ILR 10 year route on spouse visa

[London95]

Dear Members,

I would appreciate your expert opinion in the following situation.

A friend of mine, is a British citizen and his wife came to uk on spouse visa on 10 year route in 2014 now, after 10 years long residence, she is eligible to apply for ILR. However, the info on the gov.uk makes it difficult to decide which application so the write one:

1. settlement Long Residence (SET LR): before pressing apply button, it says if you are partner of a person settlement in the UK, please don’t use this form.

2. Apply as a Partner (Family Route): this has the option for 10 years route and has the guidance but the application name is Settlement Adult Relative which I believe is for members of family under care.

So I am not sure, which one to go for? I would appreciate if you could kindly paste the link to follow and comment your reason/ prior Experiance.

Also, if the application is rejected due to wrong form, will home office refund the application fee which £2,885 at the moment .

Thank you in advance!

[zimba]

There are two 10-year routes to ILR for her. One is the long residence route and the other is the 10-year family route.

For the long residence, form SET(LR) is used: https://visas-immigration.service.gov.uk/product/set-lr
The long residence route has its own qualification criteria but the new changes have introduced some limitations and ambiguities.

For the 10-year family route, form settlement-adult-relative is used: https://visas-immigration.service.gov.u ... t-relative
I strongly suggest they apply under the 10-year family route.

The form settlement-adult-relative clearly says:

Use this form to apply to settle in the UK if you:

•are the partner of someone who has or had permission on the Innovator route, has refugee status, or humanitarian protection. They must either be applying for settlement at the same time as you or have already settled in the UK.
•have permission to stay as a partner or parent (or a combination of the two) on the family route and are eligible to settle in the UK after a qualifying period of 10 years.