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“Perfect. Then we can head to the lawyer’s office.”
An hour later we were midtown sitting in front of the lawyer again. He was going over our prenuptial agreement in extreme detail, making sure everything was listed correctly in the documents he’d had printed up.
“If everything looks okay to you, then I just need your signature here,” he said, pointing to the spot where a sticky note had been place with an arrow. “And everywhere you see an arrow.”
“It looks fine to me.” It was a basic document allowing us both to exit the marriage with what we’d entered with, including my car and apartment. I signed everywhere that was required, wondering wh
y we couldn’t have done this electronically, but figuring we could use the opportunity to check on her application process.
“Do you have any questions, Felicia?” the lawyer asked. “Technically I work for Michael, but I can answer anything you’d like clarification on.”
That was a very lawyerly thing to say. I wondered if it would piss Felicia off, but she’d told me she had a headache, even after she’d had a latte. She looked like she was wishing she had a soft bed to sleep in for about a week.
“It all sounds aboveboard to me,” she said. “Where do I sign?”
Once that was out of the way, I asked, “Any news on Felicia’s visa application?”
He shook his head. “No. But I wouldn’t expect anything this soon. What we need to discuss is your options at this point. You’re down to two weeks before the expiration. The smartest and most appropriate course of action is for Felicia to return to the UK temporarily prior to the expiration while waiting for approval on the fiancée visa. It shows that she respects the laws of the immigration process. The downside though, is once she’s out of the US they might not let her back in.”
I’d known, theoretically, that they wouldn’t process our visa request before the expiration but I hadn’t been thinking she would have to return to England anyway. “That sounds risky.”
“All your options are risky. If she stays, it might be held against her, and then her visa denied. Your other option is to get married, skip the fiancée visa, and apply for a spousal visa. You can plead ignorance, that it was always your intention to get married at Christmas, and you didn’t really think it would be an issue. Usually they don’t hold it too much against you if you get married as long as you can prove your relationship is legitimate. The other option would be to go to the UK together, get married there, and wait for the spousal visa to be approved. Or get married here and go to the UK to wait.”
Holy shit. My head was spinning. “That’s a lot of options.”
He nodded. “Some riskier than others. My recommendation is to get married here in the US, prior to the visa expiration, then Felicia returns to the UK to wait out the approval process. Legally, that is the option that violates no rules or regulations.”
I just sat there, taking that in.
Felicia cleared her throat. “How long does a spousal visa take?”
“It just depends. Usually with the UK they’re pretty quick. Three to six months.”
Six months wasn’t the end of the world. “What if they don’t approve the visa at that point?”
“You can apply again. Or move to the UK.”
“I’m a surgeon,” I said. “I can’t exactly move my career to England.”
“I understand. I’m just telling you the facts.”
The facts kind of sucked.
Felicia sighed. “Well. Thank you for all the information. We’ll let you know if we need the visa application changed to spousal or if we just want to cancel it.”
I frowned at her. “We’re not canceling it. We just need to go over our options.” I stood up and held my hand out to the lawyer. “Thanks for all your help, we appreciate it.”
Felicia stood up and did the same.
We left and neither of us said a single word down the hallway, in the elevator, or as we walked across the lobby of the office building. I was kind of waiting for her to speak first, curious where her head was. Did her comment about canceling it mean she didn’t want to be with me? As in, I was in love with her and she was absolutely not in love with me?
The minute we got out on the sidewalk, she rammed her purse strap further up on her shoulder, adjusted her hat and said, “This is just bullshit. Those are our options? We can either be dodgy as hell and hope for the best or I have to go back to England anyway? If that’s the case, what was the fucking point of any of this?”
Her cheeks were red, her eyes blazing.
I could see a lot of points to this but I wasn’t going to debate that with her. “You wouldn’t be going back permanently. Just until the visa is approved.”
“So we rush a wedding, get married in a courthouse months before we reasonably should, and then I have to leave so we can’t even continue to develop our relationship? That is just insane.”
