Two questions on common law sponsorship from UK to Canada

[DeanN]

Hello,

Firstly a quick thank you to everybody who contributes to this form, the information on it has been of great benefit to our application.

Now, onto my specific questions. My Canadian citizen girlfriend and I have lived together in London for the past two years. She is planning to return to university for a postgraduate course and was intending to go to an institution in the UK. However she has now changed her mind and will instead be studying in Canada.

Thus we are now (belatedly) getting everything together for an Outland family class sponsorship application. My two questions are:

1. We are hoping to have the application submitted by September as that is when the course starts. For the purposes of the application we will use our UK address; however, we are going to be moving out of this at the end of August (I may remain in the UK or go to Canada as a visitor, we're still undecided on that). With that in mind, is there any real problem in listing an address that you will almost certainly not be residing in once the application is submitted, and changing it after submission date to an address in Canada?

2. Related to that, how long does it take to prepare the sponsorship + PR application? We've been collecting things over the years, so for example we have a lot of material to prove the relationship is genuine, and I've already applied for the police form. In terms of the actual business of filling everything in, what kind of timeframe is realistic? Ideally I'd like to have it done by the end of July (a month from now) but that might not be feasible.

Thanks for any help or advice you might have.

Dean.

 

[GG and B]

Hi Dean,

1. You can definitely change your address after you've sent the application. Just make sure to always inform CIC asap. However, whether or not it's a good idea to change the applicants address to a Canadian one, I can't tell you.

2. We needed about 2 months for the whole applications. Just a tip from me: Do-not-rush! You have to take your time, organize it well. I made an index for all 3 envelopes and one for the complete application, just so the officer can find whatever they want to look at first (they will rip it apart and re-organize it the way it suits them anyways, but I imagine it being way easier for them with an index). Also, don't go overboard with evidence. I know common-law couples need more evidence than married couples, but don't send them hundreds of printed out e-mails, thousands of pictures. Quality over quantity. One more thing: Do the medical very last minute. Means maybe a week or so before you send the applications. I did mine 2 months before that and I'm really mad at myself for that. Because (usually) the expiry date of your medical is the deadline for landing in Canada.

Sorry for the long post. Hope it helps.

 

[DeanN]

Thanks for the response, and particularly for the tip on getting the medical done last minute – I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Rob_TO]

With that in mind, is there any real problem in listing an address that you will almost certainly not be residing in once the application is submitted, and changing it after submission date to an address in Canada?

It's no problem. In most cases, the only correspondence you'll get by mail is when the entire app is approved and they mail the COPR to you.

We've been collecting things over the years, so for example we have a lot of material to prove the relationship is genuine, and I've already applied for the police form. In terms of the actual business of filling everything in, what kind of timeframe is realistic? Ideally I'd like to have it done by the end of July (a month from now) but that might not be feasible.

Do you have actual proof that you lived together for 1 year (i.e. joint lease, shared accounts/bills, mail to same address, declarations from friends/family, etc)?

1 month should be plenty of time, but depends how much effort you're putting into it each day.

 

[SchnookoLoly]

I agree with what's been posted already. Changing address is fine, and super common to change it to a CAnadian one as it's very common for non-Canadians to wait it out in Canada as visitors. No problems at all there. As for how long it takes, as Rob said, just depends how much effort you put into the application. Ours took about a month or so to put together.

There's a FAQ linked in my signature which should help you out hugely with putting the app together.

Best of luck!

 

[DeanN]

Do you have actual proof that you lived together for 1 year (i.e. joint lease, shared accounts/bills, mail to same address, declarations from friends/family, etc)?

We have most of this already -- shared tenancy agreements, shared bills, mail at the same address, etc.

The two things we don't have in terms of evidence are family / friend declarations (working on those) and a shared bank account / credit cards; we've mostly managed our money separately as (until now) there never seemed a real good reason to do it otherwise. How important is a shared bank account, i.e. will it matter if all the other things (lease, bills etc.) show that you're living together?

There's a FAQ linked in my signature which should help you out hugely with putting the app together.

Thanks, chnookoLoly -- will take a look through those pages.

 

[SchnookoLoly]

We have most of this already -- shared tenancy agreements, shared bills, mail at the same address, etc.

The two things we don't have in terms of evidence are family / friend declarations (working on those) and a shared bank account / credit cards; we've mostly managed our money separately as (until now) there never seemed a real good reason to do it otherwise. How important is a shared bank account, i.e. will it matter if all the other things (lease, bills etc.) show that you're living together?

Thanks, chnookoLoly -- will take a look through those pages.

When we applied as common-law we were the same way (though we are now married). We never bothered having a joint account simply because we just managed money separately. However, just in the interest of making a better paper trail, we opened a joint account and paid rent and bills out of it. Most of our normal spending just carried on as normal, we just paid into the joint account for rent and bills. So you could do something like that just in the interest of covering that base, there isn't really a downside, it just gives you extra stuff and one less thing for them to question. Not strictly required, but wouldn't hurt to have it either.