As part of preparing visa requirements for Australia, my fiancee's application requires a notice of intention to marry, as we all know. There are a few hitches with this. First, the notaries that she approached in the Ukraine have refused to witness her signature on a document in English - the NOIM. They have prepared stat decs in Ukrainian for us, but not the NOIM. That creates a difficulty. Secondly, we are having to chose a celebrant here in Sydney without my fiancee being here to help make the choice. Ideally we'd want to take our time and decide the style and type of service and celebrant, once she is in Australia. Yet the fiancee visa process expects that to be signed, sealed, and delivered even before she is here. Can any Australians out there suggest a way through this from their experience? Can they suggest any celebrants familiar with these kind of problems? Happy New Year, Chris
Long version: You have two issues here, both of which I am all too familiar with. The witnessing of her signature is essential. She will need to search until she finds someone with appropriate stamping authority who is prepared to witness her signature. I suggest a lawyer or registered translator. Mrs found someone in the police dept IIRC. You may get away without her signature but it is certainly outside the guidelines and I strongly recommend staying absolutely within the guidelines. The Au Moscow embassy has softened up a little recently but I wouldn’t push your luck.
The process is, you find the celebrant, complete the NOIM, sign it off, scan it (If you want to do it by email), send it to her, have her print it (If you don’t send the original by post), find the witness, sign it off, rescan and return to you. At that point it can be formally lodged with the celebrant and he/she can provide you with the appropriate verification to accompany the application documents, which IIRC, includes a copy of the NOIM for the embassy.
The second point is much simpler. The NOIM is a legal advice, it is not a legal contract. Subtle, but important difference. You are legally advising the embassy of your joint ITM but you have not given assurances that there will be no variation to the planned dates. The dates are now unimportant as is the name of the celebrant. You are entitled to vary either or at a later stage. I spoke to the embassy on this exact subject as our NOIM date at the time was looming and the visa was not issued. Olga Whatsherfaceanova (I think still works in the visa section) advised me that this was not important, we had legally advised our ITM, therefore the “intention” was the vital issue. I offered to send a new document with revised dates and again she advised not to do so as it would in fact defeat the intended purpose because the entire file would then need to be reviewed. The visa was issued in due course but in fact the issue was much later than the original ITM date.
At the end of the day, the visa issue simply states you must be legally married within 9 months of visa issue to remain visa compliant. How and when that occurs is entirely up to the couple provided it is within the 9 months.
Short version: You must have the signature witnessed. You can vary the wedding date and the celebrant if you choose. Good luck with explaining all that to your fiancé.
Thanks to both of you for this advice! It is really appreciated. Just one thing. I notice the the notes in the Notice of Intended marriage form includes:
"4. If a party to an intended marriage cannot conveniently sign this Notice at the time it is intended to give notice of the intended marriage, the other party may sign the Notice and give it to the proposed authorized celebrant. However, in this case, the party who has not signed the notice must sign it in the presence of that celebrant or another authorized celebrant before the marriage is solemnized."
Dunromin, are you saying that the Moscow Embassy takes a stricter view of this than here, because a visa application is involved?
Further to my post above, my fiance says the notaries she approached refused to witness her signature on the NOIM because the document is not a Ukrainian document. But it seems these apparently are the only people the Australian Government allow to fulfil this role outside Australia -- because notaries are the only people authorised in Ukraine to do this. To your knowledge, are there others like police officers, as you mentioned etc? Or would my lady have to travel almost 1000km to Kiev to get her signature witnessed at the Australian Consulate there!
For a good read consistent with her experience with notaries, see:
Chris: The NOIM must be signed (appropriately) both parties prior to the actual marriage, so in essence your understanding is correct. Nevertheless, the visa regulations imply it must be provided to the embassy in complete form together with the application. The Moscow embassy can be fairly strong on protocol but it may be you would get it through without her signature, I can't guess on that and I suspect much would depend on whether or not the celebrant would accept a half signed as a real NOIM. In our case. IIRC it was not so. You need to understand once the celebrant accepts the document and signes off his/her acceptance, it becomes actual. Therefore, logically speaking, the embassy should accept it at that point regardless of signatures. I remember some furious emailing back and forth. We made it all happen within 24 hours but Mrs ran her feet off to find someone to sign it off. At the end of the day she needs to get through to the local dimwitts that they are witnessing her SIGNATURE, they are NOT witnessing the document.
Oh Mrs just walked in and tells me she tripped over a Law firm who called themselves International Lawyers and they did the deed for her FOC. She says she was about at her wits end and my guess is she sold them a good sob story.
With my marriage I was doing reverse, getting English Documents into Ukrainian. I used a translation agency called April in Kiev (google it) that carried out translations and organised notorisation. We also for some documents had them organise an interpreter to go to notarist and do translation so notorist would witness signatures. They saved us a lot of heartache as it was proving difficult to find a notorist to do witnessing.
I don't think it's martin, I think it's someone who hijacked his old name Martin_UK. I'm sure now it's the return of jetma. I can't prove it though LOL, God this is hilarious.
Thanks for the email danny, didn't think this was your address:
From: Danny Green <snaper_100@hotmail.com>
To: martinXXXX@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, 16 January, 2009 13:46:16
Subject: you arseole
why make out to be me ?
why destroy posts?
why run my picture when im happy to show pictures myself ?
i dont hide my name ,my picture, my adress,where i live ,
i welcome people to a place to stay in russia .
what actually is the point ?
why not run your picture and your name rather than make out to be me ?
sorry martin but if i got the choice to come back i would choose exactlly the same .
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Hey Coop take a long walk off a Michigan short pier. Mr. I don't do anything but refer to someone as queer bait? You have knowledge of such things. Again as I said, share your great successes here, I have about 2 minutes to hear your worldly mouth.