Hello, my boyfriend is currently sponsoring me for inland sponsorship. I was wondering how many letter of support do we need? Right now, I’ve one from my brother, one from his parents and social media information.
InLand Common Law - Letters of Support
- Thread starter Jollygood95
- Start date
I'm going to disagree somewhat with the above: no, just 'more letters are better' is not true, quality is more important than quantity.
And: it's not clear you need them at all.
The question is: it depends what issue with your application is that you are trying to address. And as a corollary, no-one can give you a precise answer because we do not know your file nor your circumstances.
You're going to have to use your best judgment and figure it out.
First and foremost: in my opinion, no amount of support letters are going to be sufficient to address the single most important thing in your app, whether or not you have factually resided together enough to meet the common-law test (12 months continuous). FOr that, the start date is critical. You need third-party objective stuff to start: lease, move-in, utilities, other commercial or government. Best of all is if it's well MORE than 12 months. [Warning that 'a letter from landlord' after the fact is REALLY week, use only if no way to avoid, with lots of other good info - if it's a landlord, as well as other evidence, it should be contemporaneous - from the same time that the move-in happened or close to.]
If you can't evidence the start date: it really is better if you wait and submit to the date where you CAN. A month or three longer is almost always better than risking a refusal becasue you didn't / couldn't show the start date.
Another side note: if you really can't, consider marriage. Marriage means you demonstrate the legal test by getting married. Then any evidence of residing together becomes supporting evidence of a genuine relationship, which is generally MUCH easier for couples that ... reside together.
Support letters for this purpose mostly corroborate what you've already shown. Best there would be eg "I'm their friend fomr [university]. I helped them move in on July 1, year, because I had a van and they didn't want to trust the movers with their houseplants." The key things is corroborating the period and the start date, esp the start date (or close to it).
Separate question: you resided together and you've shown it - then, support letters are there as evidence that you are residing together as a couple and present yourself as a settled, effectively married pair in most/all circumstnaces. Sure, if parents or relatives, that's good. Friends, too, it helping if they've visited you together or attended events that people usually attend as a couple (eg "a lot of our friends got married or engaged that year, and I saw them four times at weddings of our friends the thompsons, novaks, oliveira, etc." Or we had a weekly / monthly dinner thing with other couples, we played bridge or golf, etc, we went on vacation together, etc.
And I repeat from above: if you have plenty of other evidence about both residing and nature of relationship, yo may not need any letters at all. They won't hurt, but if your evidence is really good, you may not need them. (And so related is: isntead of spending the effort to get lots and lots of letters, get better evidence).
Agreed. It is providing proof of living together for one full year that is paramount for a successful Spousal sponsorship application. Short times apart do not breach this requirement, but even CIC has yet to define what a `short' time apart would mean.
"According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the government considers this (Common-law Sponsorship) to mean a couple living together for one year without any long periods of separation. Either partner may have left the home for work or business travels, family obligations, and so on. However, that separation must have been temporary and short."
"According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the government considers this (Common-law Sponsorship) to mean a couple living together for one year without any long periods of separation. Either partner may have left the home for work or business travels, family obligations, and so on. However, that separation must have been temporary and short."
I agree but I'd emphasize that it seems to be far more common to have issues demonstrating the start date of cohabitation and the 'actually living together' (i.e. that both sizes residing there, usually meaning that wasn't entirely clear whether one was really residing as opposed to visiting). And I don't recall seeing many (any?) where the periodic or short absences were thrown into question - not saying it doesn't happen but the more common issues seem to be establishing the full 12 months of cohabitation.
The other two scenarios I recall as issues are basically partners-travellig-together (i.e. no fixed address for full period but vagabonds for a year), and doubts about relationship because living-in-group-housing (eg students living in a flat/house for more than two and having separate leases that just happened to be at same address - implication being they had separate rooms and now want to consider that as a joint household).
Thank you for your detailed response. We were living together in his parents' property (from 2021-22) so we've a signed letter from them that we were not under a lease agreement (11 months) and then we moved into a condo (have a lease agreement and utility bills), driving licenses for both address, car insurance for both addresses, CRA documents listing me as having a common law partner, Amazon receipts, pay stubs, and bank statements as co habitation proof. For proof of relationship, we've pictures (pictures from our interactions on a dating site 2019, pictures with his family members 2021-2022 (my family is in a different country), social media information from 2019, shared finances (partner is a co-signer on my car) and partner is also listed under my employment benefits as a dependent spouse. We also have a puppy together licensed under both our names. I do have a letter of support from my brother and his mother but I was told to get more letters though I doubt if it's really necessary and if two should be more than enough. We've also been living together for more than a year and have known each other since 2019 (I've attached pictures from our text conversations and trips from both 2019 and 2020).
I would tend to think that you do not need more letters, but only my opinion.
I warn though - your info overall sounds good but I draw attention again, the key is to have contemporaneous docs (from the time when you are saying you began living together) that are straightforward. The letter from parents (sort-of lease) after the fact is nice, but weak unless you have those other docs.
So eg if you're counting from March '21 and you have three bills and a couple address changes for govt docs/banks from March AND the letter from parents, probably fine. If all those bill and official doc addresses date to December 21 - not so good.
Good luck.
Thank you! We moved in together in May 2021 and have all the documents (DLs, Car insurance, car ownership documents with that address, pay stubs, Amazon receipts, bank statements from the same month.) The bills were in his parents’ names and they’ve signed the same in the letter.
DLs and car insurance etc are pretty good, as are others you mention. Since you also have a bit more than a year, probably not so bad.
Again, only my own opinion, you've done the better work of having the file with supporting evidence, and that is way more useful than chasing down more letters of support.
Thank you so much! I’ll stick to just two letters for now. Again, thank you for your time
