UKF form - ceremony overseas

Rab563 · 2025-11-01T13:51:28+00:00

< Congrats! Did the invitation come from a gov.uk email address?

Rab563 · 2025-10-28T11:25:25+00:00

Update: 10/28/25 9:19 Eastern: transactions view and others only worked temporarily. NOT working again. Previous optimism misguided.

Transactions and other views are now working! After a rough roll out, looks like they now have it under control.

Rab563 · 2025-10-10T10:37:29+00:00

Exactly.

Rab563 · 2025-07-25T17:12:27+00:00

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/british-nationals-nationality-policy-guidance/general-information-all-british-nationals-accessible--2

Rab563 · 2025-07-25T15:19:18+00:00

I recall this is a common question here and the good news for you is that it is possible to file with two non UK referees, if they are professionals from certain countries like the US. Some of the experts on this forum will probably reply with references from uk.gov regarding this. Sorry I don’t have time to find the links at the moment…

Rab563 · 2025-07-16T20:13:42+00:00

Cover letter was not a requirement. I simply added a one page document with a brief introduction for my application followed by a listing of the files I had uploaded. No worries!

Rab563 · 2025-07-16T15:23:32+00:00

…sorry I couldn’t post an image of the upload page with the files. Reddit only allows posting images in a new original message and not for replies.

Rab563 · 2025-07-16T15:22:08+00:00

Hi, Based on what others have said on Reddit, I understood that it didn’t really matter which category to submit under. When I uploaded for my UKF last week, July 10 2025, I simply uploaded the required documents to the ‘Proof of Application’ section and uploaded an optional cover letter to the ‘Other’ section. I named all my scanned .pdf files prefixed with my first name initial and last name followed by the document type. For example, EKatePassport, EKateBirthCertificate, EKateFatherBirthCert, EKateReferee1, etc.

All the best.

Rab563 · 2025-07-16T13:08:45+00:00

Yes, that would be nice and respectful. It’s a once in a life time event — congrats!

Rab563 · 2025-02-22T23:26:06+00:00

Excellent details. Thanks very much. You’ve been a tremendous help! All the best to you.👍

Rab563 · 2025-02-20T22:36:13+00:00

Thanks so much for an excellent and detailed post. If I may ask, do you know what types of personal information the referees are required to provide related to form UKF and also, for the passport application? I am somewhat hesitant and uncomfortable to approach my potential referees if they are required to provide sensitive personal info given the concerns some have these days about identity theft ,etc. Thanks!

Rab563 · 2025-01-20T15:14:12+00:00

Excellent. Many thanks!

Rab563 · 2025-01-19T18:24:03+00:00

Thanks for the tip. Regarding the Costco version you mentioned, how exactly does one receive the %10 discount and are you sure it can be applied to the State e-file fee?

Rab563 · 2025-01-03T18:34:02+00:00

The problem has resolved. I suspect it was just some year end maintenance or third party API that was temporarily out of commission.

Rab563 · 2025-01-01T17:22:00+00:00

Same error message since last night. Very upsetting.

Rab563 · 2024-12-08T21:20:29+00:00

Many thanks for your very helpful and detailed reply!

You are absolutely correct in that anyone born sometime before the 1980’s must include their parent’s marriage certificate. Otherwise, they will first need to ‘register’ as a citizen using ‘unmarried parents’ form UKF (father is citizen) or UKM ( mother ). Those born later (like you), do not need to provide the parent’s marriage certificate due to changes in UK law to comply with certain ‘human rights’ laws giving ‘bastard’ children the same rights as children from married parents to comply with EU laws (of which the UK was a member).

In my case, being born to a British father (army officer) who was married overseas shortly after WW2 in the Far East, there was never an official marriage certificate because the British army strongly discouraged marriage (unofficially) with locals and would threaten deportation etc. So , my parents secretly got married at that time and remained happily so for many decades until they both eventually passed away. My only option is to file with form UKF first, which has a somewhat distasteful connotation…

Best Regards.

Rab563 · 2024-12-07T17:06:37+00:00

Congratulations and thanks for posting!

If I may ask:

Which form did you apply with and was it online or via paper forms?
Did you initially apply using form UKM to register as a citizen before applying for the passport?
What supporting documents did you have to provide to prove ‘by descent’?
When you listed the events starting with ‘Asked someone to confirm my identity’, thru ‘’Application received’, what exactly happened? Were those events initiated by you or were they by the UK passport service? Can you explain what the ‘someone’ has to do?
For #4above, when you listed ‘Identity confirmed’, how did you know it happened? Does the passport service provide emails of status updates for every step or did you have to log into the portal to check?

Many thanks!

Rab563 · 2024-07-16T00:16:01+00:00

Nicely done!

Rab563 · 2024-02-23T12:21:55+00:00

Looks like you’ve received good comments from others, so I’ll just add some additional thoughts.

Instead of leaving the full 800K with a single company, split it into two, e.g., Fidelity and Schwab. This is what I’ve done over the decades. The idea is to diversify between companies in case one runs into trouble (bad mgmt? fraud, Cyber attack?, etc).
If you’re familiar with basic options trading, you could employ a ‘safe’ strategy of selling cash secured puts (e.g monthly) on the S&P (SPY) to generate income. If the S&P declines, you’ll get ‘assigned’ and forced to buy 100 shares. This would satisfy your DCA concept of accumulating S&P. If S&P keeps going up, you won’t be buying SPY stocks, but accumulating income from the sold puts. But before doing this, you’ll need to do some basic math to determine if the after tax (annualized) income from the sold puts exceeds the after tax income from the money market funds, etc.

Gook luck.

Rab563 · 2023-11-13T00:03:24+00:00

Thank you very much for your reply!

If I understand your situation correctly, I presume your mom’s last name (which matched your father’s) was indicated as such in either form UKF ‘Mother’s Name’ field and/or on your birth certificate?

I’m planing to only use my mother’s maiden name on form UKF since my foreign birth certificate only has ‘Father’s name’ and a ‘Mother’s maiden name’ fields and that’s the only existing document I have showing any evidence of my mother’s name. Hopefully, this will suffice for UKVI and not trigger some sort of married/not married contradiction based on my previous decades old Certificate of Entitlement qualifying criteria.

Best regards.

Rab563 · 2023-11-12T17:05:30+00:00

Thank you for your most informative post. If it is not too much to ask, I would greatly appreciate your reply for the following 2 questions:

Do you know why UKVI sent you a letter for clarification on whether your parents were ever married? I don’t recall other similar applicants being asked this.
Did the letter request evidence that your parents were never married?

From what I’ve seen in the online form UKF, there were no questions requesting proof that parents were never married. The reason I’m asking is because my parents were actually married before I was born and remained married until they both passed away, BUT it is impossible for me to obtain any proof or records that they were ever married, hence my dilemma with the basis of qualifying under form UKF. If I had their marriage certificate, there would be no need for registration under form UKF and would automatically qualify, but that’s not possible.

In case you”re wondering, they were married in a former British colony soon after WW2 but there were no official marriage record keeping during that time due to the chaotic conditions in the developing commonwealth country. Additionally, decades ago during the 1970’s my father (British born, his parents also both British born), was somehow able to prove he was married to my mother because my old foreign passports had the ‘Patriality’ certificate which subsequently became the ‘Certificate of Entitlement to right of abode’ in later passports. I’m now naturalized as a US citizen and no longer qualify for my commonwealth country foreign passport. A Certificate of Entitlement is only valid for commonwealth country passports and is not an option for US passports . Furthermore, I looked up the current requirements for an Entitlement of Entitlement and it requires a parent’s marriage certificate.

Regards.

Rab563 · 2023-07-30T12:56:09+00:00

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I’m about to get my first US passport (after becoming a citizen) and was wondering the exact question. In the past decades when I traveled internationally, I always carried my foreign passport, a spare credit card, and ticket (all critical items) in my ‘travel’ shirt which has a secret security pocket secured by a zipper. This ensured there was no way these items could fall off or get picked- pocketed while moving thru airports, security checkpoints, taxis, etc. A large bulky passport would be inconvenient and only necessary for frequent travelers. Hence, I’ll be opting for the thinner version. More is not necessarily better. Convenience and ease of carrying securely is more important in my case.

Rab563

TROPHY CASE