Family Visitor VAF1B: What money is available for your trip?

[david240]

Two related questions here to help resolve doubts for those filling in the Family Visitor form when sponsoring (paying for) for a relative to pay a visit.

Daughter working in UK is paying for widowed mother to visit for a month around her UK marriage to a UK national. Filling in the visa application form online, should the question "What money is available for your trip?" include the value of flights and UK accommodation to be paid for by daughter, or should it be exclusively the money available to her mother in her home-country bank account - which would only be used as mother's personal pocket money?

The succeeding question is "Who is paying for your travel to UK", which of course is the daughter, as a gift and because of the limited personal funds available to her mother.
Then that leads on to the second question: how much money will she give to her mother? ("If someone other than yourself is paying for all or any part of this visit, how much money will they give you? Please also explain why they are paying for all or part of your visit".) Again, the doubt is whether this should include the value of the air fares and accommodation, or just spending money that will be given over?

[MelC]

if the what money is available question is answered with the total amount of money for the trip, flights and personal spending money and the other questions are answered adding up to the total there should not be a problem,

the supporting letter can easily be used to clarify what amounts are what and where they are coming from

footnotes referring to specific documents (bank statements, flight quotes etc) are also useful as they provide a cross reference to the application form and the document that evidences it.

also provide a "contingency amount"

sounds complicated, but keep it simple as that is usually the very best way.

I don't mean this offensively to ECO's, but treat them as if they know nothing at all, and need to be spoon fed the info ~ where to see the evidence ~ make their job easier, make the visa app more likely to succeed?

[karsaai]

Hi,
I'm going to apply family visit visa for my in-laws. In the online application form for family visitor there is no drop down list for son-n-law or brother-in-law in the section 7 'Relationship to you'. What should I select? If I select 'other' they may reject the visa. Please help.