Help please from Uk Expats living in Abu Dhabi

[notsurewhattowrite]

Hi
I will be moving out to Abu Dhabi in the summer as a trailing spouse and will apply for residency off the back of my husbands visa. I am not intending to work there as I have two children back in the UK (at boarding school and University). I will therefore be travelling back to the UK on a regular basis where we have a car and home. What I would like to know is whether I need to change car and house insurance as I will be a UAE resident or will I still be counted as UK resident as I will be back in the country for several weeks and still own a home there? Hope that makes sense! It's really confusing me.

As a former UAE resident my first thought is in your situation you might be better off remaining UK resident as long as you are able to exit and enter regularly it might be financially more straightforward than becoming a resident.

If you do get a UAE resident visa you would need to declare it to UK insurers, (or risk it being invalid if discovered) and in terms of the car you would actually need to swap your license to a uae one and get re-insured. You don't have to be in the UK all that many days to remain legally resident as you own a home, 30 I think.

You don't have to fly to UK each time you need to restart your tourist visa. It was 30+ 9 grace days when I was there but there might be other options. There is a whole market in visa runs where you do a few hours round trip on an organised coach into Oman stamp out, pay and stamp back in. It's not all that expensive.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/rdr3-statutory-residence-test-srt/guidance-note-for-statutory-residence-test-srt-rdr3#automatic-overseas-tests

I think don't get residency straight away - there is no benefit if your time is primarily in the UK and you're not going to work in AD. See how your schedule goes. You can still drive on your UK licence if you're not resident - your husband can sort this with the car hire company (hardly anyone buys here).

Check the current status for tourist visas - there are different types, you would get a free visa on arrival as a UK citizen, or you can get the multiple entry one after a while - link below. Btw, BA are stopping their flights in April so Etihad is your only direct option (Heathrow or Manchester). It takes about 80-90 mins to get to Dubai airport depending on where in AD your husband settles.

Happy to help if you have any more questions.

Edited to add visa info link: https://u.ae/en/information-and-services/visa-and-emirates-id/tourist-visa

Thanks for the replies. I will need to get the residency to get some additional benefits that comes with the husband's job unfortunately (they won't pay school fees etc without it). I think I'll just have to message the car insurance company and see what they suggest. The house insurance is a bit easier I think.

That's really unusual and I would definitely query with them. What if he was a single parent? The school fees are tied to his package not yours. Your residency/visa is entirely separate. As the one on the employment visa only he can sponsor the kids' visas which are essential for school registration. Yours isn't.

No matter what your car insurance in UK say they can be very poorly informed at customer service level and I've heard of many cases where people were told it would be fine to drive on UK licence when home. Until it wasn't when they had a claim and it was looked into. If you become legally resident in UAE you do not drive/get insured on your UK license again - all on your UAE one no matter what country you are in.

If he is sponsoring the children, wouldn't they pay school fees regardless of whether you are resident or not? Some people are single parents!

Your house insurance will have a clause about how many consecutive days it can be unoccupied. Insurance for unoccupied properties is £££ unfortunately as the risks are so much higher.

You might mean health insurance which could be correct but if you don't have any serious pre existing conditions you can get cover separately without huge expense.

It's because we are choosing for them to stay in the UK for boarding (which is expensive). They won't pay it if I am not resident in the UAE for obvious reasons as boarding would not be necessary if I was staying in the UK. They are not going to school in the UAE.

Ah that makes sense now. In that case i would suggest looking for a broker who has experience of finding insurance for British non-residents driving on a non- UK or EU licence . Even as returning UK resident it really limited our choice of insurer for the first few years re-resident in UK. But it's not impossible, just a bit more awkward. Best of luck with the move.

Thank you. It's quite exciting and a bit scary.

I can see not relevant to the OP who will be getting residency, but just wanted to flag that the visa on arrival process has changed for UK nationals. Visa on arrival now gets you a multiple entry visa allowing you to stay 90 days in aggregate out of 180 days. If you use up the 90 days a border run won't help because you can't get a new visa on arrival until the 180 day period is up.

You can be resident of both the UAE and the UK- it's just that most people don't want to be. Becoming resident of the UAE does not make you automatically not UK resident. The downside of you claiming UK residency (or rather not claiming non-residency) and keeping the house in the UK and having dependent DC at boarding school is that it reduces the amount of time your DH can spend in the UK each year in order to stay non-resident for tax purposes(which is pretty crucial) as the days are calculated based on number of ties to the UK, of which property and UK resident family are two. If he has to return to the UK a lot for work, it may not be practical. I would get proper advice on this- worth spending a few hundred to potentially save thousands.

For insurance purposes, it's not so much residency as the fact that the house will be unoccupied for long periods of time. You'd therefore need to have a discussion with your insurer about that.

Also it's a slightly more complicated question for you depending on the ages of your children - the more 'home ties' you lose to the U.K., if you lose your uk residency status your children are not entitled to home university fees and have to pay as international students would.

In order to qualify for 'home fees' your children need to be resident in the uk for 3 years before the start of university