Evidence for joint accounts? (IR-1/CR-1)

[awaywego 28]

Is there a recommendation on the best way to show joint bank accounts in the bona fide marriage evidence during the IR-1/CR-1 process?

Our accounts have been joint for 3.5 years. It would be nice to show this as part of our evidence, but I'm not sure what here would be too little and what too much.

Thanks!

[Sukie 1,460]

Is there a recommendation on the best way to show joint bank accounts in the bona fide marriage evidence during the IR-1/CR-1 process?

Our accounts have been joint for 3.5 years. It would be nice to show this as part of our evidence, but I'm not sure what here would be too little and what too much.

Thanks!

I can only tell you what WE are going to do.

We will submit the first statement after our marriage date, and one every quarter thereafter until the present day. It appears that they want ALL pages of each statement (unfortunately), so don't skimp.

Best of luck to you!

Sukie in NY

[Soup Dragon 104]

We included full statements (photocopies) from the only joint account that we have and used one from each quarter. They like to see continuous financial activity.

I see you are Frankfurt DCF too, so I can't see that you will have a problem with 3.5 years' worth of statements. We only had just over a year's worth and these were accepted just fine, no RFE.

Good luck!

Edited October 14, 2015 by D&B18

[awaywego 28]

Thanks for the responses! Quarterly statements it is, then.

"They like to see continuous financial activity." – Silver lining for those student loan payments coming out of our US account?

Two more questions:

1) We're missing some statements, so there are gaps in the quarterly presentation. Should this be noted?

2) I assume we need to translate the German statements. If so, would one translation of the general layout (e.g., text in headers and footers) suffice?

[Soup Dragon 104]

I wouldn't worry too much about the statements not being quarterly, we just did that because we thought it was a good number per year to provide and because we had them to hand. I'm sure if there are 'gaps' it will be fine, you are still showing continuity over the last 3.5 years whether it's every quarter or, say, every four months. You have more than we did!! I doubt they scrutinize what goes and in what goes out either, just that your names are on the statement and that the account is being used on a regular basis. My husband tells me that we blanked out the account number although I can't be sure as our CR1 file is in our household shipment (we just moved back to Germany on government orders and didn't think I would need it!)

I'm not sure about the translation, ours were US statements. We didn't need to translate any of our stuff, our house lease was already in English and German and everything else was in English so it's not something that we needed to investigate.

Good luck for your interview when it comes around, the folks at the consulate are really friendly!!

[awaywego 28]

I wouldn't worry too much about the statements not being quarterly, we just did that because we thought it was a good number per year to provide and because we had them to hand. I'm sure if there are 'gaps' it will be fine, you are still showing continuity over the last 3.5 years whether it's every quarter or, say, every four months. You have more than we did!! I doubt they scrutinize what goes and in what goes out either, just that your names are on the statement and that the account is being used on a regular basis. My husband tells me that we blanked out the account number although I can't be sure as our CR1 file is in our household shipment (we just moved back to Germany on government orders and didn't think I would need it!)

I'm not sure about the translation, ours were US statements. We didn't need to translate any of our stuff, our house lease was already in English and German and everything else was in English so it's not something that we needed to investigate.

Good luck for your interview when it comes around, the folks at the consulate are really friendly!!

The gaps are a bit larger than an extra month (papers got lost in the move here), but we'll sort something. We have plenty of other evidence that covers the time our marriage and relationship.

I envy that you didn't need to translate your lease. I hope we can only do part, but I imagine that we'll have to translate the entire 15-20 pages of riveting information like how many sets of keys we get, where to store our bikes, and how often to air out the apartment.

Thanks again for the response.