Register child under 18 as British citizen (form MN1) + fee waiver

[MZ83]

Hello everyone

I am a Syrian national with Indefinite Leave to Remain. I am married and my wife and I have 4 children together (all are under 18). We came via the UN as Syrian Refugees. We live together in the same house in Yorkshire.

As parents, we want to apply for British Citizenship for our four children via the MN1 (Register child under 18 as British citizen).

As you can imagine this is very expensive and since we are on very low income (benefits), we cannot afford to do so, so we wish to apply for a fee waiver.

The citizenship MN1 form has been fairly straight forward, but the fee waiver form is extremely confusing and we hope someone can clarify some questions that we have.

Benefits Confusion

For each applicant (the applicants being our children), the form asks details of both parents, and whether each parent has previously received benefits and whether they currently receive benefits (in other words, they want to know about current & previous benefits received)

This is not a problem as we have kept all our paperwork since arriving in the UK in 2016. However, it asks the same questions for each parent!!!

If I say, I received Child Tax Credit, do I then have to say my wife also received Child Tax Credit? If yes, wouldn't that double the amount? What are we supposed to do here? Are we supposed to split the child tax credit equally between each parent?

We're a family unit, so all benefits we received would come as a lump sum to one of our bank accounts.

Also, are they really interested in all historic benefits received all the way back to 2016? Or should we take only the last 12 months into consideration?

Any help and clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Amber]

You just state it as one parent receiving the benefits, for a number of benefits there is a main/lead claimant, that’s the case for legacy means tested benefits (but for tax credits). As long as the sum total is correct for the family unit, that should be ok.