Hi all,
I'm sponsoring my British boyfriend as my "common law partner" and we're hoping to send everything off in the next week or two. Just thought I'd post on here before we send everything off in case anybody has any pointers?
We're doing outland as it's supposed to be a few months quicker filing here than in Canada.
We've been living together for 15 months but have had to do some affidavits as we haven't got any bills in both of our names and as we live in a house belonging to his Mom and don't pay rent we haven't got a lease. Had we known when we moved in that we were going to make this move, we would have changed all bills to both of our names and got a joint bank account but it was too late to do that by the time we decided we wanted to move. Hindsight eh!
We've got statutory declarations from friends and family saying that we have been together for three years, living together for 15 months and all that, filled out the forms, each done a "relationship essay", included photos, airline tickets for the three holidays we've been on to Vancouver and a few bits of post that I've had to this address as well as bills paid by my boyfriend.
Is there anything else that we should be doing or including? Just wondering if anybody who has gone through this has any recommendations on what we could do or shouldn't do to ensure that the forms don't get sent back - that's the last thing we want!!
Also - when doing the photos, should we be gluing them onto blank paper on including them within the body of our essay?
I've already got a job in Canada and am including a contract to prove that I'll be working and my salary etc. And because I'm due to start in February we were hoping that my boyfriend could get into the country on a 6 month visitor permit so that at the very least we're not separated while we're waiting for the results.
Anybody have any info, ideas, recommendations? This is all so new to me and I just want to get it right. :