COA v. Unmarried Partner

[siv]

Hi all....

Happened upon this great forum while doing a websearch....

Thanks in advance for your time.

I am British...my girlfriend is from Taiwan...

We have been living together in the UK since October 2005.

She is currently on a student visa...and has had 2 extensions in her time here so far.... the current one expires in July 2008.

We want to be here together for longer than that so....

OPTION 1
The first most obvious choice is to go for the unmarried partner visa (de facto) via form FLR (M)

We actually have an appoitment for Croydon next week to go for it!
We have been compiling all the documentary evidence we can find to support the app.
From what I can tell the two key factors for OUR application will be the '20' docs proving cohabitation in a relationship akin to marriage AND having sufficient funds so as not to have recourse to public funds.

The second one SHOULD be no prob as my income (18,000 going up to 23,000 if I accept a new job offer - which depends on the success of this app) is sufficient to support both of us.... plus if we get this visa she will be able to get a job (she hasn't been working the 20 hours permissable for students so far)

The first one was looking fairly good unitl I started reading/hearing that even 20 docs each (all docs except tenancy agreeement are in indiv names) is not really enough...and that they would like to see evidence for each month of the last 24....

so now I have doubts about whether we will get it....

OPTION 2
IF we don't get it we COULD go for the COA then spouse visa via FLR (M)...... BUT... I am now reading that applying through the COA is not really a good idea at the mo...

and even if we did there are complications:

- I have been offered a job in another city starting in Feb 08..... say we are refused unmarried partner visa and submit COA app immediately (end Dec 07)...this will then take 4 weeks MINIMUM to get through (by which time the job starts)
- If we then move to another city my gf will not then be able to attend her school...... I wonder IS THIS A PROBLEM IN TERMS OF THEN GETTING MARRIED AND MAKING THE FLR (M) APPLICATION


My questions are

1) For the unmarried partner app.... is it a big problem not to have docs for every month?....we have gaps of 3 and 5 months between docs of rmy gf...... for me we have docs for most months

2) Is it a good/bad idea to use the COA right now?

3) Will non-attendance at the educational institution that a student visa is based at while sorting out the marriage/FLR (M) hinder the application at all?

Hope I haven't made it too complicated

Cheers

S.

[VictoriaS]

I think we may be chatting about this on another forum...

Victoria