure if its worth doing.

Other than the maintenance issue, I am fairly confident that we meet all the other requirements, we have a lot of proof of joint addresses for the last 2 and a half years plus lots of photos, and some letters from friends and families. We're probably going a bit overboard with all the documents we will be sending and this is where my next query lies, How do we present it all? This is probably a stupid question but do i just pile all the documents together and send them in an envelope or should i buy a binder and organise everything into separate plastic sleeves or what? I appreciate that this is probably a really dumb question but i just want to get the application perfect before i send it off, Thanks.

[anniecc]

Re how to present the evidence, when I applied I divided the evidence into sections (proof of address, proof of income, proof of relationship) and put each in a separate plastic sleeve, with an explanatory post-it note on the front. This sort of thing is not required and I don't know whether it makes any difference to your application, but UKBA seem to make mistakes a lot and I figure it can't hurt to make things easy for them.

On maintenance, you could provide a cover letter explaining why you are unable to provide proof of income, other than your bank account statements. I would also consider providing copies of at least some of the invoices, particularly if these can be matched with payments going into your bank account.