Received job offer, question about stepchild on EOI

[Holy Moly]

Hi everyone, I'm new here! We have been exploring emigrating to NZ for a while and yesterday my (de facto) partner received a skilled job offer - woohoo! We are planning to apply for a skilled migrants visa and have a question about the EOI, I wonder if anyone could advise.

We have 3 children; our eldest child is not biologically his (although his biological father is not involved or on the birth certificate and my son calls my partner dad). He is not legally adopted and as we are not married I am not sure that he is legally classed as his step child either. Does anybody know if it is going to be a problem to include him on the application? On the EOI I think there is only an option for child, adopted child or stepchild. Can we put him down as a step child or would we need to be married?

TIA for your help.

[JandM]

Congratulations on the job offer!

I don't immediately know an answer to this. Your son is obviously YOUR dependent child, but I'm not sure about putting him on the EOI as your partner is the principal applicant. Maybe someone else knows. Meantime, I'll have a look around and come back later if I find anything useful.

[lifes_a_beach]

Hiya.

My family moved to NZ in 2008 under my step dad me and my sister were not biologically his children and he was not married to my mum either but there was no problems with putting us down as step children they applied for skilled migrent visas also. In the end myself and my sister did not end up going for other reasons but we definatly had the blue stickers in our passports. I can always ask my mum if they had any problems with this but Im pritty sure that the only problem they had was the fact that I was 18 and they had a nightmare getting stuff together to proove I was a dependent child.

Good luck with erevrything hope it all goes well for you

Gemma

[Holy Moly]

Thank you both of you! Gemma that's useful to know, hopefully then nothing will have changed since then and it will be as simple as that. If you do speak to them any time soon it would be really helpful if you could ask if they had any issues over it or if they just put you both down as step children on the EOI, but don't go to any trouble! :-)

[Holy Moly]

Hey just to let you know, I finally got through to INZ on the phone (I've tried them heaps of times but kept being cut off) and they've said that it is fine to include him as a step child even if not married - phew!! So no need to ask around for me, thank you for your help! :-)

[JandM]

Excellent news! I'm very pleased for you.

[lifes_a_beach]

No worries. Good luck with it all hope it all goes well