Spouse Visa application from third country

[heathrow]

Hi. I am hoping someone can help me with a spouse overstaying question.

My wife (Australian passport holder) returned from a funeral last Friday and was told that her spouse visa issued in July 2016 had expired on 17 March 2019. Needless to say we were surprised as her old visa issued in 1999 gave her indefinite leave to remain so we assume her new visa was the same (her old ILR visa expired because we were outside the UK for 7 years - hence the need to apply for a new spouse visa). We were completely unaware there was an expiry - no one mentioned this at any stage, although it is written on the card (obviously should have read the fine print!)

She was allowed to enter the UK on a 6-month visitor visa, presumably because we have 2 school age children (both UK born citizens, as am I). I also think it helped that she had left the UK to go to the funeral within 90 days of her visa expiring.

We now need to apply for a new visa. There seem to be two options according to this thread immigration-for-family-members/spouse-v ... 46449.html

The first is for my wife to leave the UK and apply for a new spouse visa

The second is for my wife to remain in the UK and apply through the FLR FP route (I am not sure what FLR FP stands for).

My questions are:
(1) if she applies for a spouse visa from outside the UK does she have to apply from Australia? We have no family in Australia so it makes sense for her to stay with her parents who are living in Japan.

(2) the application form for the FLR FP route suggests that: "You’ll usually need to leave the UK to apply for a family visa if either: you have permission to be in the UK as a visitor or your visa is for 6 months or less." The use of the word "usually" suggests that a visitor visa holder could potentially apply from within the UK - which seems to be what happened in the thread above - but does anyone have any insights?

With thanks for any thoughts on this.

[seagul]

Hi. I am hoping someone can help me with a spouse overstaying question.

My wife (Australian passport holder) returned from a funeral last Friday and was told that her spouse visa issued in July 2016 had expired on 17 March 2019. Needless to say we were surprised as her old visa issued in 1999 gave her indefinite leave to remain so we assume her new visa was the same (her old ILR visa expired because we were outside the UK for 7 years - hence the need to apply for a new spouse visa). We were completely unaware there was an expiry - no one mentioned this at any stage, although it is written on the card (obviously should have read the fine print!)

She was allowed to enter the UK on a 6-month visitor visa, presumably because we have 2 school age children (both UK born citizens, as am I). I also think it helped that she had left the UK to go to the funeral within 90 days of her visa expiring.

We now need to apply for a new visa. There seem to be two options according to this thread immigration-for-family-members/spouse-v ... 46449.html

The first is for my wife to leave the UK and apply for a new spouse visa

The second is for my wife to remain in the UK and apply through the FLR FP route (I am not sure what FLR FP stands for).

My questions are:
(1) if she applies for a spouse visa from outside the UK does she have to apply from Australia? We have no family in Australia so it makes sense for her to stay with her parents who are living in Japan.

(2) the application form for the FLR FP route suggests that: "You’ll usually need to leave the UK to apply for a family visa if either: you have permission to be in the UK as a visitor or your visa is for 6 months or less." The use of the word "usually" suggests that a visitor visa holder could potentially apply from within the UK - which seems to be what happened in the thread above - but does anyone have any insights?

With thanks for any thoughts on this.

Although ILR has no expiry date but it usually ceases to exist on 2 years of absence from UK. In your case the best, faster and economical way is to apply for spouse visa from outside the UK even from Japan/Australia. FLRfp can be succeed from within the UK but you might end up in wasting a lot of your savings and time on it.

[CR001]

She should have applied for a Returning Resident visa if she had previously held ILR. By applying for a spouse visa to return to the UK, it cancelled out her previous ILR completely.

[heathrow]

An extension would have been preferable, but we were told we would probably be rejected.

This all such a headache

[heathrow]

My spouse recently overstayed her visa by some 50 days and she now needs to apply for a new spouse visa (the overstay was an oversight as we wrongly thought spouse visas did not expire).

The initial spouse visa was granted while we were living in Australia (I am a dual UK/Aust national). We have no family in Australia so it makes sense for her to apply for her new visa from the country where her parents are currently living (although she is not a resident or citizen of that country and so would be on a visitor visa).

Does anyone have any experience of this?

[CR001]

My understanding is that she needs to apply from a country where she has legal residence, i.e. not as a visitor.

[heathrow]

Thank you for your answer (and joining this question to my last thread).