To include explanations about certain (financial comitment) issues in cover or separate letter? (Partner work visa)

[PeterG]

Hi Guys,

I am applying for the partner based work visa (aiming for 2 years) and I am quite certain we have enough resources for the evidence of relationship (tenancy agreement, official documents stating the adress, flight details, communication, hollidays, pictures etc.). We also do have a shared bank account, where we paid rent from (most of the time I transferred half of the rent to that account, not much more). However, we do not have any utility bills as we live in a subtenancy contract where the main rental pays bills to the according organisations. Also we do not have any bigger joint bills or other financially commitments.
I am still a student and she works in part-time jobs, we both want to start our career in NZ, where these things would just begin to matter. We paid the bills for food on the go (whoever went to the supermarket). In general, for smaller things we payed in turns trying to keep it equally (but all easy going).

I have read that the financial aspect can be quite important too (besides the living together), but our life situations just did not allow for bigger bills/proofs.

My question is:
Should we explain our situation in a separate letter? Or provide a few explanations in the cover letter about financial commitment issues?
For instance, that utility bills are missing because of the subtenancy. Or her financial support during our travels. But how can you even proof these things? A simple bank withdrawal cant really proof she lent me money.

In general it would be useful for others if you could provide information about what you included in your cover letter and whether or not you did include explanatory notes for special issues (such as mine) within your application.


Form of answers


Answers to my case:
...



Your general case:
Applied visa:
- e.g partner work visa
Proof of financial commitment:
- What prrofs did you include? Which issues arised?

Cover Letter content:
- e.g. short abstract about relationship
- table of content
- special issues
- ...

Additional explanatory letters:
- Why? What form?


I would be happy if this thread develops into a small collection of such special issues and how you solved it, I think future applicants would benefit from this greatly. Thank you! Great board!

[Queenstown13]

Hi there,

I would definitely suggest providing an explanatory letter re finances, we (NZ girl and French guy) provided a document explaining our financial situation and referring the person reviewing our application to various aspects of our individual and separate accounts that we wanted them to be aware of. For example, our separate accounts might have shown we were both in Stewart Island at the same bar on the same night (each paying for drinks), i.e. things that showed we were constantly together (we normally reside in Queenstown), we highlighted the transactions in our account joint and separate accounts and then provided an explanations about them etc. If your financial situation is a bit different, ours was, my Auckland based parents own the house we live in in Queenstown, there's no mortgage and we are lucky that they don't ask us to pay rent - provide an explanation. We explained why there were no tenancy agreements and why there were no rental/mortgage payments going out of our accounts. We'd only been living together 3 months and were granted a partnership visa.

Further, 2 years is tricky to get straight off the mark. We were given 6, then after that 12 months. We've been told that we're pretty much guaranteed 2 years for the next application but we've been living together nearly 2 years now.

Hopefully that helps, let me know if you have any more questions about it.

Cheers,