Last updated: 28 October 2025

Partner (spousal) visa

If you are a British citizen, or you are settled (for example with Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the UK) and you meet the minimum income requirement, you may be able to apply for permission for your spouse, civil partner or unmarried partner to live with you in the UK.

In these types of applications, the person who is settled (this means they have British citizenship, or ILR) is referred to as the “sponsor”.

The rules for these types of applications are in Appendix FM (FM stands for Family Migration) of the Immigration Rules, specifically under the heading “Family life with a partner”.

Minimum income requirement

To make an application under Appendix FM, you will need to meet the minimum income requirement and provide evidence to show this. 

If you are applying for your partner to join you in the UK for the first time on or after 11 April 2024, to meet the income requirement, you need to be earning a minimum of £29,000 per year. This threshold is fixed regardless of the number of children in the family. 

There are different ways you can meet the income requirement, depending on whether you are in salaried employment, you have a job offer, variable income, or have cash savings, pensions or benefits. For detailed information on calculating the minimum income requirement in your case, see this Policy Guidance from the Home Office from page 11 onwards. 

For detailed information about the specific types of evidence needed in these applications, see Appendix FM-SE, which contains rules on how income is calculated and what supporting evidence is required. 

If you had already applied for your partner to join you on this route before 11 April 2024, the minimum income requirement for a partner applying without children is £18,600 (the income requirement increases to £22,400 for your partner and one child, and then and additional £2,400 for each further child).

What if I cannot meet the minimum income requirement?

There are some circumstances in which your partner can be granted leave even if you do not meet the income requirements. If you are in receipt of certain welfare benefits, such as Disability Living Allowance or Carer’s Allowance, you may not need to meet the income requirements.

If you cannot meet the minimum income requirement as outlined above, it may be possible to include other sources of income.

Exceptional circumstances

If you cannot meet the minimum income requirement to apply for a visa to bring your partner, there are some cases in which they might be granted leave to enter or remain if you can show that there are exceptional circumstances in your case.

Applications along these lines are complex, and you must show that refusal of leave would result in very harsh consequences for you and your family. You must provide strong evidence to explain the circumstances of your case.

Paragraph GEN 3.1 of the Immigration Rules says that other reliable sources of income may be used where:

It is evident from the information provided by the applicant that there are exceptional circumstances which could render refusal of the application a breach of Article 8 [right to private and family life] because it could result in unjustifiably harsh consequences for the applicant, their partner or a relevant child

This means that the Home Office needs to consider whether a refusal of your application because you do not meet the requirements would have “unjustifiably harsh consequences” for you and your family. This will be particularly relevant if you have children.

In this Policy Guidance on page 68, the Home Office gives some examples of when a refusal of an application might lead to unjustifiably harsh consequences, including if: 

The applicant and their partner have a child in the UK with serious mental health or learning difficulties, and independent medical evidence establishes that good treatment and learning support are in place for the child here which would not be available in the country where the applicant resides.

So, if your income is below the threshold, but exceptional circumstances apply in your case, such as the needs of a child with a disability, you may be able to show that you can rely on other forms of support (such as from another family member in the UK, or future earnings). 

It is a good idea to get legal advice for these types of applications. 

Partners: right to family life

If you cannot meet the income requirements, it is possible to apply for the right to remain (or to enter) the UK on the basis of your right to family and private life in the UK. Read more about this on our page on Human Rights.

The Home Office refuse most human rights-based applications, but you may have the right to appeal a refusal at the First-tier Tribunal.

The Home Office (and then a judge, if you are appealing a refusal) will consider whether you and your partner meet the immigration rules for these types of applications. If they do not meet the criteria of the immigration rules, the Home Office/judge should then consider your application outside of the rules and decide if exceptional circumstances apply that mean your partner should be given the right to enter/stay.

The immigration rules allow you to apply for the right to remain on the basis of family life, if:

• there is a “genuine and subsisting relationship”
• with a partner who is in the UK and they are a British citizen, or have Indefinite Leave to Remain, or Refugee Status or Humanitarian Protection
• and there are insurmountable obstacles to your family life (with your partner) continuing outside of the UK.

You need to provide evidence that your relationship is genuine. The Home Office may invite you and your partner to attend an interview to assess this. They are unlikely to refer to it, to you, in language that makes it obvious that the interview is about testing the “genuineness” of your relationship. They might just refer to it as a “marriage interview” or “relationship interview”. Both of you in the relationship must attend this interview if you are both in the UK.

A subsisting relationship means a relationship that currently exists. See below for information on how to prove this.

A partner is someone you are engaged to, married to, in a civil partnership with, or someone you have lived with in a relationship like marriage for at least two years.

The meaning of “insurmountable obstacles” has been the subject of legal debate. If you have a lawyer, they will need to show that the reasons you couldn’t live outside of the UK amount to insurmountable obstacles. If you are making the application without a lawyer, concentrate on showing why it would not be reasonable for you to live with your partner outside of the UK, and provide evidence for this.

Applying to bring a parent to the UK

If you are an adult with British citizenship or Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK, and you wish to apply to bring your parent to the UK, you have to demonstrate that due to age, illness or disability, your parent requires a level of long-term personal care that can only be provided in the UK by a relative in the UK and without recourse to public funds (this means without relying on state benefits).

If you have the funds to support your parent so that they will not need public funds, the Home Office is likely to argue that you can pay for care to be provided in the country in which they live – the Home Office position is generally that care does not need to be familial care.

These applications are known as “Adult Dependent Relative” applications, or ADRs. It is extremely difficult to succeed in these applications because of these strict criteria.

Read the immigration rules on Adult Dependent Relative applications here in Appendix Adult Dependant Relative here.

Making a family member application

The application forms and guidance notes for these applications are on the Home Office website here.

In general, you will not be able to get legal aid advice to assist you with these applications. In exceptional circumstances and if you do not have the funds to pay for a private lawyer, you may be able to apply for exceptional legal aid funding. See here for more information about this.

When applying for the right to enter/remain for a partner, there are “suitability” requirements your family members have to meet, meaning that “bad character”, poor immigration history or unpaid NHS debts could disqualify them.

Suitability requirements

When applying for the right to enter or stay in the UK as a partner (under Immigration Rules Appendix FM), the Home Office will look at “suitability” – reasons they may refuse an application.
For example: criminal convictions, “bad character”, immigration history, or unpaid NHS debts.

From 11 November 2025, new rules called Part Suitability apply to all decisions on family and human-rights routes (like Appendix FM or Appendix Private Life). These changes are mostly about how the rules are organised and written – they put all the suitability rules in one place and use simpler wording – but a few new and stricter rules have been added.

Mandatory refusal – the Home Office must refuse your application if:

• You are subject to a deportation or exclusion order, or the Home Secretary has personally said you must be excluded from the UK.
  
• You are classed as an “excluded person” under the Immigration Act 1971. For example, you are excluded for reasons of national security, terrorism or serious international crimes.
  
• Your presence in the UK is not considered good for the public because of your character, behaviour, or associations. This can include links to organised crime or other serious misconduct even without a recent conviction.
  
• You have been sent to prison for 12 months or more, are a persistent offender, or your offending caused serious harm. (Before 11 November 2025, people sentenced to 12 months–4 years could still qualify after 10 years with no further offences. That “cool-off” period has now been removed – any 12-month sentence or more leads to automatic refusal.)
  
• You have used deception in your application. For example: you gave false information or documents, or you hid important facts.
  
• You have failed without good reason to attend an interview, provide information or biometrics, undergo a medical exam or provide a required report. A good reason might be something genuinely outside your control that you can provide evidence. For example, being in hospital, having a medical emergency, or another situation where you could not reasonably contact the Home Office.
  
• New rule: if a child is applying, the Home Office must refuse if it believes the child’s parent or their partner poses a safeguarding risk to the child. This means that the Home Office will look at any information it holds about the parent or their partner such as police records, criminal convictions, social-services reports, or past safeguarding concerns. If there is credible evidence that the parent or their partner could harm the child (for example, because of abuse, neglect, or serious violence), the child’s application must be refused.
  

Discretionary or “normally refuse” 

The Home Office may, or will normally, refuse the application if:

• You have given false or misleading information, or did not tell the Home Office something important, including in any previous applications. 
• You have unpaid NHS debt of £500 or more.
• You have previously broken immigration rules, such as overstaying your visa, breaching conditions of leave, entering illegally, or using a false identity.
• You have tried to avoid or “frustrate” immigration controls. For example: you did not report (“sign”) at the Home Office when you were supposed to, you did not attend an interview or appointment, you left the address they gave to the Home Office without permission or without telling them where you have gone or claiming public benefits or housing you were not entitled to.
• The Home Office believes your marriage or civil partnership is not genuine (this is called a “sham” marriage).
• You owe litigation debt to the Home Office from a past legal case that has not been paid (this mostly affects settlement and private-life routes). A litigation debt is money you owe to the Home Office or another government department because of a court or tribunal case.
• You can also face re-entry bans if you previously breached immigration laws, depending on how long you overstayed or were removed from the UK.
  

Human-rights safeguard (Article 8 ECHR)

Even if someone does not meet the suitability rules, the Home Office must still consider whether refusing the application would breach their right to family or private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

An application can still be granted in exceptional circumstances. For example, if a refusal would cause “unjustifiably harsh consequences” for a partner, child, or family member.  This means the outcome would be too severe or unfair to justify, such as splitting up a family, separating a child from a parent, or forcing someone to live in unsafe or inhuman conditions.

However, this safeguard cannot be used for the most serious cases, such as:

• deportation or exclusion orders;
  
• being classed as an excluded person;
  
• serious national-security or protection cases; or
  
• criminal convictions of 12 months or more, or other serious or persistent offending.
  

In all other situations, the Home Office should still look carefully at family-life and private-life evidence before making a final decision.

Fees

There is a fee for the application. To find out how much you will need to pay, read the latest Home Office guidance on UK immigration and nationality fees.

You will need to pay the Immigration Health Surcharge as part of an application under this route, unless you fall into one of the exempt categories or unless you are making an application for Indefinite Leave to Remain. Read more about the health surcharge here.

You cannot apply for a fee waiver for the fee and health surcharge for these applications unless you are not required to meet the minimum income threshold. Read more about fee waivers here.

If your application is successful

If you are successful in your application, you will be granted 2.5 years’ leave to remain in the UK. You will generally have an NRPF condition on your visa, which means you will not have access to public funds such as welfare benefits or homelessness support.

You can apply to renew your leave to remain (before it runs out). If successful, you will be granted another period of 2.5 years’ leave to remain.

If you have met all the income requirements and suitability requirements, you will generally be able to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain after 2 x 2.5 years’ leave to remain. Because you can apply for settlement after 5 years, you may hear this referred to as the “five-year route to settlement”.

If your application is granted on the basis of the exceptional circumstances described above when you do not meet the standard requirements, you will need to establish 10 years of time-limited leave to remain (4 x 2.5 years’ leave to remain) before you can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK.

If your application is refused

If your application is refused, you may have the right to appeal the decision.

If your application is based on human rights and doesn’t meet the immigration rules, the Home Office may say that they consider your human rights claim to be “clearly unfounded” and “certify” your claim. This means you do not have the right to appeal the refusal in the UK.

If you do not have the right to appeal the refusal, you may wish to consider a judicial review.