OJAS

When did you obtain your 60-day wife visit extension at CW? Before or since 1 September 2020 when @Huckfi obtained his there according to the earlier thread?

The Lancashire Police Force should also IMHO be prosecuted for the bungling incompetence and ineptitude which they have displayed in this whole matter, as well as their crass insensivity in divulging personal details about Nicola to the world and his wife.

I'm sure that Randy Andy's nephew who now lives in California has a spare room in which he could easily be put up if need be. The further from the UK which that particular pair of renegades are located the better IMHO!

And on the few occasions that we are troubled for Life Certificates in connection with our CS pensions (just 2 in nearly 15 years of retirement in my experience), it's OK to submit a witnessed version by email. And the witnessing function does not necessarily have to be performed by a non-family individual "of suitable standing in the local community" - last time I got my mother-in-law to perform the honours!

Or you could even email a scanned form to a suitable pal back in the UK with your section dutifully completed in black ink. Provided they have access to a decent printer they could print it off, complete the witness section, then pop it in a letterbox inside an envelope bearing a second-class stamp. The important thing to ensure of course, though, is that your date and your witnesser's are both the same!

My gut feeling is that every State Pensioner living in Thailand is currently being targeted by DWP for a witnessed Life Certificate to be received at their end by 30 April at the latest. So, if a particular pensioner's form has still not showed up in the post it would IMHO be strongly inadvisable for them to assume that no news was good news, but instead set the ball rolling ASAP (having regard to postal disruption at the UK end at the present time) on the basis of these 2 attachments (which DWP steadfastly refuse to make available for download from the GOV.UK website for some ridiculous reason). CFN701.pdf IPC698.pdf

And, if you can find a fellow Brit to perform the witnessing function for you, get them to write their NI number in the Official Stamp box.

So looks like I can kiss goodbye to any chance of obtaining a one-off 60-day extension then since my wife never obtained a family name change certificate following our marriage in 2009. That didn't prove any bar to her subsequently getting her blue housebook updated and a fresh ID card issued, though. @Huckfi - if you are reading this thread, could you please attach a scan of the family name change certificate your wife obtained (with personal info redacted, of course) and let me know how she went about obtaining it and from where? @ubonjoe - would also appreciate your comments on the need for a family name change certificate in support of an application for a 60-day extension for the purposes of visiting your wife. The only answer to your question I can think of is that Immigration are hell-bent on making the 60-day wife visit extension as difficult as is humanly possible to apply for and, preferably from their point of view, completely impossible to obtain in practice! That said, though, I do wonder whether we might be talking about some uniquely rogue CW requirement here. I'll be going to my local immigration office (Rayong) next week to obtain a re-entry permit and submit a 90-day report in any event, so also plan to take the opportunity of clarifying their requirements for a 60-day wife visit extension application. @connda - you would also IMHO be strongly advised to check your local office's specific requirements for a 60-day wife visit extension application. What goes at CW may not necessarily go there!

According to @Huckfi in that thread, though, one of the docs he was required to produce was a Wife's family name change certificate copy What on earth is a family name change certificate? Never heard of one of these before! Is it a requirement peculiar to CW? Interested in this thread because I'm thinking of following in the OP's footsteps at my local office (Rayong). EDIT: According to Peter Denis on the 2020 thread a family name change certificate is, indeed, needed if your wife changed her surname to yours following your marriage to her, as mine did! So another piece of paper to have to chase round for just for a 60-day extension, then, by the look of things. ????

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? After all, saving face is their tip-top priority bar none, of course!????

And was said partner bank also Bangkok Bank, by any chance? It's my impression that their bungling incompetence and ineptitude lay at the heart of most (if not all) of the issues reported in this thread, over which Wise had absolutely no control, of course.

Nothing wrong at all with doing this IMHO if you're really stuck in finding someone to perform the witnessing function who complies in every respect with DWP's over-fussy eligibility criteria - provided, of course, that you are, in fact, still in the land of the living (and you would, of course, be in considerable difficulty in doing all the necessary in any event if you weren't!). DWP almost certainly have no way of checking the authenticity of any name you choose to use for this purpose. Only serves to underline the whole futility of the Life Certificate charade in the way it is being administered in practice by DWP, I think.

I have renewed my passport twice since moving to Thailand, and on neither occasion (most recently as 3 months ago) was I required to include the original of my existing passport with the application docs. The current requirement, as clearly stated on the GOV.UK website, is to provide "a full colour photocopy of the entire passport (every page including blank pages)." https://www.passport.service.gov.uk/overseas/information/thailand/renew/adult

Strikes me that as a result of this "Statement" CW may now be making a serious bid for the 2023 Rogue Office Of The Year award!

Was this "Statement" attached to a blank TM7 form which you had obtained from CW? Or from an agent??

In the case of switches from marriage to retirement, though, Immigration do consider it necessary for the Thai spouse to be physically present for the initial annual extension of stay application based on retirement so as to satisfy themselves that she is content with the switch.

And at peak times it could be even worse than that, of course. After encountering massive slow-moving queues at check-in (no earlier than 3 hours before the scheduled flight departure time is the norm) and Security, it could then prove a fine call as to whether there is enough time to obtain a re-entry permit before joining another massive slow-moving queue for Immigration and then legging it to some distant departure gate before boarding the flight closes.

The big mystery as far as I am concerned is why the OP chose not to obtain a re-entry permit at the same time as his recent extension of stay based on retirement!

In which case you'll probably be doomed to failure sooner or later if using the online system. You simply can't pick and choose the address you decide to use. Just stick to using a single address for both TM30 and TM47 purposes and be done with it!

Unlikely that they'll pick this up there, I think. More likely that he'll need to face the music at his local office in due course after his return to Thailand. EDIT: Just picked up that he's planning to return to Thailand visa-exempt with no intention to stay here long-term in future. So, unless he subsequently needs to do any business at a local immigration office at any time in the future, he may well be OK!

Unfortunately for you, it was clearly too much of a herculean effort for the Chiang Mai Immigration Office to have pointed out to you on that particular occasion that your next 90-day report was also due on the same date!

Presumably International Registered rather than International EMS in your case, then? I've used both services for sending trackable mail to the UK, with no discernible differences in delivery times.

You're the second person on here to confirm 16 weeks from 8 January, as has @BlueScouse up thread. So we can, I think, take it that this applies to us all. The curious thing as far as I am concerned, though, is that 8 January fell on a Sunday! Was the IPC really a hive of activity that day (at considerable overtime expense to us taxpayers, of course) so as to get a whole load of new life certs off to Thailand? And will they likewise be a hive of activity in the small hours of 1 May (which, I believe, is a Bank Holiday in the UK), with itchy fingers gleefully poised over buttons at 00:00:01 hours sharp to cut off State Pension payments to everyone who has missed the 30 April deadline??????

I have come to the conclusion that DWP have deliberately engineered their acceptable witness categories with the sole and avowed aim of ensuring that, if their rule book is followed to the letter and the witnessing charade is only performed in the physical presence of your witnesser, only Thai nationals with usually a minimal grasp of the English language at best can perform this particular responsibility. But are DWP prepared to provide us with dual English/Thai language versions of the Life Cert to assist us in this task? Of course not, since their overriding desire is to make the witnessing task for us just as difficult as is humanly possible (when, for instance, their flat refusal to accept witnessed Life Certs submitted by email is also thrown into the mix).

Possible good news in the Life Cert context in the short term at least - longer-term sounds rather more uncertain, though: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64548795