Sponsoring common law partner - proof of cohabitation issues

[wyho007]

I am Canadian citizen living abroad with my common law partner. We both plan to move back to Canada after her PR is approved. SA is approved. Her VO just started her application process a week ago.

Our situation is where I am the only person on the lease, all utilities are under the landlord's name, we just pay the bills monthly. Since we have been moving almost yearly, and we have lunches at her mother's almost everyday, so we have all our mails sent to her mother's permanent address for the past 3 years for convenience. We explained this in our application.

I read on this forum that both proofing the relationship is genuine AND living together are critical. I am comfortable with the relationship being genuine proof but I'm a little paranoid on the "living together" one based on what mentioned above. I can't get the landlord to attest as we rent through an agent and we have never met our landlord. The place where we live don't have friendly neighbours so it's impossible to get them attest either.

We sent the followings in the original application:

- 2 affidavits attesting we live together for the past 3 years, one from her sister and one from her friend.
- Joint bank account statements for 2 consecutive years, address is her mother's
- Credit card and bank statements in our individual names for the past 2 consecutive years, address is her mother's
- Internet bill under my name to current physical address
- Cell phone bill under my partner's name to current physical address since 5 months ago
- A couple of letters sent to my partner to our current physical address from 6 months ago
- We have bank statements showing payment of utilities (although the bills themselves are not under our names) from our joint bank account for the last 3 years

Do the above look enough of proofs?

My friends said I should move right away and start a new joint name lease. They say better late then never, indeed if VO really insists on a joint name lease, I can still provide a new one and let it wait a full year for it to become a strong evidence. What do you think?

We just moved to this place since 11 months ago, we spent 2 years in a different place before, if I could get an old neighbour to attest to our 2 years of previous cohabitation , will they do the trick? Or the attestation must be to our current residence?

 

[Ponga]

You are correct; there are two separate `pieces' that must be proven for a Common-Law applicant.

As soon as you and your partner had cohabited anywhere in the world for one full year, you would have met the requirement for immigration purposes. This means that if you have proof of this from a couple of years ago, it would have been good to include before you applied. Since this `new/old' information will undoubtedly differ from the date that you entered in the application, as your C-L date, it would only complicate matters more, IMHO.

Not having solid proof of truly living together is a real challenge. Sorry, but I don't know if mail going to her mother's house will suffice to convince the officer.

Moving now and starting a new joint lease wouldn't do anything. You need to prove that on the day that CIC received the application, you had cohabited for at least 365 days together.

If marriage is an option for you, it would eliminate this `piece' of the puzzle. Some people have gotten married during the process and had their application changed from C-L to Spousal sponsorship.

Now...having said all that, there was one person last year that landed with virtually no proof of cohabiting with her partner. All that was provided was a Statutory Declaration letter from each of their mothers. WTF? How did THAT happen?!?!

Good luck!