Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

A UK immigration solicitor would cost in the region of £1000+ vat to prepare your wife’s application for a spouse visa in order to come here and settle with you once you are married. They would deal with all the documentation I am about to write about and other matters so that the application would be drafted in the best way to get approval of your wife’s visa. It really is worth doing. If the application is rejected then you will probably have to appeal and pay more than that for a solicitor to act for you so I would strongly consider it.

If your wife has simply applied for a general visitors visa and not a Marriage Visitor’s visa then it would be unwise to marry whilst she is here on a visitor’s visa. If it is intended that she should come to the UK to marry you and then return to Ukraine to make her application for a spouse visa later then she should have applied for the marriage visitors visa on the following page
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/visas-immigration/visiting/marriage-cp/
If you marry whilst she is here on a general visitor’s visa then it may make her application for a spouse visa more complicated

If it is intended that she should travel her to marry you and then remain here permanently with you as your wife without going back to the Ukraine then she should have applied for a fiancé visa.

The criteria for a fiancé or spouse visa in terms of financial requirements is that you should be able to support and house eachtoher without needing to access public funds. This is taken to mean that no more public funds should be claimed as a result of her being here.

Therefore you would have to show with documentary evidence that you have sufficient housing, income and capital to support yourselves. Your solicitor would likely require that you execute a statement indicate a budget for your living expenses and then detailing the income you have available (by showing your most recent pension statements and bank statements going back 6 months). They would also show your savings as the capital you have available (ie. by showing the statements of your savings account). In addition the statement would also show that you own your own property by stating that you do and attaching a copy of the land registry title for the property showing your ownership of it from the following land registry search engine:-
eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/wps/portal/Property_Search

If you can show that your savings and income are sufficient to easily over your living expenses, accommodation and other outgoings then you will be regarded as meeting the financial eligibility criteria and if you meet the other criteria she should get her visa under the current rules.

However, there is a strong possibility that the ukba may bring in a minimum salary threshold that the UK spouse must earn. It may come in in November and it will be somewhere in the region of £18-24k PA so it could cause problems for you if you do not submit your application by this time.

If your wife submits the application for either a spouse/fiancé visa before the new rules come in then you should be okay subject to doing what I have said above because your application will be judged on the rules in force as at the date your application is received by the UKBA.

These applications and collecting the supporting documentation is a complicated process which can be helped enormously by instructing a solicitor.

If you wish for me to provide you with further guidance on any question you may have in the future then please submit a further question to the board requesting me either by my profile or by marking your question. “FAO Tom”.


Kind regards,


Tom