Maiden Name & Married Name advice.

[Hammer2001]

My wife came to the uk in 2014 with a leave to enter spouse visa. This will be due for renewal next year. I would like some advice on the issue of having documents in both her maiden name and married name.
We have a mix of bank statements, bills, NHS letters, electoral roll etc, which we can use for proof of address/living together when we renew the visa, theses are a mix of both names.
My wife wishes to be known by her married name, but the complication we have is her current passport and visa are issued in her maiden name and that is the only official ID she has.
Her visa is due for renewal in 2017, but her passport not until 2018, so I assume we will have to still apply for the visa renewal in her maiden name?
We were then planning to renew her passport in her married name and then get the biometric residents permit updated. But can we do this or would her visa then not be valid as it is in her maiden name?
Would we be best to just continue keeping her passport in her maiden name and then wait until after she has ILR on the final visa and ultimately British citizenship before we would finally get a request a British passport in her married name.
Any advice you can offer will be appreciated.

[noajthan]

Good question & I commend your foresight.
After all forewarned is forearmed.

It's a perfectly understandable and normal position to be in, my wife's case was very similar.
Yet between them HO & HMPO have made this area a bit of a minefield, especially for married ladies who have naturalised.

See http://www.immigrationboards.com/britis ... 84012.html

And see the catch-22 situation you will want to avoid:
http://www.immigrationboards.com/britis ... 83170.html

If on final leg of spouse visa, you can probably leave BRP out of the mix, no real point in trading that up to married name as it will become redundant after naturalisation anyway.
But if you do change names any time soon be aware of need to change BRP within (from memory) 3 months.

Depending on wife's nationality (& rules, policies, traditions in her country) you will need to sync up the names on foreign passport and naturalisation certificate before applying for first British passport.

At least that is what HMPO policy appears to be and what they wish you to do. (Whether you can do that in practice depends partly on the other country involved).

Good luck.

[African Princess]

Hiya, I had exactly the same issue, I was given 2.5 years visa in my maiden name. What I did was to get a new passport in my married name a month before applying to extend my visa. I completed the application using my married name and submitted both passports. I also submitted documents in both my maiden and married name. My visa was extended and the new BRP is in my married name. My documents came back in March, so it's fairly recent.

I hope this helps

[noajthan]

Hiya, I had exactly the same issue, I was given 2.5 years visa in my maiden name. What I did was to get a new passport in my married name a month before applying to extend my visa. I completed the application using my married name and submitted both passports. I also submitted documents in both my maiden and married name. My visa was extended and the new BRP is in my married name. My documents came back in March, so it's fairly recent.

I hope this helps

A good suggestion as OP's visa renewal is coming up soon. (If passport/name can be changed in this case in the relevant country).

[Hammer2001]

Thank you for the advice.

We did enquire about changing her passport at the embassy here in the UK, but they told us we have to go back to my wife's home country to do it.
We aren't planning on going back until next year, so if we can we will do it. But as we are only going to be there for a couple of weeks, we aren't confident of getting it back in time.
And even if we do, we wonder at the problems we may have of her flying out with her old passport in her maiden name and back with a new passport in her married name on an already booked return flight!

Why does life have to be so complicated!