Visits considered as cohabitation

[Cpalma]

I have a question for question 27 on 5490. When I went to my husbands country when we were dating I would stay with him for five days, the next two weeks and when we married we stayed together for the holidays is this consider cohabitation?

 

[Carlaganda23]

I have a question for question 27 on 5490. When I went to my husbands country when we were dating I would stay with him for five days, the next two weeks and when we married we stayed together for the holidays is this consider cohabitation?

Yes, cohabitation means living together although it is interrupted cohabitation since you left after few weeks but as far as I know it is still counted as cohabitation.

 

[truesmile]

We answered "no" to it being cohabitation, but fully described these answering the 'visiting' questions.

 

[BeShoo]

I would mark it as co-habitation. They will see that it was only for a few days, but it's a positive thing that you've been living together even for a short time. I've seen appeal cases where the husband didn't even live with his wife for a few days, even though he spent those days in her country. Obviously, that isn't a good thing.

 

[tink23]

I really don't think visiting someone for 5 days is cohabitation. You're visiting/ traveling, not living together. I would just list the details of your accommodations when you're describing your visits.

 

[BeShoo]

In the end, it doesn't really matter all that much whether you call it cohabitation or not, but it does matter whether you lived with your husband when you were in his country. If you went to see him for a couple of hours or didn't see him at all, then stayed in a hotel, that would probably be a serious problem.

In my case, I'm pretty sure that I called my visits "cohabitation." One of them was for almost a month. Others were shorter. In any case, we slept together, went grocery shopping together, cooked, ate, took out the garbage, did laundry, I drove him to work every day, etc. If that is not "cohabitation" I don't know what is.

I tried to find the appeal case where they asked why there was no cohabitation during a short visit, but I didn't find it.

 

[canadianwoman]

Some appeal cases are very clear: they expected even short visits to be listed as cohabitation. This is not the cohabitation that is needed for a common law application. So I would list each time you stayed with your husband before and after marriage. Be clear about how long each visit was, where you stayed, etc. This way the visa officer will see you have stayed together.
If you instead answered no, but at least listed these visits and stays together on the 'visiting' question, it should be OK too.