Tier 2 General child to ILR dependent child

[tier2ilrdependent]

Hello All,
I need your expert guidance for my family's visa situation.

I am a tier 2 general visa holder currently eligible to apply for ILR under the 5 year rule.

I have my wife and 3 kids who are on my tier 2 dependent visa. My wife initially got her UK Tier 2 ICT(established staff) in Dec 2010 valid till Dec 2013 and traveled to UK in Jan 2011. She went back to India Aug 2013. Her visa expired and after that she and my 2 kids applied for visa from India on June 2014 and got this renewed last year in UK valid till Nov 2017. My youngest got her visa on March 2016 from India valid till Nov 2017. All the kids were born in India.

As far as I am aware, my wife cant apply for ILR as her ILR clock reset when she moved to my dependent visa in 2014 and she cant apply for her own ILR till she completes 5 years and I don't want her to switch to an ILR dependent visa which would reset her clock. So, she would need to apply in Nov 2017 for a 3 year extension of her Tier 2 dependent visa to get her through to Jun 2019 to be eligible for her ILR. Is my understanding correct?

Now, the confusing part for me is the best way to proceed with the visa application for my kids. Basically utimately my aim is to get citizenship for my kids and wife at the earliest. Also I am trying to save some money.

1) For the kids, I can follow the same path as my wife in applying for a tier 2 dependent visa extension on Nov 2017, then once my wife is eligible to apply for ILR, along with her application (at which point I should hopefully have British Citizenship), apply for the kids citizenship. I am not sure if I can apply directly for the kids citizenship at that point (me BC, wife ILR) or if I would have to first apply ILR for the kids and then after a year apply for citizenship.

2) I understand that I can't apply ILR for them currently because my wife wont be eligible for ILR till 2019. So I was thinking of doing an ILR dependent application for my kids along with my ILR application. And after a year apply for citizenship for myself and my kids. In this way I was hoping to avoid the Tier 2 extension (scheduled for 2017) helping me to save some money. Considering 3 kids it amounts to quite a bit of saving.

I needed your expert opinion on whether the 2nd option is a feasible one and is practical.
If so, then can you advise me what application I need to use for the kids dependent ILR application along with me.

Any help and guidance is much appreciated.
Many thanks in advance.

[CR001]

It's option 1, kids follow the same route as other parent.

Either all depends switch or stay on the route they are on.

Are any children UK born?

[tier2ilrdependent]

Thank you CR001.
None of the kids are born in UK.

If I go through option 1, when my wife is applying for ILR can my kids directly apply for citizenship considering that I would have (hopefully) got British Citizenship?

[CR001]

Thank you CR001.
None of the kids are born in UK.

If I go through option 1, when my wife is applying for ILR can my kids directly apply for citizenship considering that I would have (hopefully) got British Citizenship? No, children born abroad are expected to hold ILR before they can qualify for BC.