2 questions about common-law visa

[Zwiewel]

Hi everyone,

I am German and my partner is Canadian. We met in March 2016 and are in a relationship since July 2016. We lived together in Canada for 3 months last year.Then I had to go back to Germany to apply for the work and travel visa. I stayed out of the country for six months. My partner came to visit for a month. I moved to Canada in April 2017 and we're looking now into applying for the common-law visa. Our questions are:

1. Do the 3 months living together last year count to the 12 months living together, since I was out of the country for too long?!

2. I have to leave the country because of my very sick grandparents in Germany. How long am I allowed to stay away for without compromising my common-law status?

Thanks in advance!

 

[zardoz]

Hi everyone,

I am German and my partner is Canadian. We met in March 2016 and are in a relationship since July 2017. We lived together in Canada for 3 months last year.Then I had to go back to Germany to apply for the work and travel visa. I stayed out of the country for six months. My partner came to visit for a month. I moved to Canada in April 2017 and we're looking now into applying for the common-law visa. Our questions are:

1. Do the 3 months living together last year count to the 12 months living together, since I was out of the country for too long?!

2. I have to leave the country because of my very sick grandparents in Germany. How long am I allowed to stay away for without compromising my common-law status?

Thanks in advance!

1) Not likely. The separation period was much too long.
2) Not more than a couple of weeks probably. Three at the maximum.

You still have quite a long wait ahead of you before you qualify.

 

[spousalsponsee]

Your gap was far too long to use the previous months as part of the CL period.

Any time apart while qualifying should be kept to, at most three weeks or so. Two weeks is safer. No gap at all is best.

If you have been living together since July 2017, the earliest you can qualify is July 2018. If you leave for more than a couple of weeks and they don't go with you, it will be a year from whenever you return. If you want to qualify quicker, you will need to get married.

 

[Rob_TO]

1. Do the 3 months living together last year count to the 12 months living together, since I was out of the country for too long?!

No chance. The time living together must be continuous, meaning no breaks longer than several weeks at the most.

So if you started living together in April 2017, then you would become legally common-law and could apply for PR in April 2018 or later.

2. I have to leave the country because of my very sick grandparents in Germany. How long am I allowed to stay away for without compromising my common-law status?

Agreed with the above, anything longer than 3 weeks and you're pushing your luck. How long a break you are allowed is entirely at discretion of the visa officer processing your file, so you don't want to give them any excuse to claim there was a break in cohabitation so you are not actually common-law.

 

[majesty]

I believe you need to live together for a minimum of 365 consecutive days (a week or 2 break may be OK, I think).

We applied under common-law status too. We did not have a rental or lease agreement as I own my house. My partner was here on a 1 year working holiday visa and all we could do was show proof of plane ticket arrival and departure with ID issued with the house address, correspondences to the house (work paystubs, other official documents, throughout the year). We also were not at the house together the first week we arrived as we spent a week in Toronto the first week of the start of our cohabitation and we were together another 10 days in NY after the 365 days he was allowed to stay in Canada (we had 3 days apart as I joined him 3 days after he left Canada and we counted that towards our cohabitation period). We are 7 months into the application and they haven't asked us for more proof of our cohabitation time period to this date. We also ran this by our immigration consultant and she did not say anything about needing more documentation. Hopefully we meet the eligibility requirements.

Just sharing our experience in case you run into circumstances that may present some grey areas in proving the length of your cohabitation period.

 

[Zwiewel]

Thank you everybody. I will go see my garndparents for two weeks. I hope, that will be okay, since nobody knows if they'll survive the rest of the year. We moved in together in April this year, I edited my original post that said July 2017 instead of July 2016. I'm sorry for that. Does someone know if I can apply for another work visa or to extend the one I'm currently having even though I haven't worked in Canada yet? Thanks again everyone for the quick answers.

 

[Zwiewel]

Your gap was far too long to use the previous months as part of the CL period.

Any time apart while qualifying should be kept to, at most three weeks or so. Two weeks is safer. No gap at all is best.

If you have been living together since July 2017, the earliest you can qualify is July 2018. If you leave for more than a couple of weeks and they don't go with you, it will be a year from whenever you return. If you want to qualify quicker, you will need to get married.

Thank you! WE both agreed that it's too early to get married and we definitely don't want to get married to speed up the immigration process. My grandparents are really sick and I will definitely go. Hoping for the best. Just edited my original post since it said 2017 instead of 2016. We've been living together since April.

 

[Rob_TO]

Thank you everybody. I will go see my garndparents for two weeks. I hope, that will be okay, since nobody knows if they'll survive the rest of the year. We moved in together in April this year, I edited my original post that said July 2017 instead of July 2016. I'm sorry for that. Does someone know if I can apply for another work visa or to extend the one I'm currently having even though I haven't worked in Canada yet? Thanks again everyone for the quick answers.

Are you on IEC/Working holiday visa? I know some countries allow a 2nd year, however not sure if Germany is one of these countries.