What constitutes "living together" or "cohabiting" to IRCC? (Sponsorship Evaluation and Questinnaire)

[goldfinger]

Hey all,

Question 3 under Part "C" asks

"Are you living together now?"

"If Yes, how long have you been cohabiting (living together) after your conjugal* relationship started. *Conjugal relationship means a committed and mutually interdependent relationship of some permanence where a couple has combined their affairs to the extent possible (marriage-like). "

Some backstory - I immigrated to the USA on a fiance visa, and we've been living together here since 2013. Before I immigrated, we bounced around back and forth visiting each other, and I spent a semester on a student exchange at the university in my wife's hometown in the USA. The easy answer for this for me would be when I arrived in the United States after receiving a fiance visa. Prior to that, we kind of "lived" together, inasmuch as wherever we visited we were staying at the other's parent's house. Some of our visits were a few weeks, some were a couple of 3 months long, either in Canada or the USA. I did spend a semester on a student exchange in my wife's hometown, and stayed at my mother-in-law's house during that time (this was all before we were married.)

I would prefer to just answer that we've lived together since I moved to the states on my fiance visa, but I wouldn't want to be omitting anything?

What are your thoughts?

 

[k.h.p.]

Your conjugal relationship started 1 year after you started living together. So if you started living together June 30, 2013, your common-law relationship started July 1, 2014.

 

[steaky]

Your conjugal relationship started 1 year after you started living together. So if you started living together June 30, 2013, your common-law relationship started July 1, 2014.

Does not make sense. Are you trying to say the below instead?

So if you started living together June 30, 2013, your conjugal relationship started July 1, 2014.

 

[k.h.p.]

Does not make sense. Are you trying to say the below instead?

So if you started living together June 30, 2013, your conjugal relationship started July 1, 2014.

Sorry, I messed up terminology, thanks for pointing it out.

A common-law relationship is established after 1 year of cohabitating in a conjugal relationship.

So if the conjugal relationship and cohabitation started June 30, 2013, the clock starts ticking from July 1, 2014.

 

[goldfinger]

Sorry, I messed up terminology, thanks for pointing it out.

A common-law relationship is established after 1 year of cohabitating in a conjugal relationship.

So if the conjugal relationship and cohabitation started June 30, 2013, the clock starts ticking from July 1, 2014.

I think that I may have misrepresented my question -

my wife and I have been married for since December of 2013. I'm not trying to come over as common-law, I'm just trying to make sure that I accurately represent when we began "living together" per IRCC's definition. Like I said, in my mind we were living together once I immigrated to the states, but I'm not sure if they would interpret us as "living together" while I was at her mom's while I was on my student exchange.

Edit - I should say that prior to that, we hadn't lived together for a year straight at any point. We visited each other, but there was always *some* break to speak of , and since we didn't have anything but visitor status in one-another's country, it was just a visit really.

Thoughts? Sorry if this is baffling.

 

[k.h.p.]

I'm sorry! I didn't catch on that you were married.

If you were married since December 2013, I am assuming you began living together earlier than that in 2013.

Provided that you both didn't consider your earlier in 2013 living together to be a temporary thing, the date you moved in is safe to use.

Again, my apologies for the misreading of your earlier post.

The good news is that if you're married, IRCC won't really care much about this answer provided that you haven't been married for 20 years and only cohabitating for 5 months.

 

[goldfinger]

I'm sorry! I didn't catch on that you were married.

If you were married since December 2013, I am assuming you began living together earlier than that in 2013.

Provided that you both didn't consider your earlier in 2013 living together to be a temporary thing, the date you moved in is safe to use.

Again, my apologies for the misreading of your earlier post.

The good news is that if you're married, IRCC won't really care much about this answer provided that you haven't been married for 20 years and only cohabitating for 5 months.

No prob!

Yeah. I moved in October of 2013 on a K-1 visa, and we were married in December of 2013, so yeah, I put October of 2013 as my answer.

I guess that my big question was whether or not it qualified as "living together" when I stayed with her at her mom's house during a 4 month student exchange in fall of 2012? It sounds like IRCC mainly asks this question to make sure that we've in a legitimate relationship I suppose.

Thoughts?