I respect your opinion. My question is since the only issue is the misrepresentation regarding the date in the statutory declaration of Common-Law...why is the additional work required on the part of the lawyer?
We made a mistake on the dates of statutory declaration of common law
- Thread starter juhanjuhanjuhan
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Marriage before applying would have made a difference as you would not have faced questions about common law nor the inquiries related to it, which is why you are where you are now.
Plus the relatively short cohabitation (just a bit longer than minimum required) and out of status applicant, and sharing housing with others - a series of red flags that would look different as married.
So yeah - you wouldn't be paying a lawyer nor be facing a ban.
I can imagine scenarios where getting married could make a difference, hypothetically, depending on what happens with your pfl and eg if the app is refused. But speculative so not worth getting into now.
I doubt it would be of immediate benefit but go with legal advice.
[In fairness i think some others here think I'm a bit of an extremist on the marriage question here, compared to others anyway. Specifically, if you ain't ready to be married, you ain't ready to sponsor as common law. IMO. To be clear, I'm neither religious nor a social conservative - quite the contrary.]
Don't know if that's the only issue. See my other post. Could be the still waters running deep.
Frankly should have ordered gcms notes when invited for interview, but too late now.
Editadd: i see it wasn't an interview but a call. So perhaps wouldn't have been obvious to order gcms.
That's pretty harsh IMHO, but...your opinion is undoubtedly echoed by others here, I'm sure.
I would disagree on the matter of official marriage importance to IRCC. If you look at the current forms and sponsorship checklist, it doesn't minimize the number of questions regarding the proofs one has to submit. It effectively just replaces the common-law declaration. On the other hand, you have a bunch of additional questions about the marriage including the need to check though a list of close relatives that were present and if not - why. You still end up with a lot of places to make mistakes or omissions Just an opinion.
Not really bothered whether others agree on this one.
But in addition, objectively i believe many underestimate the additional challenges and risks sponsoring as common law.
(I was going to sponsor as common law - BTW - because of a barrier to getting married. When we could get married, we did, in part because i believed would simplify sponsorship. I'm not against common law. I'm against treating it as a halfway house to marriage, or sort-of marriage, for purposes of immigration. Also some other dumb stuff people believe about marriage and common law but not in play here.)
It does eliminate the need to show proof of cohabiting together for at least one full year, which in and of itself is a major stress elevator for many Common-Law applicants.
Nope. As in this case, a déclaration is just a statement you declared in front of an official. As clearly shown here - it was found to be false. A valid marriage certificate is a legal proof in its own right.
It does not remove the relationship proofs required, but it means they all now serve as proof of good will marriage, not proof of a legal relationship. It removes quite a bit of subjectivity - but not all.
A marriage without relatives present is still legally valid (as long as other witnesses, usually). That's important, or can be, but not proof of the legal relationship (or not having them doesn't invalidate the marriage).
You still need to convince the IRCC that marriage is genuine. But yes, there are tradeoffs. I'm not advocating for any of these, I just believe it's very case specific.
So if I'm the lawyer, the way to make the strongest case that this was a mistake is to be in a position to say that all of the other info in the application pointed to the 2020 date as the start of the cohabitation. But they have no idea if that's the case. They have no visibility to what was in the original application. They are hoping there are statements in the GCMS notes they can rely on to make the "mistake" argument stronger. Submitting additional evidence after the fact helps but the strongest argument is proving this through what was submitted in the original application. Maybe the OP kept photocopies of everything they submitted (I know I did) in which case the lawyer could use those. Failing that, this leaves the GCMS notes.
I would disagree that the only issue is the statutory declaration. We don't know that. All we know is that this is the only issue the officer has chosen to call out in the PFL. This is how I would be thinking of I was the lawyer. Lawyer is flying blind right now.
I may be repeating myself, but if married, you generally don't need to show that the marriage is legally valid. (Well, all you do is show your marriage certificate, basically - the presumption is legally valid, usually).
For the common law test to be met, the cohabitation info - subject to interpretation - is a critical part of the evaluation.
Or put more simply: on a like for like basis (eg where cohabitation of more than a year), married is ALWAYS an easier app. Legal test met? Yep.* Evidence of relationship? Well, cohabitation.
Cases where eg attendance at the wedding is or may be crucial are for married-not-residing together cases, esp arranged marriages. Weaknesses of cohabitation evidence - including esp documentation of the start date - are not critical (arguably even important) to married cases.
Now this does NOT mean that everyone applying as common law must get married (although a bit less documentation). But for cases where the cohabitation period is short and/or there are other red flags - and especially documentation issues (to show cohabitation) - it may make the difference between more hassles and/or refusals. And yes - refusals I have seen here. We saw a few cases where the documentation of start of cohabitation was only a few days off - and refusal.
Rule of thumb that 'if in doubt, it will strengthen your case' is a good one. IMO.
*I could perhaps come up with some exceptions, but the ones I can think of off-hand are in the category of 'marriage not valid' (proxy, bigamy/previous marriages not demonstrated annulled/divorced, etc). Possible corner case - the few people who've had IRCC get confused by the handful of US states that don't have marriage certificates (but the courthouse stamps the marriage license), and that usually gets figured out. Suffice to say I think rare.
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To be clear, I'm not at all suggesting that IRCC/IRCC officers 'care' about common law vs marriage. I'm not saying it's a moral issue.
I'm saying that meeting the test of common law is inherently a higher bar than married.
This is the reason why I chose to hire a lawyer. I have requested GCMS notes as far back as last year but have not gotten anything despite paying multiple times. And I do not have a copy; all the forms and documents were lost when I lost my Mac, which I have not backed up (I know, very dumb). And so working with a lawyer is our best route because I want to get GCMS notes plus the documents we submitted as a baseline for crafting a good PFL response. I honestly think that the payment would be worth it given that we have waited for 2.5 years just to get a response. I wouldn't wanna mess it up and make a mistake once more T_T
BTW, I appreciate all the responses. I am following the thread, but I need to make time for the requirements as well. Will be back soon.
Also, my partner's eligibility just changed from in process to completed today.
I'd add - lawyers have requirement to make truthful statements, to best of their ability, after reasonable diligence - in other words, they have to check. They can't just take what you say at face value.
Consequences for not doing this correctly can be a big deal for the lawyer. Some may recognize this concept from things that are in the news right now (in US context, cough cough Trump).
This is very different from sworn statements or affidavits - as seen above with the error here - whoever took the statement did not check. It's not part of the process, the official (notary or lawyer) just attests that so and so SAID such and such.
So apart from all the other good reasons @scylla mentions, they have a basic requirement to check that what they're saying is bassically 'true.'
Specific requirements of this depend on context and I'm not a lawyer, so surely there's nuance I'm leaving out. But still, a careful lawyer is going to check the facts.
Damn... Please update us all with the outcome...
I did literally the same mistake, but I haven't received AOR yet.
We submitted our common law start date as 2021 - 10 - 08 (based on the idea that this is the day we started living together), but from what I am seeing it should have been 2022 - 10 - 08.
How can I fix this now? Is there an online form to update the application or something?
I did literally the same mistake, but I haven't received AOR yet.
We submitted our common law start date as 2021 - 10 - 08 (based on the idea that this is the day we started living together), but from what I am seeing it should have been 2022 - 10 - 08.
How can I fix this now? Is there an online form to update the application or something?