Common-law PR in process. Can we get married or should we wait?

[inlandvegreville]

Hi,

I applied for a PR with my Canadian fiancé as my sponsor within Canada in Feb. 2011 and we are now waiting to hear back from CIC. We were going to wait for my PR approval to get married (which will likely be a bit over a year from now without any hiccups) but otherwise we don't have any other reasons not to... We actually wanted to get married before we apply but we were advised not to do so as it could look suspicious even though we had lived together over a year and had all the stuff to prove our relationship...
The CIC website says to "notify if your circumstances change such as a birth or adoption of a child, marriage or divorce..." so we know it's not like that it's not allowed but we just want to know if it is going to affect the application process in any ways...
If anyone has gotten married when the application is still in process, would you recommend to or not to? What would happen?

Also, just out of curiosity, if I got pregnant with his child before the decision is made, would he have to resubmit his portion of the application? (right now, we don't have any dependent children.)

Thank you in advance.

 

[BeShoo]

You have to tell them if you got married, but it doesn't change your application. It is still supposed to be processed as a common law application if that's the way you filed it. I have read of case where they take the new status into account, but they're technically not supposed to. In your case, I doubt it will make any difference either way.

(Clarification below)

 

[sidkrose]

Are you sure about this? ^ I was under the impression that if you applied under a category, such as common-law, and then got married, you no longer qualified to be processed under the common-law category. I might be totally wrong, but that was the impression that I had. That common-law wasn't a "fiancé" category, but a martial status all it's own. I would love to see some more opinions on this.

 

[canadianwoman]

Look at the operational manual that instructs visa officers in how to process applications:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/manuals/op/op02-eng.pdf
5.51 on page 35 deals with what to do with people who change their marital status during processing. It seems that if conjugal partners or common-law partners get married during processing, they should inform CIC and the visa office, and the visa officer is supposed to start processing their file under the 'married' category.

 

[RobsLuv]

You have to tell them if you got married, but it doesn't change your application. It is still supposed to be processed as a common law application if that's the way you filed it. I have read of case where they take the new status into account, but they're technically not supposed to. In your case, I doubt it will make any difference either way.

This is not correct. Common-law qualification includes a co-habitation requirement that "disappears" if the couple legally marries . . . because the marriage automatically makes the applicant eligible to apply to immigrate without the cohabitation. So if you got married, you'd notify them of the marriage and they would not have to assess the co-habitation as a requirement of your eligibility. The rest of the process remains the same, and the case would probably not be finalized any faster.

And no, if you got pregnant, there would be no need to resubmit his portion of the application. First of all, a child conceived by the two of you would be a Canadian citizen (if he is) and, secondly, there are no minimum income requirements to a spousal or dependent child case - so it's not like he'd have to suddenly prove a certain amount of income to sponsor a dependent. If you were to get pregnant and the child was born before your application was finalized, you'd want to notify them of the birth . . . but they would know (if he's a Canadian citizen) that the child would not need to be sponsored and it would only be a matter for informational purposes.

 

[BeShoo]

Thanks to canadianwoman and RobsLuv for the information. Apparently I was very confused on this point. I think what messed me up was that you can't change status after a refusal decision. In that case, they still need to judge the application (i.e., in an appeal) on the status originally applied for.

 

[inlandvegreville]

Thank you all. I am less confused now. We will read through the manual canadianwoman linked, that looks helpful.