few days ago my wife had her UK spouse VISA granted while we are waiting for appeal date.

An ECO officer refused her original application so we lodged an appeal and was eventually overtuned by the manager of the ECO officer without the need to go to court

Below are the timelines:

April 15th 2013:
Submitted my wife's UK spouse VISA application with tons of documents

July 18th 2013:
VFS Global returned all documents back to my wife including her passport with a note saying her appllication has been refused on financial ground. (If you can recall in my earlier message, I'm an IT contractor with my own limited comapny who after taking tax advice from my accountant paid myself aabout 11k a year salary and top up the rest with dividends payment which can be seen in bank statements supplied)

This type of financial arrangement is not what and ECO officer deals with on a day to day basis as it's unconventional. Most ECO officer is used to dealing with applicants with just one source of income on single payslip.

Financial arrangements like this probably confused the ECO officer and took the easy option to refuse the VISA application.


July 22nd 2013:
Loged an appeal online against the ECO officer descision, in the notes section I stated clearly that "my financial arrangement is not conventional and that even though my payslip yearly salary of 11k does not meet the 18.5k target, I have other souces of income like dividends payment which is visible on bank statement which put me in the 45k a year salary bracket but somehow the ECO officer chosed to ignore it"

In the appeal form I chosed to only want face to face in court as I cannot see how this can be resolved otherwise so I did not attach any further documents with the appeal.


9th Aug. 2013:
Letter from 1st Tier tribunal that my appeal acknowledged and an appeal date will be communicated to me after 11th November 2013 after they have received a report from the ECO officer who refused the VISA appliacation.


23rd Aug. 2013:
Received email from manager of ECO officer who made the original refusal descision to submit with 10 days last 6 months bank statements.


28th Aug. 2013:
6 months bank statements submitted and additionally specifically pointed out the dates in bank statement dividend payments received for his/her attention.


23rd Sept. 2013:
My wife received a request to send her passport to British embassy in manila with a return pre-paid courier envelope.
She was unable to do this straight away as 18th Sept. 2013 she gave birht to our first child via CS in manila. However her parents was able to send her passport to the embassy.


2nd Oct. 2013:
My wife passport returned with spouse VISA approved



Small prob now is I have been back at work in UK since end of April 2013 and all the VISA drama was unfolding while I was back in UK. But work commitments means I can't go and get my wife and child until my current contract work ends next year April. This is beacuse since the new baby is now in the equation I cannot just dash to phils for a few days to bring my wife home as the child British passport will take about 6 weeks to process which means I'm looking at 2 months stay in Phils to get new baby's passport sorted. This 2 months I can only afford to take off once my current contract finish at end of April 2014.


Does anyone know if the 2 year initial Spouse VISA start from date of issue or from date she actually enter UK?