Originally Posted by
lovelife95
I'm wondering how they will count the 12 months also. Since my partner arrived in NZ we have been living together at the same place. Will INZ start counting our 12 months living together requirement since arrival or would we need to start counting from the day we had something official addressed to us like a bank statement as evidence we are living at the same address? the former seems like common sense to me but i'm not sure how INZ sees things. Obviously if my partner arrived in NZ there's no way they'd be on the bills or have mail etc from day one. But then again this is INZ and we can't assume anything..
If you were living together at any point for 12 months or more before your arrival, that does count -- but, from my experience, you will then need to document the entire period of living together (don't leave any gaps in your evidence timeline), and even more importantly, provide evidence of how the two of you maintained your relationship during any periods of separation.
When I included my partner on my SMC application (INZ applies partnership criteria to partners included on an SMC application as per
R2.1, so my experiences here are definitely relevant!), we had been living together and happily married for 2.5 years before we did the move. This was followed by 5 months of separation: I came over first to secure employment, and she came over once I had done that, she had been granted her Partner of a Worker Work Visa, and had put all our possessions on a container ship. Our SMC application was lodged only a month and a half after we were reunited. INZ looked at our relationship evidence since our marriage (we could provide evidence to cover the entire 2.5 years, and did just that), and how we kept in contact during those 5 months of separation, and were quite satisfied: we were both granted our Resident Visas when the SMC application was approved.