steady

Where did you get the understanding that the Thai adoption process would be complete within the year? We looked into it about 3 years ago and the people in the government agency which deals with adoptions involving a foreigner told the wife that we shouldn't be surprised to wait between 4 and 6 years!

As it happens the legal adoption doesn't really affect anything when going for a visitor's visa. 7by7 has shown the rules that must be satisfied. In addition we used a Por Khor 14 from the local amphur to show that we were legally taking care of our niece and that she was coming on holiday with us as a family member. Getting that drafted meant an input from our niece's mother so it all fitted in nicely.

Passport handed back and biometrics card arrives about a week later. However we were told that wife could not travel on the passport unless the biometrics card was with it.

From our own experience I think that you may find that you have problems with a formal adoption in the UK without having settlement status for your niece in the first instance. Presently we are going through an adoption for our niece and the Sheriff (Judge in Scotland) is being exceptionally careful concerning his view that an "Adoption with a Foreign Element" was taking place. We have had to get a letter from the Government saying that they are happy that no foreign aspect arises because of the settlement status on our niece's visa. However if that were not the case I'm pretty certain that we would not be allowed to proceed.

This led the Sheriff to comment that our situation appears to be ahead of legislation and he is assessing things at each stage of the adoption process. Very few people go down this route and so there is very little legal framework to adhere to. This works both ways, if you get a Judge who is happy to proceed then there should be no barriers to getting the adoption completed. However should the Judge (as in our case) want to take things carefully then not only will it more than double the cost it also extends the timescales.

We started the process over a year ago and have had social work reports, school reports and mother's consent all done (last December). Now we have to get court reporting officer's reports done and the court wants further consent from the mother and even then the Sheriff openly admits that he will have to re-assess things at every stage because of what he sees as the complexity of the case. I see the case as an open and shut UK adoption!

As it is we are moving forward very slowly but lack of legislation to cover all cases certainly should not be ignored as a problem.

I brought my niece to the UK in 2012 and got a settlement visa for her. We went down the defacto adoption route but we had been living together as a family in Thailand for a couple of years and could prove it. It seems to me that your issue, if you do decide that the defacto route is for you is that you have not been together for long enough as a family. Is there any way that you can stay in Oman for another year or so? If your niece is in an international school then she won't be missing out on education and it may be the best long term answer.

You may well be throwing good money away if you employ an immigration advisor or solicitor who specialises in adoption of family members when you already know that you cannot meet the regulations. The input that you have had so far from 7by7 is probably as good as it gets, whether you pay money or get it free. There may be others who can add more and will contribute shortly.

From what you say it seems to me that everything can be done, but probably not to your desired timescales. I think that after some time you could easily prove (to the satisfaction of the regs) that you had adopted your niece in a defacto fashion but right now it seems to me that the 3 months together is much too short. However if you accept this then you can still live together and travel to the UK for holidays whilst preparing for your application. Good luck.

I claimed child benefit for my niece last year and as 7by7 rightly says the calculation is done on the claimant i.e. me. Niece did not have ILR at the time. I was also paid child tax credits at the same time - again my wife and niece did not have ILR at the time of applying. I just put down all of my wife's details and got the CTC awarded on my income. I found the whole process straightforward but I didn't ask for advice. I just applied and assumed that if I was not eligible the government would tell me.

Why are you involving the UKBA in a DWP process? It's nothing to do with the UKBA. As bobrussell says, if you apply truthfully the decision will be made. My understanding of the situation - which is only as a layman - is that you probably should be eligible for child benefit. I don't know about child tax credits but tend to think that if you get child benefit then CTC would follow if your income is low enough.

I think that bobrussell and Jay Sata have both indicated very well the situation and the issues which arise from it. Burbonizer, you're definitely between a rock and a hard place but I also think that now is the time for the decision to be made about your wife's son.

If you do decide that it's worth a try then start reading exactly what 'sole responsibility' is and get your application to address it. As stated earlier the difficulty is getting the ECO to believe that your wife has had sole responsibility for her son for the last 7 years when she hasn't lived in the same country. It's normal for the embassy to carry out telephone interviews with those involved with the child's upbringing. Do you know what they will say.....will it help or hinder your cause?

This forum appears to always have someone asking about their failed application for the wife's child to come over to the UK. It appears to me that the common reason for failure is the inability to prove 'sole responsibility'. I don't know if that's because the applicants do not understand the idea of sole responsibility AND then fail to get the Thai side of the family to understand it too because some of them will be contacted by the embassy. Or if it is just that the ECO is looking for something special to counteract the feeling that if the child or children lived apart from mother for X years then the mother cannot show sole responsibility.

My own personal experience with the embassy hinged on the need to address sole responsibility. We had taken care of our niece and had to show that we had sole responsibility when applying for her settlement visa because she wasn't legally adopted. It was a lot easier for us because living together meant that we had lots of photos, school receipts, medical insurance, her name on the Tabien baan and a couple of visitor visas from earlier holidays. My wife and our niece's mother were both phoned and interviewed. The questions were pretty much aimed at finding out who had sole responsibility, and I suppose to make sure that the stories matched up. Before I put the application in I spent many a frustrating afternoon trying to get the wife to understand exactly what sole responsibility was and then got her make sure that if anyone got a call from the embassy to answer the question truthfully and don't ramble on or to embellish stories.

Our niece's mother explained that we took care of her daughter now and that she was happy because she could not take care of her daughter, but she also gave a few Thai style rambling stories (left me feeling frustrated until we got the visa because I didn't know what she had actually said - she couldn't remember herself). It never crossed my mind that she had probably never had a business call before!

With hindsight I feel that the staff at the embassy do have an understanding of how Thailand works and that a mother living in another country can still have sole responsibility. However it is up to you to make the case. It's all about satisfying the rules, so forget thinking that ECO's shouldn't have the power to break up families. It's about looking at each requirement and then proving why you meet that requirement.

Good luck.

I think that the passport issue is the easiest part of the OPs problems. I wonder what the postings will be like when everyone is discussing how to prove 'sole responsibility' to the embassy.

A bit of a Catch 22 situation.

I think the only real way round this is to go down 7by7's route and apply without the biological fathers permission. If he 'grants' permission then the UK authorities are very likely to consider he is still exercising parental responsibility and refuse a settlement visa!

Yes, but that still doesn't address the issue that the mother has been living in the UK and someone else has been taking care of the child. However I agree that sorting one problem at a time is the way forward but the timing may be unfortunate on a couple of counts. Firstly the government is making noises about getting immigration from 100's of thousands down to 10's of thousands and the number of years that mum hasn't been present in Thailand. I know that proving sole responsibility can be proved by absent parents but there are many cases seen on the forums where people haven't been successful for one reason or another.

I think that the passport issue is the easiest part of the OPs problems. I wonder what the postings will be like when everyone is discussing how to prove 'sole responsibility' to the embassy.

I'm with the posters suggesting to pay him money. It's the easiest and probably cheapest option in the long run and the route most likely to succeed. Only point I would clarify first is to find out if you really do need his signature.

Perhaps you should also work hard to avoid your step daughter hearing about it. She could become very unsettled if you get the father's agreement (by any means) and then the British Embassy puts the block on it because sole responsibility can't be proved.

I had no legal positives in our application - we had just sort of accepted responsibility for our niece, I would assume that because you have legal custody then that will count as a positive legally. However we could prove (well at least the UKBA accepted it) that we lived as a family for more than 12 months (about 2 years).

Reading your emails it seems to me that you could use the "compelling" aspect, I'm afraid that I don't remember the formal terminology or references, even though your timescales are less than the required amounts it seems that you do have good reasons for you application - but I'm only a layman, not an expert.

I should add that although the embassy (UKBA regulations) added that all ties should be broken between the mother and the child (our niece), when they did phone the mother ( as they will of any family member) they asked a loaded question of the mother about whether the mother wanted to keep in touch and, obviously, she said that she wanted to keep in touch (in the future) and it did not count against us. I took this to mean that the British Embassy has an understanding of the world it exists in (maybe I'm wrong) this part of the world??

Many forum members won't like to hear this but the Embassy were totally fair in our case. They applied common sense as I understand it, which was very refreshing after all the feedback I got from some of the forums I subscribed to. With that background I believe that if you start drafting a complete and truthful explanation of events, make sure that timescales are addressed, i.e. paying special attention to dates and reasons, with proof then there is no reason to think that you will be unsuccessful.

I'm sure that there is some way to contact personally which is beyond my limited capability, however I f you contact me then I'll happily forward anything which may be useful to you. However I must re-iterate that my 'selling point' was that we had lived together more than a year.

Hopefully I can add something to your application.

We went down the 'defacto' route with our niece last year and I put all my efforts into proving sole responsibility and was successful. There is no need to have any legal documentation (although I'm sure that it would help), it's all about proving that you live as a family and the child has effectively been adopted. A defacto adoption does not have any legal meaning but if the UKBA accept that it has happened then you are home and dry!

Things like schooling receipts, medical insurance and recorded address (Tabien Baan), in our case along with our natural children's were submitted.

There is also a route whereby compelling reasons for the child to come with you can be considered.

I did lots of reading of all of the defacto regulations and somewhere on the UKBA website there is all of the guidance notes for the ECO which gave a good insight into what was required too. I just went through showing how I satisfied each requirement, sometimes one submission satisfied 2 or 3 aspects so I just explained that in my letter.

My application pack was almost 2 inches thick with things like photos, previous visitor visas, letters from my family saying how good earlier holidays were, address and telephone number of my niece's mum (and they did contact her), father's death certificate and anything which I though showed that we lived as a family.

Hopefully this can get your application started.

Take her down to your local registry office with all of your paperwork and ask them about the requirements to marry you. They can then tell your wife that she's already married to you - or if you're a religious type go to a church and get your marriage blessed. Seems to me that desperate men have to take desperate measures !

Update 8/6/2013

Part 1 - Success.

It is only possible to apply for a UK tourist visa, a maximum of 3 months before the date of travel. Not very long if you have a tenant in your UK house, who requires notice. This application took 3 weeks to process.

The application requested an August start date and the full six months. It also included the reasons, particularly that the 2 children need a mother to look after them. They refuse any help in the toilet from their father.

In reply to a poster above, my children speak, read and write English as well as Thai. However their spoken English is "Tinglish" as spoken by many Thais and Farangs. No final "s", no "a" or "the", etc. Understandable but pidgin. They will start their Scottish school on August 14th.

However it is an experiment, for all of us and whether we can cope with the Glasgow weather and food for 6 months, I just don't know.

After August I will update this thread with our experiences of going back to the UK - positive and negative.

I think that you will be very lucky if the school removes the "Tinglish" effect in one year. My family (3 children) came back to Scotland last September and we are just about to finish the school year and their English is a lot better than it was in Thailand but still has the Thai version of words dispersed. That said I do rate the school they are at and I can see that in the forthcoming school year they will develop much faster than in Thailand at things that I think will give them a better grounding in life. This isn't an anti Thai thing, both my Thai wife and I like the way things happen here but we were very happy with the Thai school the children were previously in. It was just that (with the finances at my disposal) they were only being educated for life in Thailand, in the UK, if they choose to do the work, then they can go to any country.

And I wouldn't worry too much about the weather, the wife and children have just spent all day swimming and canoeing in Loch Lomond with a mix of sticky rice and plain bread 'pieces' washed down with Irn Bru!

We brought our niece over to the UK using the de facto adoption route last September. I remember that the application took about twice as long as the other applications which were being done at the time which only included wifes or girlfriends. I know this because of the thread on waiting times on this site. The embassy contacted my wife and our niece's mother by phone, and were as good as one could expect from a government department and I feel that we were dealt with in a common sense manner.

Our application folder was thick showing things like school fees and receipts (and identical ones for our natural children), medical insurance records, Khor Por 14 (Amphur docs saying we had responsibility), lots of photos from over the 2 years she had stayed with us and a letter from us explaining everything and a letter from our neice (she was 11 at the time) saying that she was happy and that we took care of her, and previous UK visitor visas. We also had her on our tabien bann (house record) so that got translated and put in too. That's not everything, just what I can remember off the top of my head.

We had been taking care of her for 2 years at the time of our application but the point that I worked really hard at addressing was the 'sole responsibility', obviously the longer you are together the easier that becomes. I read and re-read the UKBA rules and made sure that every point could be addressed in my application but there is always a vagueness just because of the way they are written. By the time we put the application in I felt the we had met all of the UKBA rules and could argue each point but it was a big project and I think that I worked fulltime on our application for 2 or 3 weeks before submitting it. Even then when we went to VFS the wife came back out with the folder after a VFS employee told her that she should just save her money and not apply because the embassy will not give a visa in our case! I sent her back in and told her to make them take the application.

So in your case I think that it is certainly do-able, perhaps because the time that you have had sole responsibility is quite short there will be an issue. Do you not want to take a 6 month holiday in Thailand before coming back to the UK? That will give you more time and allow you you to build a better case.

Others will know more than me but is there any benefit from making your application from Bahrain rather than Bangkok?

Steady

Steady - thanks for putting that all in writing, really useful and I am glad it all worked out for you all.

A few questions for you:

How did you and your wife go about getting the Por Kor 14? My wife has been told today that we need to go through a Thai court? I am not sure about this answer as I have met someone who said they did it in a day down at the local Amphor also! Any ideas?

We have a good history, not just from out full time together, but us with her since him since he was born (we are together for every borthday, summers etc), he's also on our Tabian Ban.

And the 6 month holiday in Thailand isn't a bad idea at all - I was just thinking that its perhaps easier to apply from Bahrain as they have few tough cases compared to all the nightmares the UKBA face with BKK applications.

One question though, if you were in Thailand why didn't you just adopt her there, if you dont mind me asking?

Thanks again and appreciate the help.

We could get the por kor 14 from the amphur office but we had to bring our niece's mother with us and she had to say that she had given up all rights to her daughter and my wife and I were now taking care of all aspects of life for our niece. Even with that our local office would only write that we could take her overseas for holidays, they stated that it had to be the home amphur office for the wife's family that would have to state that we had full rights should we want to relocate to another country. We went there and they did it without any problems.

The reason we didn't adopt in Thailand was that all the advice we were getting was that it would take between 3 and 7 years because I was a foreigner. I think that we (foreigners) are the only people who follow that course, all the Thai's just live with each other without any paperwork and it works for them but as soon as there is international travel involved we, as foreigners, try to cover ourselves legally. In our case we looked at the adoption rules and spoke to staff from the agency by telephone. They were helpful but kept saying that no one could give timescales and one employee told us that the 2 cases she knew off took years, she thought between 4 and 6 years and then said best we allow between 3 and 7 years. Being Thailand it was impossible to get anything in writing. Whilst doing this I was reading up on the UKBA de facto adoption rules and it seemed to me that we could satisfy them so we went that way.

Apart from the extra waiting for a decision we felt that the Bangkok embassy dealt with us reasonably. In fact the rules say that all ties must be broken with the original family, which in our case was difficult to do because our niece's mother is still thought of as a sister in law, daughter in law etc and when she was phoned by the embassy she said that she would love to be able to keep in touch with her daughter - which could have been a big no-no, yet the embassy accepted that it was only what any mother might say in the same situation. I believe that common sense was applied. The embassy understood that just because she wanted to keep in touch there was no way that she had the power to do so because she doesn't have the money to travel. So maybe there is mileage in doing things from Thailand because it seems that time is your only issue and there is a better understanding of Thai family life and culture from the Bangkok embassy.

We brought our niece over to the UK using the de facto adoption route last September. I remember that the application took about twice as long as the other applications which were being done at the time which only included wifes or girlfriends. I know this because of the thread on waiting times on this site. The embassy contacted my wife and our niece's mother by phone, and were as good as one could expect from a government department and I feel that we were dealt with in a common sense manner.

Our application folder was thick showing things like school fees and receipts (and identical ones for our natural children), medical insurance records, Khor Por 14 (Amphur docs saying we had responsibility), lots of photos from over the 2 years she had stayed with us and a letter from us explaining everything and a letter from our neice (she was 11 at the time) saying that she was happy and that we took care of her, and previous UK visitor visas. We also had her on our tabien bann (house record) so that got translated and put in too. That's not everything, just what I can remember off the top of my head.

We had been taking care of her for 2 years at the time of our application but the point that I worked really hard at addressing was the 'sole responsibility', obviously the longer you are together the easier that becomes. I read and re-read the UKBA rules and made sure that every point could be addressed in my application but there is always a vagueness just because of the way they are written. By the time we put the application in I felt the we had met all of the UKBA rules and could argue each point but it was a big project and I think that I worked fulltime on our application for 2 or 3 weeks before submitting it. Even then when we went to VFS the wife came back out with the folder after a VFS employee told her that she should just save her money and not apply because the embassy will not give a visa in our case! I sent her back in and told her to make them take the application.

So in your case I think that it is certainly do-able, perhaps because the time that you have had sole responsibility is quite short there will be an issue. Do you not want to take a 6 month holiday in Thailand before coming back to the UK? That will give you more time and allow you you to build a better case.

Others will know more than me but is there any benefit from making your application from Bahrain rather than Bangkok?

Steady

I have used an email before. My sister, who we were going to be staying with just set it out like a letter with address at the top right and there wasn't a problem, even without a signature. On another occasion she just wrote the letter, scanned it and sent it to me. I then printed it (with signature), it was obviously scanned and I told the ECO that it was a scanned copy, again no problems. The email was for a visit visa and the scanned version was for a settlement visa and both successful.

I don't understand why the period of 6 months is being talked about to prove sole responsibility. I thought that the sole responsibility had to be proved for the period of separation (or at least a large part of it), which in this case runs into years. It's all about showing that the child needs that parent's input to live and that the parent makes all the decisions in the child's life, even if other family members take care on a day to day basis. Other factors would be financial input, the amount of contact, the amount of input from other family members and perhaps if grand parents were getting too old or infirm to continue taking care of the child. I can't remember all the rules now but the UKBA website give a very good starting point and I'm pretty certain that there is no specific time period stated.

The UKBA website defines their requirement of sole responsibility and that's what must be satisfied. I've read on forums of cases where the father still had a minimal input or another family member said that they took care of the child and the ECO has taken that to say that sole responsibility has not been proved. Trawl through the other threads and read about how others satisfied the requirements. It's a lot easier if the child has always remained with the parent but there are still cases of mothers who have been separated and have been successful but the onus is on you to prove that you meet the UKBA's requirements.

My own personal view is that the ECOs are as fair as they can be but it's up to the applicant to spell everything out to them and put in a complete application covering all of the relevant points. I think that you are going to have to do lots of reading of the UKBA's rules and search out what other successful applicants did in their applications.

With what you have written I think that you will be very lucky to get your wife's son into the UK. The reason for thinking this is that, as I understand it, the big thing is for your wife to be able to prove that she has sole responsibility for her son. Basically that she has been taking all major decisions in his life and fully supporting him, even though she's been in the UK. It can be done, just look through the threads on this site. However the embassy wants proof and the way you describe things showing proof will be very difficult for your wife to do for the full period of time she has been in the UK. I'm sure that smarter people than me will contribute and correct me if I'm wrong, good luck.

To 7x7, you've missed the point with your reply about me being happy to lose 851 pounds. My issue is that all of the information I can find online from the UKBA seems to relate to the majority of applicants. The fact that my wife got ILR after 4 months whilst the UKBA information online stated clearly that the residential requirement was much longer appears to indicate that there may be other standards which are acceptable if you are not mainstream. However I cannot find the rules which will be applied. The fact that someone who works for the UKBA gave an indication that perhaps the rules on the website are for the majority using today's rules raised my issue.

Your first 2 paragraphs were very useful and helpful,this is as you have been on many occasions to many people, myself included. However I feel that you should have omitted the final sentence. It comes across in a very negative and churlish fashion. I have brought a wife and family from Thailand in 6 months and my wife now has ILR. You know that this is possible but if you read the UKBA rules you would do well to find out that it's possible.

Thanks for the reply. The issue that I have is that the UKBA rules on the internet state that someone must have been in the UK for a set period of time before applying for ILR, either 2, 3 or 5 years I think. However my wife got ILR after 4 months. It is only because of forum contributors who put the information online that we knew this. The rules for naturalisation again state residential requirements, which we may or may not have to meet - depending on who we believe. Hence why I'm trying find out if anyone has been here before or where the earlier rules can be found.

My wife came to the UK in September (I returned at the same time) but she got her visa under the old rules. Her visa was a spouse settlement (KOL) because we had been married for over 4 years overseas and through the good advice given on these forums we knew that she only had to pass the knowledge of life test and then she could apply for ILR without having to meet any time limitations. I checked throughout the UKBA website and on its forms and found no reference to our situation but duly attended the UKBA office with a premium application. (I just ignored where it said that we had to be resident for a certain number of years on the forms.)The UKBA staff were very professional and recognised the visa and the ILR was issued in 30 minutes. I had a bundle about an inch and a half thick of photo copies and the person checking gave me everything back except my divorce certificate from my previous marriage and our passports saying that was all that was needed for these types of applications.

When the ILR was actually given we were called back to the desk where a more senior officer said to my wife, "you now have ILR, you can apply for citizenship in one year." I said that I thought that it was 3 years in the UK and he said as far as he was concerned it was one year after ILR with our type of application. Now my query is, how do I find out documentary proof that this really is the situation. For our application for ILR I couldn't find any documentation addressing our situation, we just went because of everything we had read in forums like these. However for citizenship I can't even find people on forums writing about it.

The UKBA officer made clear that it was his belief that there wouldn't be a problem but also pointed out that applications for visas up to ILR the UKBA take the lead but for naturalisation / citizenship the lead is taken by the Home Office.

So if there is anyone with a copy of the old rules or knows where to find this information then please get posting.

Many thanks, Steady

You replied to an earlier post, "That's exactly what they are saying, that if we want the right to a family life we should live in Thailand. The cheek!" I don't know why you you think it's cheeky. The government has a set of rules which tend to get the public's vote in the present political climate, especially when they make very clear the rules that must be satisfied to get a visa. This doesn't mean that I don't sympathise with your predicament, it's just that the government has a set of rules which tends to satisfy the majorityof voters who are continually bombarded by the media about negative issues with immigrants and immigration into the UK. I think that most people would think that in this case the government's rules are reasonable, and I assume that the government have lawyers which will fight any challenges to their perception of the law.

I wish you luck but fear that any positive outcome may be a long time in coming.

Did it for my wife about 6 weeks ago. Phoned the number I found on the government's website and asked for a N.I. number for my wife because she wanted to work. They sent an application form the next day and the wife had her number about 2 weeks later. We had to send a copy of her passport with visa page and that was it.