Defacto visa financial evidence

[llessur]

Hi all,

Early next year I plan to apply for a defacto visa so that I can head out to Australia with my Aussie other half. We have been living together for about 18 months here in the UK but my girlfriend misses her family and wants to head back - which is fine by me :)

We have loads of evidence over the past 18 months which should help with the application - joint travel, insurance policies, joint bills, rent etc etc. Plus should have no problems with various stat decs etc.

My only worry is regarding proving joint finances - we have had a joint bank account for a year or so but my girlfriend is paid weekly in cash and very little of her money actually goes through the account. When it does (i.e. for bills etc) it just shows on the statement as a cash deposit with no evidence that it was deposited by my girlfriend.

I earn a fair amount more than my other half and the reality is that I do pay for the rent and most of the bills out of my wages. My girlfriend contributes what she can, when she can - but when she does it is usually in cash.

We will be supporting the application with a letter from my girlfriend's employer (a local homeware store) that she is paid weekly in cash but do you think this relatively one-sided financial situation is likely to cause any problems with the application?

At the end of the day, this is a far more financially dependent situation than a couple who earn similar amounts and split everything straight down the middle - but would it be seen like this in a visa application scenario?

Many thanks for any light you can throw on this one.

[MicheleW]

I wouldn't worry about this too much, I am the only income earner in our relationship and this was not even questioned in our application.

Good luck with pulling everything together.

[_shel]

I wouldnt worry about it. I was the main wage earner when we applied and we dont have joint bank accounts. I highlighted odd bits of money going into my account from him, some not recognisable like yours. But we did have tax credit info if you have that.

[llessur]

Thanks very much to both of you!

[piglet1]

Same goes to our r/s, there isn't much proof of our joint finances since we pay rent and food by cash! And he can't open a bank account here as he's on a tourist visa (visa runs every 3 months, which serves as our vacations). So what we did was our landlord wrote us a testimonial of some sort, saying we both pay the rent and the utilities are under his name cos we're both renting his apartment, etc.

One thing that I'm glad is I pay electricity through online banking, and I highlighted it to my CO, and the internet as well.

What about payment for holidays, flights, etc? We supplied those as well to show that he pays for my holidays, and vice versa.