UK family and dependant visas

Route one: as a dependant on a work visa

On the Skilled Worker visa, the Scale-up visa, Global Talent, Innovator Founder and the Global Business Mobility routes, your partner and children can come with you or join later as dependants. A partner means a spouse, a civil partner or an unmarried partner. Unmarried couples usually need to have lived together for at least two years, or be in a relationship where living together has not been possible for good reason.

Each family member makes their own application and pays the route's visa fee and the Immigration Health Surcharge. If you have been in the UK on a visa for less than twelve months, you must show funds: £285 for your partner, £315 for the first child and £200 for each further child, on top of the £1,270 for the main applicant.

Dependants' visas usually end when the main applicant's does. One point to keep in mind for later: time as a dependant does not count towards settlement as a main applicant on a work route. If your partner wants to work and settle in their own right, plan their own route early.

Route two: the family visa to join someone British or settled

If you are joining a partner who is British or has indefinite leave to remain, you need the family visa. You must both be at least 18 and intend to live together permanently in the UK. Fiancés can come on a six-month visa if they marry in the UK within that time.

Income is the biggest hurdle: as a rule you need a combined income of at least £29,000 a year. Savings can count instead of income in some cases. If you first applied as a partner before 11 April 2024 and are now extending, the old threshold of £18,600 still applies to you.

The family visa costs £2,064 from outside the UK and £1,407 inside the UK, plus the health surcharge, which for five years comes to £5,175 for an adult. After five years on the family visa as a partner you can settle. Under the earned settlement proposal, partners of British citizens would stay at five years.

EU families: often the better way in

If your partner holds settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, you may be able to use that free route instead of the expensive family visa. As a rule the relationship must already have existed before the end of the transition period. Family members applying for the first time have, since 8 October 2026, three months from their last lawful entry to apply.

Children

Children under 18 come as dependants on a parent's route or through the family visa. A child born in the UK while a parent has settled status or indefinite leave to remain is automatically British. For children born abroad to a British parent, the rules on citizenship by descent apply, which we explain on our page on British citizenship.

Bringing parents or other adult relatives is hard by contrast. The adult dependent relative visa requires that someone needs long-term care that is not available in their home country, and it costs £3,635 from outside the UK.

What family means for tax

A partner or child living in the UK counts as a tie of its own in the statutory residence test, the family tie. If you move the family over but commute yourself, you can become UK tax resident sooner than you expect. A right to live in the UK and tax residence are two separate things: the statutory residence test decides, year by year, whether you are UK resident, not your visa or your status. How the two fit together is explained in status and tax, in our overview of the UK tax system and, for the first years after arrival, under the FIG regime.

Sources: GOV.UK: Family visas; GOV.UK: Skilled Worker visa; GOV.UK: Global Talent visa; GOV.UK: Apply to the EU Settlement Scheme; GOV.UK: Statement of changes HC 584, explanatory memorandum; GOV.UK: Earned settlement (consultation)