Recently Married Abroad and Living Apart - Bona Fide Marriage.

[KingzFan 0]

Hey guys!
So let me try to sum up the story.
I'm a US citizen I was born and raised in the US and have been living abroad for the last 11 years.
About 5 years ago I met my wife while in College, she had a different major but same school.
We dated for over 4 years and started to plan our lives together and decided that we should move to the US for good.
(It's always been a dream of mine to move back, just wasn't sure on when).
I got in contact with a few immigration attorneys and they said that instead of applying for a K-1 Fiancée Visa it would be best for us to get married here and start the paperwork from here before moving back state side.

We got married at the courthouse about 2 weeks ago and are planning a big ceremony and party for December (we've already started paying for it all).
Since we decided to try and move to the US, we decided that it would be best for us only to live together on the weekends (Since rent here is pretty expensive) that way we can still save up some cash for the move.

Now I started reading up on initiating the i-130 Process and saw that we need to show evidence of a bona fide marriage.
Since we're living apart I was wondering what we could use as evidence, I saw some topics saying that we could open a joint bank account, and stuff like that, just wasn't sure.

We are still kinda in doubt if we should try to go through the process alone or if we should hire an attorney.

You guys got any ideas about what we could submit as evidence and about the need of an attorney?
Thanks!

 

[Boiler 46,374]

You have a year or so to put all that together. Plenty of time to put together a case.

 

Obviously which Consulate is involved matters.

[Ryan H 3,834]

Moved from Progress Reports to Process & Procedures.

[pushbrk 13,254]

Concentrate on evidence of time spent together.  You have four years of living in the same country, so you'll have no shortage of relationship evidence.  

[hm139 55]

Add each other to your life insurance policies as beneficiaries, make a will or a power of attorney...

[lierre 224]

That shouldn't be a problem if it's a bonafide marriage.

 

We've been married for 6 and we decided to live apart for 4 of those 6. I wanted to go to grad school while he worked in a city 3.5 hours away (same state). During our removal of conditions, I wrote in the cover letter a brief paragraph explaining our separate residences. 

 

However, our main residence (where I lived) has a mortgage loan that's in our names. We also share bank accounts, have each other as beneficiary on our retirement accounts, pay taxes married filing jointly, and have our names on all our cars and insurance. You definitely need to show your lives are co-mingled. You seem to have more than enough time to do so.

Edited October 1, 2018 by ivyanddan

[carmel34 3,664]

If you're the USC living abroad, the bigger challenge for you will be to show US domicile and US income to meet the affidavit of support requirements.  There's lots of good advice on VJ about how to do this.  Good luck!