The marriage file,document by document.
A marriage extension is a paperwork exercise about your life together, judged by someone who has never met you. Every item in the file exists to answer one of three questions.
Prefer this handled for you?
General information, not advice about your case. Procedures change, so where a detail matters to your application we confirm it with you rather than print a figure here that could be out of date.
Three questions, one file
Once you know which question a document answers, the list stops looking arbitrary.
Prefer this handled for you?
The three tests
Jump to sectionRegistration, money, and where you live. Everything in the file serves one of them.
The documents
Jump to sectionEach item, and the question it is there to answer.
The home visit
Jump to sectionWhat is expected, and how to make it a short visit rather than an awkward one.
Year two
Jump to sectionWhat changes at renewal, and the commonest reasons a file comes back.
What the office is checking
Three things, and every document in the file answers one of them.
The three questions
That the marriage is registered, that the income or savings requirement is met and evidenced, and that you live where you say you live. Everything in the document set exists to answer one of those three.
The document set
The list divides into yours and your spouse's, and the two halves are gathered differently: yours from your own records and your bank, your spouse's from Thai registries that keep their own hours.
We send you the current list for your case after the first conversation, so that nothing you gather goes stale while you gather the rest.
The financial requirement, and its two routes
As with the retirement route, there is a deposit answer and an income answer, and the timing of the money matters as much as the amount. Which route suits you is a question about your own arrangements rather than about the rules.
Prefer this handled for you?
Send us what you already hold. We will tell you what is missing, and which half of the file it belongs to.
The visit, and the second year
The parts of this application that are about your life rather than your paperwork.
The home visit and the photographs
Some cases involve a visit to the address, and photographs of the couple at home. Whether yours is likely to, what is expected on the day, and how to make it a short visit rather than an awkward one, is something we will tell you before it is arranged rather than on the morning.
What changes in year two
The renewal is the same application with a different set of dates. What changes is which documents can be reused, which must be reissued, and which have quietly expired since last time.
Why applications come back
Files are returned far more often than they are refused, and almost always for a document rather than a decision. A date that has passed, a name spelled two ways across two documents, a letter without the right heading: these are the failures we see, and they are all preventable on the desk rather than at the counter.
The page this guide feeds
One service page, and the two guides that sit either side of it.
Marriage visa and Non-O extension
Read the guideDocuments prepared, and someone with you at the office.
The admin calendar
Read the guideEvery recurring filing, when it falls, and how the dates interact.
Your first 90 days
Read the guideEverything a new arrival files, in the order it becomes due.