RFE for I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions

[Aldi & James 2]

My husband came from Indonesia in May 2014 on a K-1 visa and we were married a month later. Then, we submited the paperwork for a conditional Green Card in August and it came about 9 months later. Last year, in the 90 days before his Green Card was set to expire, we submitted our paperwork to remove conditions.

 

In the original packet (sent March 2017), we included join bank accounts, joint credit card accounts, joint health insurance, joint auto insurance, joint vehicle registration, leases from prior two years with both our names (at addresses USCIS should have), 2 years of married filing jointly tax returns, 4 affidavits from citizens attesting to the relationship, life insurance naming the other person as beneficiary, pages of photos of us - by ourselves, with family, with friends, on vacations...it's a fairly comprehensive packet of 40 pages. I've just received an RFE this week asking for more "evidence of the marriage"...I've never been so tempted to send the government obscene photographs. The irony is, that wouldn't prove we have a real marriage any more than all this paperwork does.

 

They've asked for any adoption or guardianship of children paperwork - which we do not have - there are no children. They've asked for transactional data from our joint checking account...which we can share, but it's not going to be clear who's transactions are who's, so we fail to see the point. They've asked for our licenses/state photo ID's that have our address on them. We can provide copies the last 2-3 IDs from the last 2-3 addresses, no problem. They also wanted a copy of the marriage license...which is not only NOT on the instruction form as required, but they should also already have it from the K-1 to Green Card application. Again, we can send it, but we don't see the point.

 

Has anyone else run into this? I understand the need to prove the marriage is legitimate and you can't get more legitimate than us, but it seems like we could bury them in paperwork and it's still not going to prove anything.

 

[Jeanne Adil 1,651]

sounds like some of your documents got separated /technically lost in the system

how do they have a marriage license from K1?

i think here they want marriage certificate

 

all this may seem crazy but u have to send what they ask for

tell me why i had to send (25 pound RFE ) and one of the things they wanted was proof i told my MOMMIE i would marry 

[Sukie 1,439]

If you don't have kids, you don't have kids.  Many of us do not.

 

As far as "transactional information" from your bank accounts...did you send EVERY page of the statement, or just the summary page?  They want to see how you pay for your rent and make sure you both live at the same address (which is why they asked for your IDs/driver's licenses).  They want to see that your JOINT account pays for the utilities, your auto insurance, and for your living expenses.  Ideally, they'd like to see your income coming into the account and how it gets spent.  This is how they determine evidence of "co-mingling of finances".  If you do not do it this way, then you need to explain how your income comes in, and how it gets spent.  It's not who spent what - it's how your joint account pays for your living expenses. 

 

You've done a great job and given them a high-level picture of your co-mingling, but there is something they are missing (or that they THINK they are missing) - so that is why the "transactional" data is important.  Don't argue with them about the marriage license.  Send them EXACTLY what they ask for.

 

Good luck.  You'll be fine.

 

Sukie in NY

[Lucky2Lucky 2,526]

Did you submit bank statements that were for the length of your marriage or only a month or two? Definitely recommend sending the copy of ids which show your addresses. Did you have rfe or interview for AOS? Def send the marriage certificate as well... it sounds like you had good info you submitted sorry you got the rfe. Really curious how many months of bank account you sent though.

[implife 318]

12 hours ago, Aldi & James said:

They've asked for our licenses/state photo ID's that have our address on them.

My hunch is that's exactly why I received RFE: they want state-issued IDs with your address. If you included these in the original submission, I don't think you'd get RFE. 

But send them all they're asking for.

[Aldi & James 2]

13 hours ago, adil-rafa said:

sounds like some of your documents got separated /technically lost in the system

how do they have a marriage license from K1?

i think here they want marriage certificate

 

all this may seem crazy but u have to send what they ask for

tell me why i had to send (25 pound RFE ) and one of the things they wanted was proof i told my MOMMIE i would marry 

The marriage certificate was from the marriage AFTER the K-1. We had 90 days to marry, of course, then sent the certificate with the first Permanent Resident application in 2014. It should be part of our file, but I got many extra copies for just this reason...so I can send another to them if they really want it.

[Aldi & James 2]

12 hours ago, Sukie said:

If you don't have kids, you don't have kids.  Many of us do not.

 

As far as "transactional information" from your bank accounts...did you send EVERY page of the statement, or just the summary page?  They want to see how you pay for your rent and make sure you both live at the same address (which is why they asked for your IDs/driver's licenses).  They want to see that your JOINT account pays for the utilities, your auto insurance, and for your living expenses.  Ideally, they'd like to see your income coming into the account and how it gets spent.  This is how they determine evidence of "co-mingling of finances".  If you do not do it this way, then you need to explain how your income comes in, and how it gets spent.  It's not who spent what - it's how your joint account pays for your living expenses. 

 

You've done a great job and given them a high-level picture of your co-mingling, but there is something they are missing (or that they THINK they are missing) - so that is why the "transactional" data is important.  Don't argue with them about the marriage license.  Send them EXACTLY what they ask for.

 

Good luck.  You'll be fine.

 

Sukie in NY

We’ve always had a joint account and paid for all things from that, so if they want transactions to show that we can provide transactional data. Initially, I only sent the summary pages that showed the account was in both our names...I never imagined they’d be interested in the transactions. Our credit card does separate which card spent what, so they can enjoy reading through months of that too. 

Now we did change banks in early 2017...so I can’t really give them much history before that. If I give them the last year or so from our current bank do you suppose that will suffice? 

[Aldi & James 2]

13 hours ago, Luckycuds said:

Did you submit bank statements that were for the length of your marriage or only a month or two? Definitely recommend sending the copy of ids which show your addresses. Did you have rfe or interview for AOS? Def send the marriage certificate as well... it sounds like you had good info you submitted sorry you got the rfe. Really curious how many months of bank account you sent though.

I didn’t send any transactional data, just a bank cover sheet. I even redacted our account balances in the checking and savings since I figured that wasn’t really the point. I have nothing to hide, of course, so if they want months of transactions I can send it.

 

My husband doesn’t work, so it’s all one income and one set of household bills. I guess if they want to trace the money back to the tax returns to confirm it all goes to one place they can, but it hardly seems definitive we’re only maintaining a single house...in fact for many years we’ve had at least two.

 

I didn’t really think about that until now, but there would be payments and utilities for more than one property for a lot of our marriage...but many people own more than one property for rentals or vacation homes. Do you suppose I need to lay all that out in a descriptive letter or something? Primary residence for both of us always matched, and other properties were always in both our names. 

 

Edited November 11, 2018 by Aldi & James

[Sukie 1,439]

You don't have to do much.  Your mistake was just sending in the summary page.  Send the bank statements again, with EVERY SINGLE PAGE.  If the bank statement page says 1 of 8 pages, then make sure you have 8 pages.  You redacted so much that they felt you might be faking it.  Trying to out-guess USCIS is a bad idea.  Just send them the bank statements, a certified copy of your marriage license and your Driver's license/State IDs with your current address on it.

 

Sukie in NY

[TheKingmaker 153]

Just do what they ask you to do. No point in fighting them really.

[Jenny17655 283]

17 hours ago, Sukie said:

If you don't have kids, you don't have kids.  Many of us do not.

 

As far as "transactional information" from your bank accounts...did you send EVERY page of the statement, or just the summary page?  They want to see how you pay for your rent and make sure you both live at the same address (which is why they asked for your IDs/driver's licenses).  They want to see that your JOINT account pays for the utilities, your auto insurance, and for your living expenses.  Ideally, they'd like to see your income coming into the account and how it gets spent.  This is how they determine evidence of "co-mingling of finances".  If you do not do it this way, then you need to explain how your income comes in, and how it gets spent.  It's not who spent what - it's how your joint account pays for your living expenses. 

 

You've done a great job and given them a high-level picture of your co-mingling, but there is something they are missing (or that they THINK they are missing) - so that is why the "transactional" data is important.  Don't argue with them about the marriage license.  Send them EXACTLY what they ask for.

 

Good luck.  You'll be fine.

 

Sukie in NY

Oh lord all mine checking account would show is how many times I have McDonald's for lunch

[geowrian 22,335]

1 hour ago, Jenny17655 said:

Oh lord all mine checking account would show is how many times I have McDonald's for lunch

Trust me, I have a more interesting purchase history for them to peek through than McDonalds. 🤭

[Lucky2Lucky 2,526]

On 11/11/2018 at 11:31 AM, Aldi & James said:

I didn’t send any transactional data, just a bank cover sheet. I even redacted our account balances in the checking and savings since I figured that wasn’t really the point. I have nothing to hide, of course, so if they want months of transactions I can send it.

 

My husband doesn’t work, so it’s all one income and one set of household bills. I guess if they want to trace the money back to the tax returns to confirm it all goes to one place they can, but it hardly seems definitive we’re only maintaining a single house...in fact for many years we’ve had at least two.

 

I didn’t really think about that until now, but there would be payments and utilities for more than one property for a lot of our marriage...but many people own more than one property for rentals or vacation homes. Do you suppose I need to lay all that out in a descriptive letter or something? Primary residence for both of us always matched, and other properties were always in both our names. 

 

That could definitely been it then. They want to see you mingling your finances - our lawyer had us submit about 4 months per year we had the account. 

[jcra615 53]

sorry you are going through this! you've gotten some good advice here so far - submit what they asked for and what people here have recommended and you will be totally fine  best of luck!

[indianshah 4]

How many days does CSC take to get back after RFE response Is submitted for i751 waiver cases?