12 Month Cohabitation - Common-Law PR Sponsorship

[boredinwinterpeg]

Hello Everyone,

I am Canadian and I am in the process of sponsoring my Polish girlfriend for PR as a common-law partner. We have been together for almost 2.5 years, and I have a question about the requirement to live together for 12 months.

We met in May 2016 while I was traveling in Poland. Things progressed, and from May 2016 until July 2017, I visited every month, and stayed at an apartment that we shared (although it was rented in her name). In February of 2017, we started making plans for her to move to Canada, and applied for an IEC Working Holiday visa. She was granted the visa in the spring of 2017.

In July 2017, I started a new job and had to stop traveling to Poland. She quit her job and moved to Canada. When she entered Canada on August 25, 2017, she did so as a visitor. We stayed in Toronto at my parent's house from Aug 25 - Sept 30. I had to work in Montreal for October, so we rented an AirBNB in Montreal from Oct 1-31 in both our names. I was reassigned to work in Calgary from November onward. We flew to Calgary on a house hunting trip in mid October and signed a lease for an apartment in Calgary under both our names. We moved in to our apartment in Calgary at the start of November 2017 and have been here ever since. On November 20, 2017, she flew back to Poland for 10 days, to visit family, and with the intention of returning on December 1, 2017 to activate her IEC visa. On December 1, 2017, she returned to Canada and activated her IEC Working Holiday visa, which is valid until Nov 30, 2018.

We have lots of proof showing that we have been together our entire relationship (plane tickets from my visits, pictures, vacation itineraries, whatapp messages and instagram posts), and lots of mail and documentation showing us both at our address in Calgary from Nov 2017 onward.

We are now preparing her Inland PR application (with OWP application) and I am wondering when IRCC will consider us to have lived together for 12 months? In other words, when do we officially become common law? Please consider the following:

• Does the time that she spent in Canada as a visitor from August 25 - Nov 20 count? In this case would our common-law date be August 25, 2018?
  
• Or since we don't have proof that we lived in Toronto in Sept/17, perhaps the 12 months would begin when we rented the Montreal AirBNB in Oct 2017 and the common-law date would be Oct 1, 2018?
  
• And lastly, I have read that in general, CIC will consider absences of 2 weeks or less during the 12 month cohabitation period to be acceptable. (Does anyone have a link to CIC material indicating this?) I ask because I am concerned about the 11 days that we were apart when she went to Poland in November. If these days are considered a break in our cohabitation period, then will our common-law date be Dec 1, 2018? ... one day after her IEC visa expires...

Thanks in advance for your time and kind advice!

 

[1887CAN]

Hello Everyone,

I am Canadian and I am in the process of sponsoring my Polish girlfriend for PR as a common-law partner. We have been together for almost 2.5 years, and I have a question about the requirement to live together for 12 months.

We met in May 2016 while I was traveling in Poland. Things progressed, and from May 2016 until July 2017, I visited every month, and stayed at an apartment that we shared (although it was rented in her name). In February of 2017, we started making plans for her to move to Canada, and applied for an IEC Working Holiday visa. She was granted the visa in the spring of 2017.

In July 2017, I started a new job and had to stop traveling to Poland. She quit her job and moved to Canada. When she entered Canada on August 25, 2017, she did so as a visitor. We stayed in Toronto at my parent's house from Aug 25 - Sept 30. I had to work in Montreal for October, so we rented an AirBNB in Montreal from Oct 1-31 in both our names. I was reassigned to work in Calgary from November onward. We flew to Calgary on a house hunting trip in mid October and signed a lease for an apartment in Calgary under both our names. We moved in to our apartment in Calgary at the start of November 2017 and have been here ever since. On November 20, 2017, she flew back to Poland for 10 days, to visit family, and with the intention of returning on December 1, 2017 to activate her IEC visa. On December 1, 2017, she returned to Canada and activated her IEC Working Holiday visa, which is valid until Nov 30, 2018.

We have lots of proof showing that we have been together our entire relationship (plane tickets from my visits, pictures, vacation itineraries, whatapp messages and instagram posts), and lots of mail and documentation showing us both at our address in Calgary from Nov 2017 onward.

We are now preparing her Inland PR application (with OWP application) and I am wondering when IRCC will consider us to have lived together for 12 months? In other words, when do we officially become common law? Please consider the following:

• Does the time that she spent in Canada as a visitor from August 25 - Nov 20 count? In this case would our common-law date be August 25, 2018?
  
• Or since we don't have proof that we lived in Toronto in Sept/17, perhaps the 12 months would begin when we rented the Montreal AirBNB in Oct 2017 and the common-law date would be Oct 1, 2018?
  
• And lastly, I have read that in general, CIC will consider absences of 2 weeks or less during the 12 month cohabitation period to be acceptable. (Does anyone have a link to CIC material indicating this?) I ask because I am concerned about the 11 days that we were apart when she went to Poland in November. If these days are considered a break in our cohabitation period, then will our common-law date be Dec 1, 2018? ... one day after her IEC visa expires...

Thanks in advance for your time and kind advice!

To my knowledge, her legal status in any country she’s lived in is irrelevant in its effect on common law status. It’s living together that counts, where and why doesn’t matter. You just need to prove that you did live together.

When you go through the forms, there’s background declarations to complete, with address history sections to state where she’s lived, etc. It’ll also ask what her status was if it’s not her home country.

Send in copies of all the proof you’ve compiled so far to support the application. Make sure you have lived together for a minimum of 12 months before applying, if you fail to meet that, the application will be declined. As far as I’m aware, brief periods apart are ok for common law, but they need to be made up. For example, if the requirement is 365 days living together for valid status, and your girlfriend was absent from you for 10 days, make sure you can prove you’ve been living together for longer. I don’t think the days need to be cumulative, so that’s good. I also don’t know for sure if a long absence, 2-3 months apart, resets the counter so to speak and you need to start again. This won’t apply to you anyway by the sounds of it, but the point is to check what Canada considers common law. There could be lots of little clauses that may catch you out. The law society website for whatever province you’re in should details the rules. There may be people here that can help better than me too, so wait to read those.

Good luck to you both.

 

[np08]

Is there any special reason why you don't just get married instead? That would be a fairly simple way to avoid all the headache surrounding adding up all these different days and worrying whether this or that counts.

 

[boredinwinterpeg]

To my knowledge, her legal status in any country she’s lived in is irrelevant in its effect on common law status. It’s living together that counts, where and why doesn’t matter. You just need to prove that you did live together.

When you go through the forms, there’s background declarations to complete, with address history sections to state where she’s lived, etc. It’ll also ask what her status was if it’s not her home country.

Send in copies of all the proof you’ve compiled so far to support the application. Make sure you have lived together for a minimum of 12 months before applying, if you fail to meet that, the application will be declined. As far as I’m aware, brief periods apart are ok for common law, but they need to be made up. For example, if the requirement is 365 days living together for valid status, and your girlfriend was absent from you for 10 days, make sure you can prove you’ve been living together for longer. I don’t think the days need to be cumulative, so that’s good. I also don’t know for sure if a long absence, 2-3 months apart, resets the counter so to speak and you need to start again. This won’t apply to you anyway by the sounds of it, but the point is to check what Canada considers common law. There could be lots of little clauses that may catch you out. The law society website for whatever province you’re in should details the rules. There may be people here that can help better then me too, so wait to read those.

Good luck to you both.

Great, thanks for the insight! That's good to know that they don't care about her status. I know that I read somewhere (but I can't remember the page on CIC's website) which stated that time we spent together in another country where I was a visitor did not count, so I was worried that the same will apply to her in Canada as a visitor. In this document (https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/operational-bulletins-manuals/permanent-residence/non-economic-classes/family-class-determining-spouse/assessing-common.html) CIC says that you may leave each other for short, temporary absences if it is "for work or business travel, family obligations, and so on"... so I figure that a 10 day trip for her to visit family and activate her IEC work visa would be accepted under this.

 

[1887CAN]

Great, thanks for the insight! That's good to know that they don't care about her status. I know that I read somewhere (but I can't remember the page on CIC's website) which stated that time we spent together in another country where I was a visitor did not count, so I was worried that the same will apply to her in Canada as a visitor. In this document (https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/operational-bulletins-manuals/permanent-residence/non-economic-classes/family-class-determining-spouse/assessing-common.html) CIC says that you may leave each other for short, temporary absences if it is "for work or business travel, family obligations, and so on"... so I figure that a 10 day trip for her to visit family and activate her IEC work visa would be accepted under this.

I don’t see any issues with what you’ve said so far, if you’re still unsure you could try the IRCC call centre for advice. An immigration consultant would be able to help too, but both of these things seem like overkill to me. As long as you’ve lived together for over a year, you're common law.

This is directly from the IRCC website:

How can my common-law partner and I prove we have been together for 12 months?
Items that can be used as proof of a common-law relationship include:

• shared ownership of residential property
• joint leases or rental agreements
• bills for shared utility accounts, such as:
  • gas
  • electricity
  • telephone
  • joint utility accounts
• important documents for both of you showing the same address, such as:
  • driver’s licenses
  • insurance policies
• identification documents

You don’t need to include all these items to prove your relationship is real. We may consider other proof as well. Use the document checklist to find out what to submit with your application.

We don’t return photos, telephone bills or letters. Don’t send videos or CD-ROMs. We’ll return original documents such as marriage certificates and passports. However, you should send certified photocopies unless your checklist or country-specific requirements ask you to submit originals.

Immigration status isn’t mentioned in the above, so I can’t see that being a factor.