Hey everyone. I've been browsing the posts on this site, and noting a lot of people have some difficulty adjusting to their spouses after arrival in the USA (I know...duh...). Sometimes it seems that that is the reason people are not able to work things out after marriage. I was just curious if people thought that having a longer time to adjust to one another (maybe live together a little while first) might help with marriage success? Personally I voted it should be extended, but I'm not sure how long...maybe 9 months.

i put 6 months. 9 would work too.

You can only vote if you think it should be extended. If you don't, you can't pick anything in the second part and it won't let you submit.

Your poll pre-supposes that the 3 month time limitation is a get-to-know-you period. It is not. The time between meeting and committing to an engagement is. When you become engaged you are saying "I am willing to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you." When you come to the US on a K-1 visa you are sealing the deal..... not giving it a trial run.

I think 90 days is fine but 6 months wouldn´t hurt either. My bigger concern is that I don´t think they should be giving a 90 days permit on the I-94 when you enter. Noone who looks at the passport (for example at DMV) understands what K1 is for or what it means and they automatically assume that you are supposed to leave the country in the 90 days. They don´t understand you are supposed to stay and therefore they don´t wanna give you the drivers license or something etc etc. And according to your passport you aren´t supposed to be here after the 90 days according to some people. So would be better even if they insist on getting married within 90 days to give you a 6 months stamp so you don´t run into those kind of problems.

Exactly! K-1 is not a shack-up visa, the couple are committed to marriage shortly after arrival.

That's interesting, because I don't really see it that way. I sort of saw it as saying that though you know each other (obviously...you're marrying the person after all!), you might need some time for them to adjust to the new country, get to know their way around, and know all the quirks of how their other half is in day to day life...in all my relationships I have absolutely found it true that you don't really know someone until you've lived with them...

I reckon 90 days is long enough. I got married 20 days after arriving in the US.

Agreed 110%

I would hate to impose on my friends to house my SO for any onger than I have to. I do NOT believe in living together before getting married.

Amen to that Sister Krikit!

Very well said Krikit! That's why VWPs were invented..a three month opportunity to grasp whether you can live with your fiance or not! Marriage is a life long commitment end of.

I agree that by the time your SO arrives in the U.S., you are ready for marriage. I can also see that if you waited until the visa was in hand before preparing for the wedding, 3 months might be pushing it (unless you just get married civily, not religiously).

I wish me and my girl could have lived together before marriage. I don't give as much importance to marrying before you live with a person.

90 days ok, 6 months

I believe you should have up to one year. But it goes beyond divorce rate improvement. One complaint I have, is 90 days is not enough time if you desire to marry in a particular season or on a meaningful date. I think it sucks that if my fiancée arrives in the autumn we have no way to marry in the spring or summer when it's warm! I find it unacceptable that the USCIS is virtually deciding our wedding dates.

I agree with you on that, KT. The K-1 visa pretty much rules out being able to choose a definite date and make plans for it.

ten years

Eh, there is a six-month window in which the K-1 holder can arrive in the US--which probably addresses your complaint.

Personally I've always thought that a shorter period between meeting and marriage made the marriage *more* likely to succeed, not less, but that's based on purely anecdotal evidence.

I disagree, I think it depends on the couple.
My husband and I DID live together before we met (just in his country, not the U.S.).

I voted that 90 days is enough but I think an extension up to 6 months wouldn't be too much to ask. I know that once you are granted the visa you have up to 6 months to arrive, but for us it was easier not to since my husband had to travel quite a distance for the interview - we met up there and flew to the U.S. together.
If people want to plan their weddings it makes it easier to have more time before the 90 days are up - so that is why I'd support the 6 months time period.
But that does not mean that I think the K1 visa is a "let's try this out" - if you are applying for K1 you should already know you want to marry that person.

I can see the reasoning in getting married during a certain time of the year, but I would think if the couple was serious about a long-term relationship they would want to get married ASAP. I married my wife in her country as she wanted but if we had gone the K-1 route, we would have probably been married within a few days of her arrival.

90 days is enough.

I was able to see my husband so many times before we got married,however this can be very hard for some couples.

The 6 months + 3 months is fine if you're willing to be apart from your SO for a longer period of time...if you're not, you're stuck with the time frame that USCIS gives you...

I would like to have the option of six months in the US...I wouldn't have to go through 2 weddings (a little redundant, IMHO, but such is life...)!

Well said. I totally agree!

VWPs are great for the people who live in those countries. There are a lot of people that dont have that option.

and as has already been mentioned, there is often a big difference between being engaged and actually living together day to day. When you add to that the stress of immigration and culture adjustment, well, it can be very tumultuous. I agree that the time shouldnt be used as a get to know you type thing but I also think its important to realize sometimes the reality is just not what either or both parties expected. Thats kind of inherent in long distance relationships, isnt it? so what would be the harm in having a little extra time for those couples who need it?
(having said that, I married my husband the day after he arrived here 3 and a half years ago so we didnt waste any time )

I absolutely agree

I agree..in our case it was different though because I still lived with my family, so he stayed with my family when he came over. My sister let him have her room and she moved into my room.

I think there should be an option for more than 90 days. Not because of getting to know each other, bc I agree that it's not a "get to know you" visa. But because of things like planning the wedding, and letting the SO get their feet established a little more. So they should get the EAD soon after arrival IMO so they can start working and making money to contribute to the upcoming marriage if need be. Like in our case, Sujeet would have loved if he could have worked before we got married and got his own place which I would move to after the marriage. But bc of the EAD stuff we had to live with my family after marriage for a few months until he started working. I didn't make enough at my job to move out.

We wanted to get married as soon as possible after his arrival so that he got his EAD as soon as possible.

Also with the worrisome visa process, some couples just don't know when to plan the wedding for until the visa is approved. If there was more time after they came here, the wedding plans wouldn't be so stressful and last minute. And after being apart for 11 months I didn't want to stay apart even longer just so I could plan a bigger wedding. I loved my wedding but it was much smaller than the wedding I would have planned if I had more knowledge of the wedding date ahead of time.

I agree the EAD should be effective when they come over, but since it is not, there is even more incentive to get married imeadiately upon reuniting in the U.S. Even if we had 6 months or more to get married after the SO arrived here, we would still get married relatively quick. We would want to start the AOS so that she could get her citizenship sooner, along with the EAD and especially the AP.

Exactly , I dont want to get married in a snow storm.

YES

I couldn't agree more. They have already controlled our lives during our dating and the k1 process itself. Now they are controlling our wedding date too. I have no doubt that I want to marry my fiance, but some more time to plan a wedding etc, would be nice. One could argue, you have 6 months to enter on the VISA, do the planning then...but I don't think the wedding planning should be one-sided. We are making do with the 3 month constraint, but we had to pick our date based on location availability in a particular time range. We really didn't have much say so in it! It was like we had to take the available date in the given USCIS time range.

But you still have to be apart for those six months. As greeneyedgirlfl says:


Fortunately my parents and friends are fairly flexible and as long as my wedding falls on a school holiday they can attend, so I'm not having to go through two weddings. But other people are and I think six months in the US would give more time to plan the wedding and adjust to living in a strange country. Doesn't mean, of course, that other couples can't get married as soon as they'd like, too!

I think 3 months is long enough. I married my husband three months after arrival in Germany and they don`t even have finance visas that I am aware of. Two of those months I spent living in another German state away from him, so wasn`t like I even saw him every day, more like every other weekend. I think it is all sink or swim, IMO. We will be married 4 years in August.

And double amen...

As for getting married on a specific date, who says you can't. Who says you can't have a quick civil ceremony and then plan for the wedding of your dreams, in or out of a snow storm? This is an immigration process, you gotta deal with the hand you are given. Nothing about our situations is ideal, so make the best of it. Hubster didn't come on a K-1, but we had a civil ceremony so we could get the I-130 paperwork rolling and that gave us the time to plan the full-blown wedding we wanted.

Well, some people feel that that day you get married is the day you should celebrate your wedding, and that it's not proper to have a separate ceremony. I know I asked my parents if it would be okay to sign the papers soon after entering the US and then have a celebration at a later date, as they insisted on celebrating, and they said that they would feel very uncomfortable with that; that it would be deceiving the guests (even if they know) and that it would also be pointless. So I shall be delaying my entry into the US so that I may enter closer to a wedding date that is accommodating to our guests.

So I guess it depends on how flexible your family and friends are, what their opinions on weddings are, and whether or not you'd like to listen to them. Sometimes it's easier to compromise and keep the peace.

I think that people need to think long and hard before deciding if they are ready to live in another country. Its not a decision that should be made on a whim or "because we are in love". There are very real challenges out there that even love cannot overcome.

That being said, I think that for a lot of people they may use the 90 days as an adjusting period to see if the foreign SO will be OK living here. There are a lot of us that have fiance's that have never been to the US and will naturally use the time to figure out the adjustment. I also think that the 90 days is a good amount of time for the couple to plan the wedding that they want and make plans for family, friends to attend.

In the same breath, I wholly disagree with is being a "getting to know you" period. WTF? You are supposed to be marrying this person so I would hope that you would know them. Adjustiong to America is different than adjusting to your SO. Using the visa to bring your boyfriend or girlfriend over to see "if we can stand living together" (1) defeats the purpose of the visa and (2) clogs up the system for those of us who want to get married.



Only a handful of countries have VWP. My fiance has better chances of being hit by lightening on a bright sunny day than getting a tourist visa to the US.

I mostly agree with that and that is basically why I believe 90 days is enough to get married.

However, to some extent, I feel we were fairly fortunate. Both of us have the same cleaning habits, agree about money, live well together. Those are the sink or swim mundane elements that are hard to figure out from just chat and random visits alone. Some people love each other but just can't live together.

I adapted very fast to life in Germany and my husband to life here. However, I understand people may have trouble adjusting. Hard to know that either until you are actually here. Still, 90 days is enough to know that.