Common-law outland application

[Jasonabram92]

Hey everyone, been trawling these forums for the last few days as I have been filling out my (primary applicant) application. Myself and my partner have been together for around 2 years 4 months. I have ran out of working visas to Canada so have been coming for the full amount of visitors visas pretty much. I am from the UK and she is obviously from Canada.

We were living with each other for around 8 months in Canada, then we went travelling for 3 months together and then back together again in Canada now (as of May 22nd). We also lived together previous for around 3 months, but I had to return to the UK due to running out of time and money.

My question is pretty much, which boxes should I be ticking? Are we living together? Yes, but I obviously cannot provide it has been continuous for 12 months prior. If I answer No, I also cannot provide documentation of 12 months continually living together. So what should I/we do?

I heard filling out documents as conjugal relationship very rarely work out that well.

Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you everyone

Jason

 

[spousalsponsee]

As a UK/Canadian couple, you certainly can't file conjugal, because there are no legal or immigration barriers to you establishing a marriage or common law relationship, so you're right to rule that out completely.

In order to qualify for common law, you need to live together for 12 months continuously. If you were living together in one place for 8 months, and then travelling together for 3 months, and then living together for a month - and can prove it all - that's 12 months. But you do need to be able to prove it. For 'stationary' relationships, a sampling of mail to each/both of you across the 12 months is normally enough. For travelling, you'd need to demonstrate common entrance/exit stamps, hotel stays, etc.

If you can't prove all of that, you need to wait until you can, or else get married.

 

[Jasonabram92]

Thank you very much for the reply! We can prove it all mostly so that's really good, we were travelling around Thailand and South East Asia, so we have alot of hotels and entry stamps etc that will line up perfectly.

That's awesome news, thank you very much!