What happens if you have been married to a US Citizen and have conditional residency? Or what happens when you divorced your US Citizen spouse?
Just so you can get an understanding of what the system is, the reason you have to remove the conditions on your lawful permanent residency is because when you petition you have been married for less than 2 years. So if husband and wife are married for less than 2 years and the husband is a US citizen who petitions for his immigrant wife; the best outcome that you’re going to get is a 2-year conditional residency. Then you have to go in within 90 days of expiring and ask for your USCIS to remove the conditions to show that we are married for love and not for immigration purposes. You will ask for them to remove the conditions and give you a 10-year green card. If you’re successful that’s exactly what will happen. There’s a filing fee of $680 dollars. The filing fee itself is for $595 and then the Biometrics fee to take your picture and do your fingerprints is $85. So in total $680.
Common Scenarios
- Let´s say that your husband or your wife petitions for you and you obtained the 2-year lawful permanent residency card and it’s going to expire or did expire and before you were able to get your 10-year Green Card your spouse died. This is for you. We can help you.
- What if you got divorced or annulled before you were able to remove the conditions on your green card so now your green card is expired or going to expire and you don’t have a marital relationship with a person who petitioned for you to begin with? This seems like it could be a big problem and if not handled properly. But we can help.
- What happens if you were battered or otherwise your spouse was really cruel to you or if you obtained your green card through your parents and your parents were really cruel to you? We can help you.
- We separated and we’re no longer together and they are not going to help me finish this part of the process.
For a free legal consultation, call (623) 742-5400
Filing Within 90 Days of Card Expiration
Now, if you are still married you are required to file together within 90 days of your card expiring. You must do this before your card expires, not after. So if it expires in January 2022 you need to file it before January 2022, not 90 days after 2022. There’s a lot of information on the website about what kind of evidence you need to submit but as we were talking about before it’s really just to show them that you got married for love and not for immigration documents.
Now for some reason if you need to file this individually rather than together with your spouse it’s okay if you’re outside that 90 day window. This being the case if you’re divorced, annulled, old spouse has passed away or you were battered by them.
Client Story
We actually have a young woman who had married a US citizen and she was given a conditional green card for two years and then during that time she escaped a lot of domestic violence. Her lawful permanent residency expired and she didn’t know what to do. On an off chance she happened to reach out and do a consultation with us to see if there was anything that was left that could be done. She wanted to know if she was ever going to be able to fix the situation, because her card expired and the person who petitioned for her was not on good terms with her. He was really horrible to her. So we were able to help petition for her. We sent it out and God willing everything is going to go correctly. She’s going to get her 10-year Green Card even though she’s no longer in contact at all with her original petitioning spouse.
So if you know anyone who needs help and who has been granted a two-year green card please let them know because we want to help. Most importantly we want to help you get results. We want to help take you to your newest Frontier, to your next level. You’re at the final stage of the race. It’s time for you to remove the conditions on your residency and not to trip on the last hurdle. Let us help you get across the Finish Line fabulously.
Call or text (623) 742-5400 or complete a Free Case Evaluation form
