Wanderer wrote:10 year route is 10 years legal stay.
My suggestion is to not run the visa gauntlet with HRA apps and hoping for this and hanging on for that, it's years of worry and uncertainty. Best way is for you to fulfill the requirements of the visa somehow, work three jobs, use savings, do it somehow.
Manufacturing a divorce is a certain way to be tarred with the deception brush and would wreck any visa hopes so just do it honestly and normally, tick all the boxes and save yourself a lot of grief!
Thanks for the reply.
You're probably right about the manufactured divorce. I really am grasping at straws.
There will be no problem in fulfilling the financial requirements for the visa for the 2014-2015 tax year if I stay in UK, but my earnings for the 2013-2014 tax year won't meet the requirement as I've only been back in UK and working for 6 months of the year. However, if my wife needs to return to China for a year my earnings will drop significantly as I'll need to be taking care of my son rather than working the 60 or 70 hours a week I currently do.
There is no way my son will go back to China with my wife, the area in China where we used to live really isn't the best place for a child to be raised, plus there would be no way he could go to school (unless paying £10k per year for an international school), as we had to renounce his Chinese citizenship and all Chinese rights at birth to appease the local officials enough so they wouldn't forcefully sterilise my wife (Chinese countryside officials are a nightmare).
Also, we're trying to do everything we can to stay together for the next few years (hence moving to Ireland if necessary), as these years are the most crucial in a child's upbringing in regards to developing good/bad habits, personality traits, etc., so the idea of opting to separate the family now in order to reunite later seems very wrong considering the permanent effects it may have on our son.
So I guess if there are no options to stay in UK, the only answer is to move to Ireland and try to start and build a business over there from scratch with no contacts/connections, and close the company here which is beginning to do well. It all seems very backwards, but I guess thats the way the HO wants it to be.