SET (M) without Original Marriage Certificate

[adamboston]

I've tried to find a post similar to my problem but had no success. My apologies if this question was already posted elsewhere by another member.

I'm a British national and my wife was granted spouse visa (FLR-M) straight after I got ILR (10 years long residency) in October 2011. Prior to that we were both students but I became a student dependent later.

Now my wife is applying for ILR, at a PEO, in couple of weeks' time from today. We were pretty confident that everything was just in order and spot on until we realised the original marriage certificate has gone missing. We have looked and searched everywhere in house but had no joy. We still have a coloured photocopy of it which I kept separately just in case. Now we are stuck, have absolutely no idea what to do - Due to time constraint we cannot travel to our country of origin to get the duplicate. We got married 10 years ago (no kids) and have been living together in the UK for the past 9 years. In past we sent the original marriage certificate, to Home Office, with all our previous FLR applications including my wife's FLR (M).

Can someone please advice what are our chances or can someone please share their experience when they applied without original marriage certificate. We have all the other documents ready including several letters (proof of cohabitation) confirming we are a genuine couple.

Much much appreciated. (Sorry for any typos)

[Amber]

Given the fact that the Home Office should already have a copy you should be ok. If they're not happy they won't refuse you they'll just put your application on hold and ask for the original to be sent in, which, I very much doubt will happen.

[adamboston]

Given the fact that the Home Office should already have a copy you should be ok. If they're not happy they won't refuse you they'll just put your application on hold and ask for the original to be sent in, which, I very much doubt will happen.

Hi Amber, thanks a million for replying to my post. I hope they don't ask us to produce the original certificate and if they do then it's going to be a hell of a mission. I did try to ring our country of origin local consulate to check if they could access the registrar office database and issue us the duplicate but the answer was NO.

I can only guess and hope that Home Office still has the scanned copies of the documents submitted along with our previous FLR applications (including FLR-M). I am guessing because in 2011 when I requested my SAR file, it did have a copy of our marriage certificate (original sent 3 times in last 9 years) which looked printed straight from a screenshot.

Thank you again for your help.