Spouse visa and with bursary as primary fund

[insearchofmeaning]

Hi all, any help would be greatly appreciated! If you can bare to look at the following wall of text it would be a great help.

In September I will be starting a School Direct placement which I had believed would net me £10,000 salary and £9,000 in non-taxable bursary funds. I had planned to marry my fiancee in America in July and wait the 6 months of initial employment (5.1.1) before we applied for a family/spouse visa. Unfortunately, I have been informed due to a gross error that I am only, in fact, recieving the £9,000 bursary. Frustrating!

Having looked for more information, I think I have figured out a way I could use the bursary as the primary net income for a visa application. Section 6.4.1 of the Financial Requirement application appendix suggests that the equivalent tax-free level of grant or stipend required to meet the financial requirement of sponsoring a spouse is £15,800, the equivalent of the usual £18,600. Furthermore (6.4.3), a tax-free grant or stipend can be combined with income on which tax has been paid and with current cash savings. The example given (6.4.4) states a bursary of £12,000 accompanied with earnings of £3,800 (post-tax) would satisfy the gross level of financial requirement.

So, if I were to keep my job that I was supposed to be quitting soon and earn £6,800 a year after tax (the equivalent of just under 20 hours per week), would this satisfy my financial requirement and, if so, would my continued employment (of over 6 months) be enough to warrant a spouse-visa application as long as the bursary was within 3 months of being paid out (6.5.1, g (i))? This would, I believe, negate the necessity for cash savings to be used at all (although I do have £10,000 untouched in my own account for longer than a 6 month period).

I will definitely be asking an immigration solicitor about this as soon as possible but any help would no doubt ease my mind.

Kind regards.