I just want to give some context. Last december, I added my spouse as non accompanying in my EE profile and we got a score for 529. The reason why I added him as non-accompanying is because his ECA credentials was taking a long time. It still hasn't been processed til today. I got my first ITA in December with the cut-off of 520. Without my husband's ECA our total score together was 517. So I consulted with a lawyer and asked if it was possible to accept the ITA as non-accompanying and then add him AFTER e-APR if ever his ECA would be finished. The lawyer strongly suggested that if I do this i would need to explain why i changed from non-accompanying to accompanying. Based also on my research I agree with the lawyer. We withdrew the application and thought we would get an ITA by June. We were surprised we got another ITA at 511 by January. So we contacted the law firm again as we wanted to push through with our application with them. I was assigned a different lawyer as my first lawyer is on maternity but I still had full trust with them.
The problem now is this new lawyer said I needed a compelling reason as to why my spouse is non accompanying because when I accepted the ITA and if they changed it to accompanying when they submit the application we also needed to pass our reasons why. It really was my mistake why i didn't change my profile to accompanying spouse. But this is where i'm confused about. I thought it would only be an issue IF I changed my spouse to accompanying AFTER e-APR. Even in the PR Portal you can recalculate your score before you submit for e-APR. I told the lawyer politely that we would like to proceed with the application but we honestly have no compelling reason. My spouse is also not in Canada. So i suggested that maybe we just need a LOE that they can make.
I really hope that I'm the wrong one in this situation. Or maybe my lawyer's also being careful. But I've asked and looked into other people who changed their spouse to accompanying before e-APR and they said they didn't even need to address it in their LOE. English is not my first language so maybe there's a language barrier between me and my lawyer.
The problem now is this new lawyer said I needed a compelling reason as to why my spouse is non accompanying because when I accepted the ITA and if they changed it to accompanying when they submit the application we also needed to pass our reasons why. It really was my mistake why i didn't change my profile to accompanying spouse. But this is where i'm confused about. I thought it would only be an issue IF I changed my spouse to accompanying AFTER e-APR. Even in the PR Portal you can recalculate your score before you submit for e-APR. I told the lawyer politely that we would like to proceed with the application but we honestly have no compelling reason. My spouse is also not in Canada. So i suggested that maybe we just need a LOE that they can make.
I really hope that I'm the wrong one in this situation. Or maybe my lawyer's also being careful. But I've asked and looked into other people who changed their spouse to accompanying before e-APR and they said they didn't even need to address it in their LOE. English is not my first language so maybe there's a language barrier between me and my lawyer.
