Joint Financial Evidence for UK Visa Applications

Two Questions, Not One

“Joint financial evidence” is used to mean two different things, and they are decided under different rules.

• The financial requirement. A gross annual income of £29,000 for applications made on or after 11 April 2024, or the savings equivalent, evidenced by the specified documents in Appendix FM-SE. This is arithmetic against a published list of permitted sources.
• The relationship requirement. Whether the relationship is genuine and subsisting. Joint accounts, joint tenancies and shared bills are commonly used here, but they are not what meets the income requirement.

Treating them as one thing is where people go wrong: a folder of joint utility bills does nothing for the income figure, and a perfectly evidenced salary says nothing about the relationship.

Whose Income Counts

The published caseworker guidance lists five ways the requirement can generally be met, and the wording on whose money counts differs from source to source:

• Salaried or non-salaried employment of the partner, or of the applicant if the applicant is in the UK with permission to work — Category A or Category B depending on employment history
• Non-employment income, for example property rental or dividends from shares — Category C
• Cash savings of the partner or the applicant, above £16,000, held for at least 6 months and under their control — Category D
• Pension income, state, occupational or private, of the partner or the applicant — Category E
• Self-employment, or income as a director or employee of a specified limited company in the UK, of the partner, or of the applicant if the applicant is in the UK with permission to work — Category F or Category G

Read the first and last of those carefully. Employment and self-employment income is the partner's, or the applicant's only while the applicant is in the UK and working legally. An applicant applying for entry clearance from outside the UK cannot count their own job towards the income requirement, even a well-paid one. Savings, pension and non-employment income are not restricted in that way.

There is a related provision for a couple moving to the UK together: where the sponsoring partner is returning to the UK with the applicant, their overseas employment or self-employment can be counted, and there are separate rules for a confirmed job offer starting within 3 months of return.

Sources That Cannot Be Combined

Combining is not free. The published guidance is explicit about two limits:

• Cash savings cannot be combined with self-employment income, or with income from employment as a director or employee of a specified limited company in the UK, under either Category F or Category G.
• Cash savings cannot be combined with part two of Category B, which is the route used where the sponsor has been with their current employer for less than 6 months or has variable income.

Cash savings can be combined with Category A employment, with part one of Category B, with Category C non-employment income and with Category E pension income.

The guidance also lists sources that count for nothing at all, including financial support from a third party (with narrow exceptions for child maintenance, academic maintenance grants or stipends, and gifts of cash savings that meet the rules), income from other people in the household, loans and credit facilities, and a long list of benefits: Universal Credit, child benefit, working tax credit, child tax credit, Housing Benefit, Income Support and others.

Joint Accounts and the Savings Route

Appendix FM-SE requires personal bank statements to be in the name of the applicant, the partner, or both as appropriate. For cash savings it requires statements showing that at least the level of savings relied on was held in an account in the name of the person, or of the person and their partner jointly, throughout the 6 months before the date of application, together with a declaration by the account holder of the source of the savings.

So a joint account between the couple is a permitted place to hold savings, and the balance is not halved because there are two names on it. An account held jointly with someone outside the couple does not meet the description in the rules, and money supplied by a third party is not counted except in the narrow circumstances the guidance sets out.

The savings figure itself is £16,000 plus 2.5 times the difference between the income from permitted sources and the income required. At settlement the Rules disregard the words “2.5 times”. Our cash savings guide works the calculation through, and our financial documents guide covers the format each document has to be in.

Joint Evidence for the Relationship Test

Documents in both names are commonly used to show that a relationship is genuine and subsisting: a joint tenancy or mortgage, correspondence to the same address, bills or accounts in both names, insurance policies. In Northern Ireland the household bill is domestic rates rather than council tax.

None of these is a specified document. There is no fixed list and no required number, which cuts both ways: nothing here is compulsory, and nothing here substitutes for the income evidence. Couples who keep separate accounts are not disadvantaged by a rule, because there is no rule requiring a joint one. Our relationship evidence guide and communication evidence guide cover this side.

At Settlement

An application for indefinite leave to remain on the partner route has the same £29,000 income requirement and uses the same specified evidence. The one change worth knowing is the savings arithmetic: the Rules say that in applying the savings provision to a settlement application, the words “2.5 times” are disregarded, so the amount of savings needed to cover a given shortfall is smaller.

Our settlement documents checklist lists what a settlement application contains. Where an individual situation is complicated, advice on it has to come from someone regulated to give it — see doing it yourself or using a solicitor.

The GOV.UK page on proving your income for a family visa is the starting point, and the full evidence rules are in Appendix FM-SE.

Questions and answers