Printed out documents, are they useful?

[walker101]

Hello All,

It appears that in a couple of months my wife will be applying for ILE. We plan to go to the UK for a holiday during which she'll take the KoL test.

In the meantime we are gathering some of the supporting documentation. I have car insurance cards in both our names for a couple of years, however in the US these are just emailed to you and you print them out and the policy documents are just online. Would sending these in be useful or not really?

I also have about 8 flight itineraries emailed to me from Airline companies, giving details of flights booked that we have taken for holidays together. Are they useful, or again is this not in the form that they are looking for.

It's just that a lot of effort is paid to paper reduction, but this seems to be the time when having actual paper would be very useful.

Thanks.

[mrlookforward]

Yes, you will need hard proof in shape of original documents to prove your claim that you have been living together for 4 years or more as husband and wife. Emailed documents, though can be of some use when submitted with other original documents, but on their own they are no good for an ECO. I hope that by trawling through this forum you must have understood the importance of having original documentary proof to corroborate your claim of living together as husband and wife.

[walker101]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm going to spend some time going through documents that my wife and I have together in joint names.

I believe that we have Electric and Cable bills that are in both are names. The leases for the apartment we have are also in both our names. The emailed documents, I suppose can be for support, as you indicate they might not carry substantial weight, but would be of some use to the application.

My concern is, and something that I'll have to look for, are documents from the first year of our marriage, at that point I thought that we'd be in the US for a long long time and I'm not sure if I kept any of these.

My wife does have a US visa in her passport, showing that I had sponsored her to come to the US directly after we had got married. Would that count as a document too? On the visa in my wife's passport it has the company that I work for and my name. It's just that this would be nice to use as it has my wifes name, my name and a date of issue just after we got married. However, it doesn't have an address on it.

I think that I read somewhere and it may have been more related to ILR applications rather than ILE, that you needed 6 documents. Are 6 different documents also required for ILE? Could I count this US visa in my wife's passport as one of those?

Thanks.

[mrlookforward]

Yes, US visa in her passport with your name can sure serve as a proof. Also remember that its not only the documents that you have in joint names that you can use, but also the documents in your own separate names but coming to the same address are also proofs of living together.