Pareja de Hecho

Pareja de hecho is a civil union that is distinct from marriage. It is a form of domestic partnership that is registered with your comunidad. In this partnership your finances will remain separate (if you so desire), and it is much easier to separate than a divorce.

• Pareja de Hecho vs. Marriage
• About the Process
• Step 1 (Presenting Documents to a Notary)
• Step 2 (Registering your Partnership with the Junta)
• Step 3 (Getting Residency through Pareja de Hecho)
• Step 4 (Apply for TIE with Positive Resolution)

Partnership with a Spanish citizen or European Union citizen is one of the few pathways towards long-term residency and eventually citizenship in Spain. Before you start this journey, it is important to establish a paper trail of being in a committed relationship. Each comunidad will have their own requirements, but regardless, your residency application can be rejected if they suspect that you are not in an authentic relationship.

How can I establish a paper trail of my relationship? One way is by showing proof of living together for a certain period of time. This can include getting empadronamiento together, having your names together in a rental contract, utility bills, and your address presented in a work contract.

Some comunidades require that you have lived with your partner a set amount of time before registering for pareja de hecho. For example, Madrid requires 1 year of living together. There is no official requirement for Andalucia (besides living together when you apply), but you can be rejected if they suspect you are not a legitimate couple.

In fact, my partner and I applied with another couple who did not have a history of living together. She was living abroad and wanted to get residency in Spain. Despite meeting all the official requirements like us, they were rejected from pareja de hecho (but not from marriage, so it’s not such a sad story).

Make sure to always double check with the official Junta page for requirements, but it can be equally important to have proof that you are a legitimate couple.

It is also important to demonstrate to the government that you will not be a financial burden to the state. This can be demonstrated with a work contract and/or sufficient savings. (I used my Carta de Nombramiento from being an auxiliary teacher)

Pareja de Hecho vs. Marriage

Advantages of Pareja de Hecho:

It is much easier to dissolve a pareja de hecho. Here are the various means of annulling pareja de hecho:

• Mutual agreement.
• Unilateral decision from one of the members of the union with an official notification to the other party.
• Death.
• Separation of over 6 months.
• Marriage of any of the members.

Also, by default your finances will remain separate in pareja de hecho. Marriages can also keep their finances separate with a declaration of separación de bienes, though.

Weddings are expensive.

Disadvantages of Pareja de Hecho:

Your partnership will only be recognized in the comunidad where you are registered. If you want to move to another comunidad, you will need to register pareja de hecho again.

Your partnership will not be recognized internationally. Your residency in Spain will be recognized, but the partnership itself won’t.

You are eligible for citizenship through marriage after a year of living together. With pareja de hecho, it can take up to 10 years. After the first 5 years, you will have to apply for long-term residency to stay in Spain, but with citizenship, you do not need to justify your continual stay.

You are not given the same partnership advantages of a marriage. For example, you will not be given guaranteed sick leave to take care of your partner if they are ill or in the hospital (this has been slowly changing).

About the Process

As mentioned before, each comunidad will have different requirements to register as pareja de hecho. For the most part, the requirements will be similar from place to place. To check the specific requirements of your area, you can simply google “Pareja de hecho (region)”.

This guide will discuss the process I went through in Andalucia, 2022, but the majority of the process will remain the same between regions.

The process took about 9 months from starting to collect documents to having my TIE in hand. My partner and I completed the process with minimal mistakes and the help of a lawyer. If done perfectly, it might take 7.5 months.

When receiving residency through pareja de hecho, you will only be given 5 years’ stay. After residing in Spain for 5 years, you can apply for permanent residency.

Permanent residency is contingent on you being an upright member of your community (don’t break the law, try to maintain employment, and pay taxes). You also have to avoid leaving Spain for extended periods of time. The lawyer we hired recommended not exceeding 6 months away during the 5 year period and not exceeding 2 months away in any given year. To prove your extended stay in Spain, hold on to your boarding passes, flight tickets, bank statements, and your stamped passport pages.

(Make sure you receive a stamp when leaving and entering Spain)

The process itself involves 4 steps:

Step 1: collect documents and present them to a notary in Spain to complete the paperwork for pareja de hecho. (Technically, pareja de hecho can be done without a notary, but it will complicate and extend the process).

Step 2: take the notary statements and the previously required documents to the junta to have them registered. (You are now officially pareja de hecho in your comunidad!)

Step 3: (most difficult – we lawyered up) – use pareja de hecho status to get residency.

Step 4: apply for a TIE using your positive resolution from step 3.

Step 1 Requirements:

Information about the requirements (Andalucia)

Like always, the information provided is based on my own experiences alongside information found through official sources. Always triple check everything with the official sources.

Together:

• Empadronamiento (certificado colectivo)
• An appointment with a notary

Expiration dates (in our experience):

Birth certificate (both) – 3 months
Proof of single status (American) – 3 months
Empadronamiento – 3 months
Certificado de Fe de Vida y Estado Civil – Theoretically, 3 months, but we were warned that anything over 15 days can be rejected.

Just to be safe, bring a copy of each document throughout the process.

Apostilled Birth Certificate + Sworn Translation

Simply Google “(State) Vital Records”. I’ll give an example from my state of birth: Michigan.

Once you find your state’s vital records, go to make an order.

For those living abroad already, you can have your order delivered internationally. I highly recommend ordering online if it’s an option for your state.

If you order by mail, you will have to complete a request form with your personal information and mail it in. Personally, when sending mail internationally, I have about a 95% success rate that it will arrive at its destination.

Since you are ordering a state document, you will require a state apostille. This can be automatically added to your order! No extra wait time needed.

It will ask for the personal information present on your birth certificate (date of birth, full name, parents’ names, and city of birth).

Current processing time in Michigan ranges from 21-45 business days, but you can pay extra to expedite the process.

After receiving the apostilled birth certificate, you need to get a sworn translation.

What makes a sworn translator “official”?

A sworn translator is a translator who has been licensed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Not all translators are sworn translators. A sworn translation is required for legal purposes such as getting a visa. Here is an example of a sworn translation below:

How to get the sworn translation: Get into contact with a sworn translator. Give the relevant information such as the type of documents being translated, preferred payment method, translation delivery method (physically by mail or attached in an email), and the expected turn-around-time.

For the 99% of you who are getting English to Spanish translations, I highly recommend working with Alba:

alba.fernandez.c.residency2sp@gmail.com

She has experience working with helping individuals get through difficult bureaucratic processes in Spain which means she will be highly responsive and helpful while also providing budget-friendly pricing.

What if I need a translation from a a non-English language to Spanish?

You can search for sworn translators that work for other language pairs in the webpage below. It’s the same process, but you may have more difficulties finding responsive translators. Not everyone is actively looking for work.

Link to the List of Sworn Translators from the L.A. Consulate Website

Back to Step 1

Apostilled Proof of Single Status + Sworn Translation

This one is more difficult since there is no federal marriage registry in the U.S.

Marriage is handled on a state by state basis. You can prove you are single in an individual state through a marriage search, but it is unrealistic to do a marriage search in all 50 states to prove that you are not married.

What I did: Personally, I did a marriage search in my home state from the year I was 18 years old until the present. This document was apostilled by the state of Michigan. I also sent a statement from the U.S. embassy in Madrid clarifying that there is no centralized registry to know if a U.S. citizen is married or not. For the marriage search, you pay an additional amount for each year included in your search. It can be quite expensive!

What others have done: From what I’ve seen online, others have gone to a Spanish notary to sign and notarize a statement declaring their single status. You can do this at your notary appointment. This statement can also be accompanied with the official embassy statement regarding civil status.

The Apostille of the Hague is for government documents, so you won’t be able to apostille your notarized statement

Here is the embassy statement below:

How to do a marriage search: Just like before with your birth certificate, you are going to request proof of single status through your state’s vital records.

Unfortunately (for Michigan), you can’t order proof of single status online. This must be done through snail-mail with a request form and a check.

Again, just like the birth certificate, you can save a lot of time by requesting your No Marriage (Single Status) with a state apostille already attached.

As mentioned before, you will fill out the request form and request a search for all the years between the age of 18 and present.

They do not accept scanned signatures or digital signatures. I originally filled out the document, scanned it, and emailed it to my parents to print and mail out, but my request was rejected. If you are already living in Spain, you will have to send the document across the Atlantic.

After receiving your apostilled marriage search, you will need to get a sworn translation.

Getting a sworn translation was already explained in the previous section. See above.

Back to Step 1

Passport + Copy

Bring your passport along with a copy of all of your passport pages (yes, all of them). They may only ask for certain pages, but bring everything and save the document for later on.

Back to Step 1

TIE + Copy

If you have been living in Spain for an extended period, you will certainly have a TIE. Bring it with you alongside a copy of the front and back.

It doesn’t hurt to hang on to digital copies of previous TIEs if you took the time to scan them before renewing. It can further prove your history in Spain and with your partner.

Back to Step 1

Certificado de Fe de Vida y Estado Civil

Por suerte, será mucho más fácil ya que eres español. Aquí tienes un enlace donde se explica el Certificado de fe de vida y estado civil.

https://www.mjusticia.gob.es/es/ciudadania/tramite?k=certificado-de-fe-de-vida-estado

¿Qué documentos hay que presentar?

• DNI del solicitante
• Libro de Familia
• Certificado de Empadronamiento Individual
• En caso de imposibilidad de comparecencia de la persona interesada, la persona a la que autorice para actuar en su nombre deberá presentar su propio DNI, así como la copia del DNI y certificado médico reciente (orientativamente, de antigüedad no superior a siete días) u otros documentos que acrediten la imposibilidad de comparecencia de la persona sobre la que se solicita la expedición de fe de vida y estado.

Esta es la información directamente del Ministerio de Justicia Registros Civiles. Mi pareja solo tenía su cita y su identificación.

Enlace de Cita Previa (España)

Enlace de Cita Previa (Andalucía)

Seleccione tu oficina y, a continuación, tu solicitud (FE DE VIDA).

Después, tienes que terminar la solicitud, llevar la documentación a la cita y recoger el certificado.

Back to Step 1

Certificado de Nacimiento

“Para pedir un Certificado de Nacimiento solo necesitas tu DNI. Evidentemente también necesitarás conocer / indicar nombre, apellidos lugar y fecha de nacimiento.”

¿Como pedir tu Certificado de Nacimiento?

1. Con cita previa en un Registro Civil
   Enlace de Cita Previa (España)
   Enlace de Cita Previa (Andalucía)
2. Por correo postal
   Es aconsejable indicar un teléfono de contacto por si hubiera que aclarar algún dato.
3. Por internet

Back to Step 1

ID

¡Ya está!

Back to Step 1

Empadronamiento
(Certificado Colectivo)

You both need to be registered at the same address and present proof of living together with a collective certificate.

Step 1: Register at the same address

How to Empadronarse (Registering Your Residence in Spain)

Step 2: Get an appointment requesting “Certificado Colectivo” and collect your document (bring your ID).

Example: Solicitud de Padronal Colectiva Sevilla

Back to Step 1

Notary Appointment

At the notary, you will first present your documents before signing that you are a willing and capable participant in the partnership. The terms of the agreement will be laid out in many pages of text. You will need to sign multiple pages of legal verbiage.

Requirements fulfilled: “No estar incapacitados judicialmente.”
“Declaración de voluntad de constituir una pareja de hecho.”

You will also sign a statement saying that you are not related to your partner in any way.

Requirement fulfilled: “No ser parientes en línea recta por consanguinidad o adopción ni colaterales por consanguinidad en segundo grado.”

Personally, my partner and I were concerned about maintaining separate finances, so we requested that they add a separación de bienes section even though pareja de hecho by default has separate finances.

We went to a notary in Seville. Here it is linked below:

https://www.notariaflorit.com/

The notary service should cost just shy of 100 euros.

If, however, you have found this webpage useful, please consider rounding up a euro or two and making a small donation to the webpage. I am only able to maintain this website through the support of my viewers, and with only an average of 1 donor per 10,000 viewers, each contribution is vital. You can be the 1 in 10,000 that makes a difference.

https://residency2spain.com/support-the-page/#Donate
(This is just a link to a page with different donation options.)

Back to Step 1

Step 2 Requirements:

• Notary Statements/Documents + Previous Documents
• Completed Solicitud Form
• “Delegación Territorial de Inclusión Social, Juventud, Familias e Igualdad” Appointment

Solicitud Form

You will complete INSCRIPCIÓN BÁSICA. At the bottom of the solicitud, check off every document you are including, and at “OTRA DOCUMENTACIÓN (especificar):“, include all the extra documentation in your application.

How to get an Appointment:

We actually had a difficult time getting an appointment originally, so we went without one to the office. They couldn’t take our documents, but they did help us make an appointment. I took a picture of the document they shared.

First, access the link and go to “Oficinas de Asistencia”.

To make an appointment, you can either use an NIF, digital certificate or electronic DNI, or with any other identifying documentation (passport or TIE).

Input your personal information.

Finally, you will request an appointment to submit your documents to the Delegación Territorial de Inclusión Social, Juventud, Familias e Igualdad.

We went to the office at the following address:

C. Luis Montoto, 89, 41018 Sevilla

Be careful at the appointment, though!

The bureaucrat at our appointment insisted that we didn’t need to present the previous documents since the notary already required them. We only gave our notary statements and documents.

Our partnership registration was denied later on for missing those same documents. We had to quickly rectify the issue with a different bureaucrat.

Make sure to present all the requirements at your appointment! Again, bring copies.

Step 3 Requirements:

I highly recommend getting a lawyer for Step 3. It is the most difficult part, and a good lawyer only cost us about 350 euros.

The lawyer will apply for residency through “familiar de ciudadano de UE” (EX-19) or residency through “arraigo familiar” (EX-10), send supporting documentation, and resolve concerns from the Ministry of Immigration.

“Familiar de Ciudadano de UE” Requirements

“Arraigo Familiar” Requirements

Personal example: we were living in Madrid at the time because I was finishing out my school year in the aux program, but we were empadronado in Sevilla with our partnership registered in Andalucia. The Ministry of Immigration was confused by this, and our lawyer requested I get a statement from my school director stating that I am finishing my last year there and that I will move to Sevilla after finishing my last day.

Listen to your lawyer first and foremost, but here is the list of items required for us when we applied through “familiar de ciudadano de UE”.

• Private Health Insurance Plan (I recommend Feather Insurance)
• Work Contract and Copies of Salary Payments
• A Year’s Worth of Financial Statements
• Proof of Previously Living Together (empadronamiento, utilities, and rental contract)
• Old photos of us as a couple
• A statement from my school director (because we were in the process of moving)

After submitting all the documents for step 3, my TIE through the auxiliary program expired. Because I was in the process of getting residency through pareja de hecho, I was in an immigration limbo. My residency was being modified, my old TIE was expired, and I wasn’t yet approved for residency through pareja de hecho.

During the 3 months while everything was being processed, I was unable to work or apply for a regreso to visit home. I was also told that it would be best to avoid travelling in general because getting stopped by the police could create more issues. To avoid going crazy, I decided to make this website during this time.

Step 4 Requirements:

Once you get a positive resolution, you can apply for your TIE through pareja de hecho.

• Appointment
• Positive Resolution Granting Residency (Bring an extra copy)
• Foto de Carnet
• Passport + Copy of all Pages
• Empadronamiento + Copy
• Completed EX-17 Form + Copy
• Tasa 790-012 dutifully paid

This part will be nearly identical to the first time you applied for a TIE.

Your First TIE

Key Differences:

Tasa 790-012

This time you will mark

“Certificado de registro de residente comunitario o Tarjeta de residencia de familiar de un ciudadano de la Unión”

EX-17

Even if you already have a TIE, this will be “Tarjeta Inicial”.

Appointment

And of course, you do not need to get a fresh entry stamp in your passport like the first time you entered Spain with a visa.

If you made it through this entire process, send cute couple pics! I’d love to see your success.

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