A UK spouse visa application is less a legal argument than a document exercise. The Home Office is not usually trying to decide whether your marriage is real. It is checking whether the evidence in front of it is in the exact form the rules demand — and that is where most refusals come from.

This guide walks through the process in the order you should actually do it, which is not the order the online form presents it. Several steps need starting weeks before you go anywhere near the application.

The requirements below are taken from GOV.UK.

At Kenton Solicitors, our immigration team has advised partners and families on these applications from our office in Harrow for over 20 years.

Call us on 020 8907 2444 or request a free consultation before you start, not after something has gone wrong.

Before You Begin: The Order Matters

Two parts of this process have long lead times and cannot be rushed at the end:

• The English language test — you need an approved test booked, sat and passed before you apply
• The financial evidence — much of it covers a six-month period, so if the paperwork is not already right, you may need to wait for it to become right

Everything else can be assembled relatively quickly. Start with those two.

Step 1: Check You Actually Qualify

Before spending anything, confirm the basics. You must both be 18 or over, intend to live together permanently in the UK, and your partner must be a British or Irish citizen, settled in the UK, holding pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, or holding protection status.

You must also be able to prove one of these:

• A marriage or civil partnership recognised in the UK
• Living together in a relationship for at least 2 years when you apply
• A relationship of at least 2 years where you have been unable to live together
• Engagement — the fiancé, fiancée or proposed civil partner route, where you must marry within 6 months of arriving

And the financial requirement: a combined income of at least £29,000 a year, or £18,600 if you first applied as a partner before 11 April 2024 and are extending that same visa.

Our guide to spouse visa costs and processing times sets out the requirements and the Home Office fees in full.

Step 2: Work Out Where You Are Applying From

This determines the fee, the processing time and in some cases whether you can apply at all.

If you are outside the UK, you apply for entry clearance before you travel.

If you are inside the UK, you may be able to switch. But you usually must leave the UK to apply if you are here as a visitor or on a visa of 6 months or less. There are two narrow exceptions: a 6-month fiancé, fiancée or proposed civil partner visa, and permission connected to a family court case or divorce.

This catches people out badly. A partner who arrives on a visit visa expecting to switch once they are here generally cannot, and will have to leave and start again from abroad.

You also cannot usually apply if your family member is in the UK on a work visa or a student visa — that is a different route entirely.

Step 3: Book and Pass the English Test

You need an approved test at CEFR level A1 or higher for a first application.

Consider taking a higher level than you need. At the extension stage you will need A2 in speaking and listening, and for settlement after five years you need B1 — but if you pass at B1 or higher now, you can reuse that result at both later stages. One test instead of three.

You are exempt if you are over 65, if you have a physical or mental condition preventing you from meeting the requirement, or if you are a national of a majority English-speaking country including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA, Malta and most of the Caribbean.

Book this early. Test availability is not guaranteed and the certificate has to exist before you apply.

Step 4: Build the Financial Evidence

This is the step that decides most applications, and the rules are prescriptive about format, not just amount.

What you need depends on how the income arises:

• Employment income — bank statements, six months of payslips, and an employer’s letter. The letter must be dated, on headed paper, and confirm your employment, job title, length of employment, contract type, pre-tax earnings, how long you have been paid at the current salary, and that the payslips are genuine.
• Self-employment or company director income — based on at least the last six months, usually evidenced through a Self Assessment tax return.
• Cash savings — relevant above £16,000, with rules about how long the money has been held.
• Other income — pension income, property rental, dividends.

Extra rules apply if the income is not from employment, if maternity or paternity leave fell within the last six months, or if you are combining sources. Combining income and savings has its own calculation.

Earning enough is not the same as proving it correctly. We see applications refused where the income was comfortably above the threshold but the employer’s letter was missing one of the required confirmations.

If Your Partner Receives Certain Benefits

You are exempt from the minimum income requirement if your partner receives Disability Living Allowance, Attendance Allowance, Personal Independence Payment or Carer’s Allowance. You must instead show you can house and support yourselves without relying on additional public funds — a different test, often easier to meet, but still one that needs evidencing.

Step 5: Gather Everything Else

The application asks for considerably more than people expect.

Your identity and history: all your names, date of birth, current passport or travel ID, copies of the photo page and any visa or entry stamps from previous passports, details of previous immigration applications, any criminal convictions, your National Insurance number if you have one, and — if applying from outside the UK — your parents’ dates of birth and nationality.

Your relationship: how you met, how often you see each other, how long you have lived together with proof such as council tax bills, what you pay for together, and whether you are your partner’s carer.

Your partner’s details: name, date of birth, nationality, passport, and evidence of their right to be in the UK. Also any previous marriages or civil partnerships with evidence they ended, such as a divorce certificate, and anyone they financially support, including their parents.

Your own previous relationships: anyone you were previously married to or had children with, with evidence any marriage ended.

Children: details of all your children, including those not applying — name, nationality, date of birth, passport details, who they normally live with, who else has parental responsibility, your involvement in their daily life, any court-granted access arrangements, and countries they have lived in or visited.

Life outside the UK: countries you have lived in or visited, and family and friends in your country of birth or nationality.

Your partner’s immigration status: an online share code if they hold an eVisa, or their biometric residence permit. A BRP can be used for 24 months after its printed expiry date or until 31 December 2026, whichever comes first — so if you are relying on one, check that date now.

The TB Test

You need a tuberculosis test certificate if you are coming to the UK for 6 months or more, you have lived in a listed country for 6 months or more, and you were living there within the last 6 months.

Fiancé, fiancée and proposed civil partner applicants may need one even for a stay of less than 6 months.

A clear certificate is valid for 6 months from the date of your x-ray, so do not take the test too early. Diplomats, returning UK residents away no more than two years, and people coming under a scheme to support Ukrainians are exempt.

Translations

Any document not in English or Welsh needs a certified translation. This is a common and entirely avoidable cause of delay.

Step 6: Apply Online and Pay

The application is made online and you will need an email address. You pay the Home Office application fee and the immigration health surcharge at this stage, and you can opt for a faster decision where one is available.

A fee waiver may be available if you cannot afford the fee. It is worth asking about rather than assuming.

Document upload instructions are given to you during the application.

Step 7: Prove Your Identity

You will need to attend an appointment to provide your fingerprints and a photograph. You are told how to book it when you apply.

Take your passport with you. It is usually returned the same day.

If you are applying from abroad, the visa application centre may be in another country. Allow extra time and budget for the travel if so.

Step 8: Wait for the Decision

The published service standards are:

• From outside the UK — 12 weeks
• From inside the UK — 8 weeks

Those apply where the minimum income and English language requirements are met. Applications made in the UK on the basis of private life instead have no service standard at all, with a published waiting time of around 12 months.

You can ask for your passport and other documents back while you wait, but you may have to withdraw your application to get them — so do not plan travel around that possibility.

Step 9: Your eVisa

If the application succeeds, you receive an eVisa — a digital record of your identity and immigration status. There is no card. Your decision email or letter explains how to access it, and you will need a UKVI account.

There is one detail here almost nobody mentions, and it matters.

Your visa carries either a standard endorsement or a non-standard endorsement. A standard endorsement means you met all the requirements. A non-standard endorsement means you met only some of them but were granted the visa to join your family anyway — and that can affect your eligibility to settle later.

If your grant letter shows a non-standard endorsement, that is something to take advice on well before you reach the five-year mark, not when you come to apply for settlement and find the years do not count the way you assumed.

Step 10: What Happens Next

On this visa you can work and study. You cannot usually claim benefits or public funds.

On the fiancé, fiancée or proposed civil partner route you cannot work or study until you have married or formed a civil partnership and been granted an extension.

The route to settlement runs in stages:

• First grant — up to 2 years and 9 months
• Extension — up to a further 2 years and 6 months, and you can extend more than once
• Settlement — the earliest you can apply for indefinite leave to remain is after 5 years of continuous residence on a family visa as a partner

Time on a fiancé visa does not count towards the five years. Nor does time on any other kind of visa.

Two practical points on extending. You can apply at any time before your current permission expires, and you should — but when extending to stay with the same family member, only up to 28 days of your remaining stay is added to the new visa. Applying very early simply loses you the rest.

Our guide on when to apply for ILR explains how the qualifying period is counted, and our ILR and settlement team can advise on your dates.

Where Applications Go Wrong

• Applying before the English test is passed. The certificate must exist first.
• An employer’s letter missing one required confirmation. All of the listed points have to be there.
• Arriving as a visitor intending to switch. You generally have to leave and apply from abroad.
• Taking the TB test too early. The certificate lasts 6 months from the x-ray date.
• Uncertified translations. Documents not in English or Welsh need certified translations.
• Leaving children off the form. All children must be declared, including those not applying.
• Relying on a BRP past its usable date. Check the 31 December 2026 cut-off.
• Ignoring a non-standard endorsement. It can affect settlement years later.
• Applying too close to a deadline. A 12-week standard leaves little room for a request for more information.

Where an application has been refused, the time limits for challenging it are short. Our immigration appeals team can advise quickly on the options.

How We Can Help

Most of what goes wrong on these applications is preventable, and almost all of it is preventable before submission rather than after.

We review the financial evidence against what the rules actually require, check the relationship evidence covers the right period rather than just the recent past, identify anything in the immigration history that needs explaining before the Home Office asks, and tell you plainly if something is not ready yet. Where the financial requirement is borderline, we say so — it is better to wait two months and succeed than to apply now and be refused.

For the full route, see our spouse and partner visa service or the range of our immigration services. If your partner holds pre-settled status, our EU Settlement Scheme team can advise on how that affects the application.

Our office is on Kenton Road, Harrow, open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm, with appointments in person, by telephone or by video call.

Frequently Asked Questions

The requirements and figures in this article were checked against GOV.UK in October 2026. Immigration rules, fees and processing times change regularly, so please confirm the current position on GOV.UK before applying. For advice specific to your circumstances, please contact us directly.