Afternoon all. After a wonderful 5 years together and a 6 month visit to the Uk the better half and I have decided to apply for a fiancé visa. Looking for some recommendations on decent legal firms to assist. I’ve made a couple of enquires online, one I’ve been dealing with is Alison Law solicitors who are now bombarding me with phone calls with “limited time offer” of £1500 fixed fee for fiancé and spouse visas. The fact the are hounding me with the hard sell makes me severely doubt how capable they are. Any suggestions on who to avoid and any personal suggestions greatly appreciated. Thanks
Do it yourself with the forums help! It’s cheaper and we have collectively more knowledge @bigmac went through the route you suggest as did @UKDJ and a few others! Your post suggests you’ve met many times probably got the finance side straight and you got a visit visa for her suggests you are in a strong position. Save your money for your honeymoon.
Are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN you need the assistance of a lawyer/solicitor to apply for a FV? Unless there are specific 'complications', such as the applicant has been married before or has children from (a) previous relationship(s) (not an exhaustive list of examples), it is unlikely you need such (expensive) help. Remember, even with 'legal' assistance, YOU/your partner will still have to gather all the evidence - no lawyer is going to 'do the leg work' for you'! Added to that, you can almost guarantee that someone on here will have had the same experience as yourselves and will be able to give valuable advice - for free! Even if you convince yourself you do need legal support, any recommendations are only as good as the individual's own experience, which may not turn out to be the same for you.
I recently used a solicitor £2200 for the spouse visa. Although the wife got here in the end, I would go with the advice above and use the vast experience of the guys on here. Without sounding racist or rude, The solicitor I used was foreign (as is most of them), his English (particularly written) wasn’t brilliant and I spent more time correcting his drafts. I think I probably did more work than he did ! if you decide to use elsewhere, and indeed if I do in the future, I would probably go for the cheaper DIY package from Migrate.com (but I don’t know how useful it is, but it’s couple of hundred as apposed to thousands)
We managed to get the tourist visa ourselves on the second attempt though we were under the impression a Fiancé visa would be a lot more involved, due to the cost didn’t want repeated attempts. I’m going to have a look at the posts mentioned to see if we think we could crack it ourselves as there are no major issues like you mentioned of kids or either of us being married before. Tanks for the input
O The more this woman calls me from the solicitors the less faith I have in them, I’ll check out that migrate.com though.
my plan for tonight is to go back through the threads and get a clear plan of how to start and get a plan together. thanks got the info, greatly appreciated.
My wife was told, very clearly, she would never get a tourist visa as she had never travelled before, got no children, no family or anything else to prove to immigration that she would go back to the Philippines ! We decided in the end to get married in the Philippines. It was fairly easy to organise, cost a lot less than the fiancée visa fees (£560 return flight, £500 airBnB for 30 days I was there) and I got a months holiday thrown in. The only draw back was she had to remain in Filo while I got the spouse visa sorted, but I left Filo on 24 Feb and she arrived in UK on 27 May (a lot of the application was completed before I went over) so not too long a wait.
Think of it as a set of steps and updates You achieved the visit visa and that is the major step …. The first visa The fiancée visa is the same but with some ( you will be surprised by how few) different questions the focus being Finance , Accommodation and Wedding arrangements ( the next step) You will be fine take your time be stringent in the detail.
or you could get married over there--have a holiday--come home--then apply for spouse visa--even simpler--plus saves you applying for FLR if you marry here. Saves you a grand.
Avoid solicitors, just want your money, stress you out with how complicated it's all going to be and once they've got you on board and your initial deposit to cover their out of pocket expenses... your waiting... and waiting and thinking I wish I done this my bloody self - just a royal pain in the arse. If you have no choice then I guess you have no choice.
The processes are the same with the exception of the fiancée visa with the same number of of visa applications after the fiancée visa or not going with the fiancée route, so you don’t save a FLR application It’s fiancée visa, LTR, FLTR, ILR BC Spouse visa FLTR ILR BC Saving would be on the fiancée's step but this maybe a lesser cost than the price of a return flight from UK for the op
Hi Monkeyjazz187 I would like to echo the comments of the other members here and suggest that you can do everything without having to pay solicitors. There are members here, especially Mattecube, who will help you through the process. You are already being hassled by a solicitor for money so it shows you what they really want from you. Save your hard-earned money for when your partner arrives in the UK.
Hi Monkeyjazz187 I got my fiancè, now husband through fiancè visa from Philippines and we used Enhance Visa Services Inc. They have offices in Philippines and Thailand. Could not recommend them enough. They were very professional and extremely helpful. Hope that helps.
