Anything I should do before I move on Spousal Visa?

6 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Anything I should do before I move on Spousal Visa?**

   I’m talking about things I SHOULD/NEED get done prior to moving, not like go have fun doing whatever.

   We got married and have a marriage certificate in Japan, not USA. We’re about to submit COE.

   I’ve just seen now that you cannot actually change your name in Japan, only your home country (but you can get registered to his name in Japan instead.)

   – Would you reccommend changing your name prior to filing for COE, and coming in general or does the family registry name suffice for everything you would need? (I’m not sure how long it takes to change name on everything or how much it costs in USA…)

   – Anything else I should do or make sure is good to go prior to coming to Japan?

   The goal is to hopefully be there in around 3 months or so, that’s how long the COE/visa process would take…

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2. Sign a prenup

3. – Family registry will have your name as in passport. You can get tsushomei in Japan, which is like a legal alias, but not every institution accepts it;

   – I am not sure how it works with US, but from my understanding immigration will require you to have marriage certificate both from US and Japan. You can try without it, though, worst case they will ask you to send it by post;

4. If you want to use your partner’s name in Japan, you absolutely should get your name legally changed in your home country. While you can register an alias, it’s not going to be on your residence card, meaning you won’t be able to use it for your banking, and all in all it’ll just be a huge pain.

5. Make sure you understand what your tax obligations are, especially around inheritance tax, gift tax, and anything related to trusts. If you have money, or expect to receive money in the future, you will need to make arrangements BEFORE you come to Japan to make sure you don’t end up owing a huge amount of unexpected tax.

   Be aware that Japan does not allow or recognize joint bank accounts, and transferring money between spouses can still be subject to high gift taxes.

   If you hold crypto, you should also make preparations. Japan is not a crypto-friendly place as far as tax is concerned.

   Do some research on this and make sure you have a basic understanding. /r/JapanFinance has an excellent wiki you should read through, and you can ask questions there.

   Oh, and you should make sure that you have your ducks in a row as far as having US address (parents’ house or a sibling’s house are most common ways), your driver’s license, your banking situation, any investment accounts, and your credit cards. You may wish to get one or more zero-foreign-transaction fee cards. You also might want to make sure you have an Amex as they have a path that could get you a Japanese Amex after you arrive. Many foreigners find it difficult to get credit cards in Japan.

   If you have the technical chops, you should set up a PiVPN server at the house of your parents’, a sibling, or a trusted friend. Ideally the same house you use as your US mailing address, or nearby. This will give you a way to get a real American residential IP address for anything that needs it. Banking, streaming services (you can share passwords if you’re at the same address. Pay for their netflix in exchange for letting you use their address & having the VPN there), investment accounts, etc. Lots of reasons to use a US IP, and the paid VPN services all have datacenter IPs. Using these can get you flagged as a fraud risk.

6. My husband just changed his name in the US. It cost about ~$170ish for all the court fees. Then ~$30 for newspaper notice (required in my state). We redid his SSN (free), State ID ~$60, and (expedited) passport ~$200 + ~$35 for photos and shipping. So about $500 USD.

   It took 3-4 months to get on the court schedule so that took the longest. Once he had his court order (and 5 copies), we took a day to do everything else. Start with the SSN office as it is the first step. Then go to update your ID so that you have something in the meantime. Then we did the passport. It was a very full and annoying day of governmental offices.

   Have a checkbook, 2 pieces of address mail, your court order/marriage cert, and other ids as needed.

   If you sign your marriage certificate in your new name then you can use that for your name change process instead of a court order and save some time and money. I don’t know which way you need to go.