waiting for Partner Visa, please help

[pledda]

Hello All,

I am looking for some advice and hope to find it here.

I am a British citizen in a relationship with Canadian woman. She has been living with me in UK for a few years under working-holiday visa. Just before her visa expired in March, we applied for a Partners visa with the plan of getting married in September. Now, it has been more than 3 months and we are still waiting to find out weather she got the Partners Visa. We are getting worried because we intend to marry in September and time is getting short. Until we get our documents back (with Visa stamp), we can't go the the Registrar to give Notice of Marriage. The UKBA won't give us any information regarding progress so it could take many more months I guess...

Basically, we don't know what to do in order to get a visa asap. If we cancel the current application can we then re-apply for the one day premium service Partners Visa? I am worried that it's not possible since her old visa has now expired (in March) so if we cancel the current application she might have to leave the country.

The other option was for her to go back to Canada and apply for a Fiance Visa (with the express service which is quite quick).

any suggestions would be really appreciated?

many thanks
patrick

[Greenie]

If you withdraw the application she will become an overstayer and won't meet the rules for an in country spouse application. She can't apply for a fiance visa from France if she is not resident there. It would be unusual for it to take another 3 months for the application to be considered however she may not need her passport to get married if she has another document proving her nationality. Alternately you could request the passport back and state explicitly that you are not withdrawing the application and need the passport in order to give notice to marry.

[pledda]

Thanks for your reply.
Can you please clarify the following:
1) I didn't know you can request your documents back without cancelling the application. Is this possible? How would I do that?

2)If we get her passport back, will they let us marry since her old visa is expired? I assumed the Register office would need to see that she can stay in the country with a valid visa??

many thanks

[Greenie]

Yes you can request the passport back but make it clear why and state that she does not want to withdraw the application and do not intend to use the passport to travel.

A valid visa is not required to get married in the UK.

[pledda]

Many thanks! very helpful!

I assumed that you needed to be on a valid visa to give notice of marriage.

I'll call to see if we can give notice of marriage with other IDs instead of passports. I'd rather not interrupt the Visa process if possible!

Final question
What if we get the partner visa application declined? can she overstay (or leave and come back as a visitor) and still get married? It seems that as a visitor you can't get married but if we get the Marriage Granted can we marry anyway? And then apply for spouse visa?

sorry about all these questions!