I am a Canadian national and recent married my girlfriend who is Japanese.
I am on a the standard engineer visa presently, but looking to switch over to the spousal visa to no longer be tied to the employment requirement. Reason being is that I may need to look for new work soon when my currently employment finishes and would like to get out from under that 3 month ticking clock.
I have been looking into the required documents and getting things prepared but had a few things popping out and hoped that perhaps someone else in this community had perhaps encountered something similar and might have some advice.
First is around her jūminhyō. My girlfriend moved in and we have been technically living together basically 90% of the time for about a year (90% as if she has a holiday during the week sometimes she stays over at her parents place to get a break from the commute as her old house/parents house is closer to her work, and to visit her family/pets). However, she has not updated her residence on the jūminhyō yet given we are planning to start looking for a place here soon and its just a hassle. Just wondering if this would cause any problems or not with the process, or if there is any other special items that would be worth preparing to avoid issues with this detail.
Second is with regards to marriage certificate. We registered our marriage at the city hall near us in Japan, but we haven’t done anything with regards to Canada. I have heard from others that this isn’t required, and would only be important if say we moved to Canada. However the Japan Immigration info with regards to changing residency status mentions they want a marriage certificate from my home country (Canada). Canada doesn’t require us to register, so we haven’t. Would it be enough to just submit our Japanese marriage certificate? Or is there something else I should prepare indicating that we don’t need to register our marriage in Canada considering we were married in Japan.
Anyways, I have been contemplating finding an immigration lawyer or some similar service that provides support in doing stuff such as this but feel like it might be overkill or a bit of a waste. However if someone happens to know of someone they can recommend, if it is preferable to go that route, that would definitely be appreciated.
Edit 1: First, thanks all for all of the replies so far, they have been super helpful and help to raise confidence on being successful on this. Second, I show up on her jūminhyō as being her husband, its just her address is still her parents’ address. But based on what looks to be a consensus in the comments so far, that is going to end up being pretty clearly something that will likely trip this process up. Will need to prompt her to go and update this.
5 comments
Yes the juminhyo will be an issue since it looks very suspicious if a married couple aren’t living together. It’s not really that difficult to change it, even if you’re moving soon. It’s a very quick city office visit. Pretty sure you’re legally required to change it within 2 weeks of moving, because it has tax implications. It would be basically scamming the government if you had yourself registered as living somewhere with low taxes but actually lived somewhere with higher taxes.
And no, you don’t need a Canadian marriage certificate unless you were married in Canada. Just leave that section on the paperwork blank. It’s just there for people who it does apply to, you don’t necessarily need to fill in every section if it doesn’t apply to you. I’m Canadian and have always just filled in the Japanese marriage info and left the foreign line blank.
It’s a bit of paperwork and a bit annoying and stressful but it’s definitely not worth hiring a lawyer imo unless you have a lot of extra money to burn.
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First- yes, juminhyo is important. You need to be on the same juminhyo whilst on a spouse visa, unless for a very good justified reason (for example Japanese spouse moves back to parents to care for them when sick)
Second- you won’t need a marriage certificate from Canada because you got married in Japan. The foreign marriage certificate is mostly for those who got married outside Japan.
She should have “moved in” with you on paper the same day you registered your marriage. You need to have a good reason to not be living together, and your reason is not good.
You don’t need to register your marriage in Canada to change your residence. (You can’t legally do it in Canada anyway)
For the foreign marriage license, you can submit a short explanation as to why you don’t have one instead of the license. Americans also don’t get one. I wrote a couple sentences basically saying “the US Gov doesn’t give marriage licenses when the marriage takes place abroad” and included the URL for a link from the US Embassy stating such, which was sufficient for my spouse visa application