Is My Evidence Enough?

[LilyJ 1,258]

I am about to submit the petition for my husband's CR1 tomorrow but I want to know if the evidence we are including is enough, since we didn't have any financial assets to include
We have:

• Timeline of relationship letter
• 6 pages (22 pictures) of pictures from vacations (4 are from the wedding), including pictures of us alone and pictures of us with family/friends, captioned with when the pictures are from and where (made in word doc)
• Photocopies of his passport stamps and plane tickets from his previous visits
• Photocopies of my passport stamp and tickets 
• One notarized 3rd party affidavit from my mother
• Certified copy of marriage certificate

Will this be good enough to avoid an RFE?

Edited February 1, 2019 by LilyJohansen

[LilyJ 1,258]

Forgot to mention; I also am planning to include amusement park tickets/ticket confirmation emails

[millefleur 5,046]

Based on the evidence it strikes me as a couple who married recently (also as per your timeline) and has mostly spent time vacationing together with family and friends. Any additional evidence of travel together can't hurt. Since you were married recently, have you included receipts of wedding rings, invoices for the dress, flowers, etc? We included that in ours, I filed in person via DCF (faster but we had to do two interviews!) and they took everything related to our wedding because we also applied shortly after getting married. We had contracts from the car we rented, the restaurant, receipts, invoices, etc...they took absolutely everything related to the wedding, even receipts that didn't even have our names on it. I added captions to explain, i.e. "Receipts for wedding rings." Do you have any wedding "congrats" cards signed by family and friends? That's also strong to include, anything with both names on it. We had about 3 or 4 "congrats" cards from family and friends.

 

I don't know if this is still a popular thing but sometimes folks include screen shots of their correspondence from Facebook, chat/messanger apps, Skype, etc. So that might something to add if you can access it.

[LilyJ 1,258]

2 minutes ago, millefleur said:

Based on the evidence it strikes me as a couple who married recently (also as per your timeline) and has mostly spent time vacationing together with family and friends. Any additional evidence of travel together can't hurt. Since you were married recently, have you included receipts of wedding rings, invoices for the dress, flowers, etc? We included that in ours, I filed in person via DCF (faster but we had to do two interviews!) and they took everything related to our wedding because we also applied shortly after getting married. We had contracts from the car we rented, the restaurant, receipts, invoices, etc...they took absolutely everything related to the wedding, even receipts that didn't even have our names on it. I added captions to explain, i.e. "Receipts for wedding rings." Do you have any wedding "congrats" cards signed by family and friends? That's also strong to include, anything with both names on it. We had about 3 or 4 "congrats" cards from family and friends.

 

I don't know if this is still a popular thing but sometimes folks include screen shots of their correspondence from Facebook, chat/messanger apps, Skype, etc. So that might something to add if you can access it.

I think we have some of the receipts, but for things like venue for example we were never sent a receipt for (which I still find weird, we asked her twice!), I'll take a look at both my email and in our wedding stuff to see if I can find some invoices/receipts though since I believe we should have most of them. We do have wedding cards, both from family and friends that didn't attend and family/friends that attended as well, I was thinking about adding that too but I wasn't sure if I would need to scan those or not to include them

[millefleur 5,046]

1 minute ago, LilyJohansen said:

I think we have some of the receipts, but for things like venue for example we were never sent a receipt for (which I still find weird, we asked her twice!), I'll take a look at both my email and in our wedding stuff to see if I can find some invoices/receipts though since I believe we should have most of them. We do have wedding cards, both from family and friends that didn't attend and family/friends that attended as well, I was thinking about adding that too but I wasn't sure if I would need to scan those or not to include them

I would definitely include the cards from family/friends; you can scan the front/back and then add a caption in a Word doc explaining which friend/family member it is from. The notarized 3rd party affidavits are usually considered one of the weakest forms of evidence, good to include but just isn't usually that convincing. If you can find any receipts from your wedding at all, even if it's just a few, I think it's a really good idea to include them. The whole idea is to "front load" the petition with copious amounts of evidence to avoid the dreaded RFE.

[LilyJ 1,258]

1 minute ago, millefleur said:

I would definitely include the cards from family/friends; you can scan the front/back and then add a caption in a Word doc explaining which friend/family member it is from. The notarized 3rd party affidavits are usually considered one of the weakest forms of evidence, good to include but just isn't usually that convincing. If you can find any receipts from your wedding at all, even if it's just a few, I think it's a really good idea to include them. The whole idea is to "front load" the petition with copious amounts of evidence to avoid the dreaded RFE.

Ok, I will be sure definitely to scan those then and dig up some of our invoices as well, thank you  I figured the 3rd party affidavit wouldn't be so strong so I'm glad to cover my bases with the other things. I included it anyways since my husband really wanted to have at least 1 and because RapidVisa insists on them rather than pictures as well, but from all the posts I've seen on here from everyone who has done the process saying that pictures tickets etc are stronger evidence than affidavits I wanted to include those with it. I would rather have the RapidVisa agents annoyed at me including pictures than to risk an RFE 😂

[millefleur 5,046]

Just now, LilyJohansen said:

Ok, I will be sure definitely to scan those then and dig up some of our invoices as well, thank you  I figured the 3rd party affidavit wouldn't be so strong so I'm glad to cover my bases with the other things. I included it anyways since my husband really wanted to have at least 1 and because RapidVisa insists on them rather than pictures as well, but from all the posts I've seen on here from everyone who has done the process saying that pictures tickets etc are stronger evidence than affidavits I wanted to include those with it. I would rather have the RapidVisa agents annoyed at me including pictures than to risk an RFE 😂

Haha, definitely. We also included 1 notarized 3rd party affidavit and they took that as well, so definitively send it in but just pad it with other evidence.

[Brittany95 36]

On 2/1/2019 at 12:57 AM, millefleur said:

Based on the evidence it strikes me as a couple who married recently (also as per your timeline) and has mostly spent time vacationing together with family and friends. Any additional evidence of travel together can't hurt. Since you were married recently, have you included receipts of wedding rings, invoices for the dress, flowers, etc? We included that in ours, I filed in person via DCF (faster but we had to do two interviews!) and they took everything related to our wedding because we also applied shortly after getting married. We had contracts from the car we rented, the restaurant, receipts, invoices, etc...they took absolutely everything related to the wedding, even receipts that didn't even have our names on it. I added captions to explain, i.e. "Receipts for wedding rings." Do you have any wedding "congrats" cards signed by family and friends? That's also strong to include, anything with both names on it. We had about 3 or 4 "congrats" cards from family and friends.

 

I don't know if this is still a popular thing but sometimes folks include screen shots of their correspondence from Facebook, chat/messanger apps, Skype, etc. So that might something to add if you can access it.

Receipts from the wedding seem irrelevant. We were married two months before applying for CR1 and they never requested anything like that from us. I would just maybe add a photo from your wedding if you have any and that's usually good enough.

[millefleur 5,046]

6 minutes ago, Brittany95 said:

Receipts from the wedding seem irrelevant. We were married two months before applying for CR1 and they never requested anything like that from us. I would just maybe add a photo from your wedding if you have any and that's usually good enough.

I filed my I-130 directly in person via DCF and the IO specifically wanted to see all receipts related to our wedding, so maybe it might appear irrelevant but sometimes apparently USCIS wants to see that kind of evidence. It is not unusual to send in receipts at all, especially for wedding rings, which is common.

Edited February 4, 2019 by millefleur

[AstroCanada 206]

If you have any evidence of living together or commingling finances, that would be very helpful.  

[LilyJ 1,258]

48 minutes ago, AstroCanada said:

If you have any evidence of living together or commingling finances, that would be very helpful.  

We've never lived together and unfortunately as stated don't have any financial assets together and currently aren't able to, I've sent my package off already now though with everything aforementioned plus a couple wedding receipts so we will just have to see now

[John & Rose 7,239]

12 hours ago, LilyJohansen said:

We've never lived together and unfortunately as stated don't have any financial assets together and currently aren't able to, I've sent my package off already now though with everything aforementioned plus a couple wedding receipts so we will just have to see now

I was able to add my wife to my work health insurance.  I sent copies of the insurance card with her name on it.  There really isn't much of a chance to commingle finances since she needs an SSN to be on my accounts and I need to be a citizen there to be on hers.  I can't add her to my lease since they require an SSN and biometrics with background check.  We didn't send anything but the insurance cards and some photos of my 10 trips there.  We had NOA2 in just 4 months!  

[LilyJ 1,258]

5 minutes ago, John & Rose said:

I was able to add my wife to my work health insurance.  I sent copies of the insurance card with her name on it.  There really isn't much of a chance to commingle finances since she needs an SSN to be on my accounts and I need to be a citizen there to be on hers.  I can't add her to my lease since they require an SSN and biometrics with background check.  We didn't send anything but the insurance cards and some photos of my 10 trips there.  We had NOA2 in just 4 months!  

Unfortunately I don't have any of my own kind of insurance, I am under 26 so I am still on my stepfather's insurance until I decide to leave it so I couldn't add my husband on to it. We have the same issue with the SSN too unfortunately, but hopefully what we sent will be enough. I sure hope we get as lucky as you with the NOA2 wow!! Congrats on that!!

Edited February 5, 2019 by LilyJohansen

[John & Rose 7,239]

Just now, LilyJohansen said:

Unfortunately I don't have any of my own kind of insurance, I am under 26 so I am still on my stepfather's insurance until I decide to leave it so I couldn't add my husband on to it. We have the same issue with the SSN too unfortunately, but hopefully what we sent will be enough. I sure hope we get as lucky as you with the NOA2 wow!!

All we can do is our best.  I'm sure that your proof will be fine.  They do understand some off the constraints of being married and living in 2 countries.