Every residence and citizenship by investment (RCBI) programme admits a spouse. The more complex question—and one that applicants rarely confront until it becomes pressing—is what occurs in the absence of a marriage certificate: a couple cohabiting for 15 years without formalising the relationship, a same-sex couple whose marriage is valid in Copenhagen but not recognised in Basseterre, or a fiancé whose wedding is scheduled after the application deadline.
In 2026, the responses range from a requirement to produce a joint lease to a mandate that each partner make an independent qualifying investment. In the Caribbean, where family inclusion policy directly determines the cost per passport, an unrecognised partner does not merely attract an additional dependent fee; the partner must submit a separate qualifying contribution.
In broad terms, the world’s programmes fall into three categories. Some treat partnership as a question of fact, demonstrable through bank statements and utility bills. Others treat it as a question of registration, satisfied only by a civil union or a notarised agreement. The remainder treat it as a question of traditional legal marriage, and several of those programmes specify which marriages are recognised.
Where Living Together Is Enough
New Zealand establishes a high benchmark for pragmatism. The Active Investor Plus Visa admits a partner—married or de facto, of the same or opposite sex—provided the couple can demonstrate a genuine, stable relationship and at least 12 months of cohabitation. No registration, ceremony, or notarial formalities are required; Immigration New Zealand seeks evidence of a shared life rather than a certificate. With the relaunched programme attracting hundreds of applications since April 2025, this flexibility now benefits a greater number of families.
Australia adopts the same approach for its National Innovation Visa, admitting a spouse, de facto partner, or civil partner together with dependent children under 23. The standard 12-month cohabitation requirement may be waived if the couple registers the relationship in an Australian state that maintains a relationship register. Same-sex and opposite-sex de facto couples receive identical treatment.
Europe’s fact-based category is more limited yet includes two significant jurisdictions. Under the Malta Permanent Residence Programme (MPRP), an eligible partner is one whose relationship the Residency Malta Agency recognises as equivalent to marriage, expressly including de facto partnerships supported by adequate evidence. This formulation remained unchanged following the programme’s 2025 overhaul, positioning Malta among the most partner-inclusive jurisdictions on the continent.
Portugal codified the concept decades earlier. A união de facto—defined in law as two persons of any sex who have cohabited for more than two years under conditions comparable to marriage—qualifies a partner for the Portugal Golden Visa on the same basis as a spouse. Couples establish the relationship through lease agreements, joint accounts, shared utility bills, and a sworn declaration by both partners.
Portugal also introduced 2026’s most significant development. Law 61/2025, effective since October 2025, imposed a two-year residence requirement before most permit holders may sponsor family members from abroad. Golden visa holders are fully exempt from this waiting period, whereas D7 holders are not. For couples evaluating Portuguese pathways, the golden visa is now the sole route that permits a partner’s inclusion without multi-year separation. Unmarried couples elsewhere in the system may reduce the waiting period to 15 months by documenting 18 months of cohabitation prior to the sponsor’s arrival.
Spain closed its golden visa in April 2025, yet the rules remain relevant for thousands of grandfathered holders renewing permits. Spanish law recognises the registered pareja de hecho, and a 2024 regulation further accepted 12 months of documented cohabitation as an alternative to formal registration. Even unregistered stable couples therefore retain a pathway.
Nauru’s citizenship programme, launched in late 2024, identifies a monogamous de facto partner as an eligible dependent in licensed-agent guidance—the first instance of any citizenship by investment (CBI) programme accepting unmarried partners. The same guidance, however, restricts both spouses and de facto partners to opposite-sex couples.
Where the Notary Decides
Greece occupies a distinct category: unmarried partners are excluded on the face of the legislation yet admitted in practice through a procedural mechanism embedded in the law. The Greece Golden Visa recognises only the partner with whom the applicant has executed a cohabitation agreement in Greece, signed before a Greek notary and registered locally.
Whether the authorities will accept a foreign equivalent remains unsettled. “Even though there is an uncertainty whether the Greek application office accepts foreign PACs (civil unions), the safest and most straightforward route is to execute a Greek cohabitation agreement before a Greek notary and have it duly registered,” observes Alexander Risvas of Athens-based Risvas & Associates.
The sequencing is well established among Athens law firms. The investor completes the property purchase and files independently, obtains the temporary residence certificate, after which the couple executes the notarial agreement and the partner’s application is incorporated into the open file. Both residence cards are typically issued concurrently. Risvas adds a caution that couples executing the agreement solely for immigration purposes should consider at the outset: the agreement establishes a genuine legal family relationship under Greek law and may carry consequences extending well beyond the Golden Visa, including matters of property relations, financial claims between the partners, and inheritance.
Greek cohabitation agreements have been available to same-sex couples since 2015. Following the country’s 2024 marriage equality legislation, same-sex spouses married abroad qualify directly.
Italy’s rules permit investor visa holders to include a spouse or a civil-union partner, civil unions having been equated to marriage for immigration purposes since 2016. Italian civil unions, however, exist solely for same-sex couples, and mere registered cohabitation confers no reunification rights. Consequently, a same-sex couple holding a foreign civil partnership may access an Italian investor visa by a route unavailable to an opposite-sex unmarried couple, short of marriage.
Cypriot law has recognised civil unions, including those between persons of the same sex, since 2015, and that recognition extends to the fast-track investor permit. According to Demetris Demetriades of Andreas Demetriades & Co. in Paphos, a partner in a civil union concluded under Cyprus’s Civil Union Law may be included in the investor’s application on the same qualifying investment, in the same manner as a spouse. Unions registered abroad also qualify, subject to one terminological caveat: “Civil unions are accepted, rather than civil partnerships,” as “civil partnerships do not have the same legal status in all countries.”
The distinction ends at marriage itself: “Cyprus doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage; however, it recognizes civil unions between people of the same sex,” Demetriades notes. A same-sex couple married abroad cannot rely on the marriage certificate, yet the civil-union route remains available.
Hungary’s Guest Investor Program and Singapore’s Global Investor Programme fall into the same category: both construct the family file exclusively on a marriage certificate, and Singapore confines common-law partners to a long-term visit pass rather than permanent residence. For same-sex couples, Hungary’s marriage requirement constitutes a complete barrier rather than a documentary obstacle. “Hungary does not recognize same-sex marriages, so the residence permit cannot include the partner, whatever their legal situation outside of Hungary,” states Laszlo Kiss of Discus Holdings, adding that the excluded partner “also cannot apply for family reunification” as an alternative.
Marriage Required, Any Valid Marriage
A third group of programmes draws the line at legal marriage yet accepts any marriage lawfully celebrated, irrespective of the spouses’ genders.
The US EB-5 programme is the archetype: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recognises neither civil partners nor common-law partners, regardless of the duration of the relationship. A same-sex spouse qualifies as a derivative provided the marriage was valid in the place of celebration. The certificate itself is decisive; its place of issue is not.
Thailand supplies the clearest before-and-after illustration in this survey. Until 2025, spouses of Thailand LTR (Long-Term Resident) visa holders were required to be of the opposite sex. The Marriage Equality Act, effective since 23 January 2025, redrafted the Civil and Commercial Code in gender-neutral terms, and the Board of Investment now states expressly that same-sex marriages qualify under the dependent category—part of a broader 2025 liberalisation that also removed the dependent cap and added parents. The same official guidance is equally explicit regarding the boundary: unmarried partnerships remain unrecognised under Thai law and therefore ineligible.
Panama’s Qualified Investor Visa belongs in this category, at least formally: the eligible partner is the legal husband or wife, evidenced by an apostilled marriage certificate. Because Panama does not recognise same-sex marriage domestically, couples holding a foreign certificate should treat eligibility as a matter for advice from Panamanian counsel rather than as an assumption.
Where Marriage Means One Man and One Woman
The Caribbean’s five CBI programmes share a uniform baseline: the only partner who qualifies is a legally married, opposite-sex spouse.
St Kitts & Nevis is the most explicit, recognising a family unit composed of a husband and a wife; either may serve as principal applicant. Families of any other composition may apply, but only as individuals. For a same-sex married couple, this requires two full applications and two qualifying contributions where a married opposite-sex couple would pay for one.
Saint Lucia specifies that where an applicant is in a lawful polygamous marriage, “spouse” means the first husband or wife. Antigua & Barbuda, whose dependent definitions are otherwise the region’s broadest, monetises marriage timing rather than accommodating partnership: a future spouse of the principal applicant may be added after citizenship for a US$50,000 fee.
A slower workaround exists within ordinary nationality law. A CBI citizen who marries after naturalisation can typically transmit status to the new spouse through standard citizenship-by-marriage provisions, economic citizens holding the same rights as any other citizen. For an unmarried couple under no time pressure, one solo application followed by a later wedding is often less costly than two files, although it leaves the partner unprotected in the interim.
Turkey applies the same logic through private international law: the eligible spouse is one whose marriage is valid under the Turkish conflict-of-laws framework, with the certificate apostilled and translated. Turkey recognises neither same-sex marriage nor any registered partnership institution; a foreign same-sex certificate therefore fails the validity test, and no concept of an unmarried partner exists.
The Gulf jurisdictions operate through chains of attestation. Sponsoring a spouse under the UAE Golden Visa requires a marriage certificate legalised in the country of issue, at the UAE embassy there, and by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since the 2021 personal-status reforms decriminalised cohabitation, an unmarried couple may lawfully share a Dubai apartment; neither partner, however, may sponsor the other, leaving each to qualify independently through property, employment, or talent routes.
Saudi Arabia’s Premium Residency and Qatar’s family residence framework follow the identical marriage-certificate model, layered over legal systems in which cohabitation outside marriage is itself impermissible.
Guidance for the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme states that common-law marriage and same-gender marriage are not accepted, directing unmarried couples to file two separate applications, each supported by its own fixed deposit. Vanuatu admits only a legally married spouse and, unlike the Caribbean programmes, permits no post-approval additions, rendering the decision to marry beforehand unusually conclusive.
Indonesia’s golden visa dependent category covers a legally married spouse. The country’s new Criminal Code, in force since 2 January 2026, goes further than non-recognition: Article 412 criminalises cohabitation outside marriage, punishable by up to six months’ imprisonment. Prosecution requires a complaint from a spouse, parent, or child, and officials maintain that tourists are not the intended target. No other golden visa jurisdiction requires an unmarried couple to weigh their living arrangement against a penal provision.
The Playbook
For couples structuring applications around these rules, sequencing is decisive. In marriage-only jurisdictions, marrying before filing converts a partner from an impossibility into a standard dependent at standard fees.
In Greece, couples should budget for a notarial appointment rather than a wedding and file the investor’s application first so that the cohabitation agreement may be added to an open case.
Same-sex married couples confront the sharpest divergence. Thailand, the United States, and most of Europe will honour the certificate; the Caribbean five, Turkey, the Gulf, and Malaysia will not. The practical advice in those jurisdictions is to price two applications from the outset or select a different region.
Unmarried couples targeting fact-based programmes should begin assembling the documentary record immediately: 12 to 24 months of joint leases, shared accounts, and utility bills in both names frequently determine the difference between routine approval and a request for further evidence.
The definitions set out above change more frequently than investment thresholds, and several of the finer points—from Cyprus’s treatment of civil unions to Nauru’s de facto clause—turn on how a particular officer interprets a particular file. Before structuring an application around any of these rules, the question should be put to a professional who has previously navigated the process.
If you're planning to obtain a residence permit, invest in a country's economy, or purchase foreign real estate, we invite you to a consultation with our company. During a personal online meeting, we'll discuss your questions in detail and create a step-by-step action plan for you.
In 2026, the responses range from a requirement to produce a joint lease to a mandate that each partner make an independent qualifying investment. In the Caribbean, where family inclusion policy directly determines the cost per passport, an unrecognised partner does not merely attract an additional dependent fee; the partner must submit a separate qualifying contribution.
In broad terms, the world’s programmes fall into three categories. Some treat partnership as a question of fact, demonstrable through bank statements and utility bills. Others treat it as a question of registration, satisfied only by a civil union or a notarised agreement. The remainder treat it as a question of traditional legal marriage, and several of those programmes specify which marriages are recognised.
Where Living Together Is Enough
New Zealand establishes a high benchmark for pragmatism. The Active Investor Plus Visa admits a partner—married or de facto, of the same or opposite sex—provided the couple can demonstrate a genuine, stable relationship and at least 12 months of cohabitation. No registration, ceremony, or notarial formalities are required; Immigration New Zealand seeks evidence of a shared life rather than a certificate. With the relaunched programme attracting hundreds of applications since April 2025, this flexibility now benefits a greater number of families.
Australia adopts the same approach for its National Innovation Visa, admitting a spouse, de facto partner, or civil partner together with dependent children under 23. The standard 12-month cohabitation requirement may be waived if the couple registers the relationship in an Australian state that maintains a relationship register. Same-sex and opposite-sex de facto couples receive identical treatment.
Europe’s fact-based category is more limited yet includes two significant jurisdictions. Under the Malta Permanent Residence Programme (MPRP), an eligible partner is one whose relationship the Residency Malta Agency recognises as equivalent to marriage, expressly including de facto partnerships supported by adequate evidence. This formulation remained unchanged following the programme’s 2025 overhaul, positioning Malta among the most partner-inclusive jurisdictions on the continent.
Portugal codified the concept decades earlier. A união de facto—defined in law as two persons of any sex who have cohabited for more than two years under conditions comparable to marriage—qualifies a partner for the Portugal Golden Visa on the same basis as a spouse. Couples establish the relationship through lease agreements, joint accounts, shared utility bills, and a sworn declaration by both partners.
Portugal also introduced 2026’s most significant development. Law 61/2025, effective since October 2025, imposed a two-year residence requirement before most permit holders may sponsor family members from abroad. Golden visa holders are fully exempt from this waiting period, whereas D7 holders are not. For couples evaluating Portuguese pathways, the golden visa is now the sole route that permits a partner’s inclusion without multi-year separation. Unmarried couples elsewhere in the system may reduce the waiting period to 15 months by documenting 18 months of cohabitation prior to the sponsor’s arrival.
Spain closed its golden visa in April 2025, yet the rules remain relevant for thousands of grandfathered holders renewing permits. Spanish law recognises the registered pareja de hecho, and a 2024 regulation further accepted 12 months of documented cohabitation as an alternative to formal registration. Even unregistered stable couples therefore retain a pathway.
Nauru’s citizenship programme, launched in late 2024, identifies a monogamous de facto partner as an eligible dependent in licensed-agent guidance—the first instance of any citizenship by investment (CBI) programme accepting unmarried partners. The same guidance, however, restricts both spouses and de facto partners to opposite-sex couples.
Where the Notary Decides
Greece occupies a distinct category: unmarried partners are excluded on the face of the legislation yet admitted in practice through a procedural mechanism embedded in the law. The Greece Golden Visa recognises only the partner with whom the applicant has executed a cohabitation agreement in Greece, signed before a Greek notary and registered locally.
Whether the authorities will accept a foreign equivalent remains unsettled. “Even though there is an uncertainty whether the Greek application office accepts foreign PACs (civil unions), the safest and most straightforward route is to execute a Greek cohabitation agreement before a Greek notary and have it duly registered,” observes Alexander Risvas of Athens-based Risvas & Associates.
The sequencing is well established among Athens law firms. The investor completes the property purchase and files independently, obtains the temporary residence certificate, after which the couple executes the notarial agreement and the partner’s application is incorporated into the open file. Both residence cards are typically issued concurrently. Risvas adds a caution that couples executing the agreement solely for immigration purposes should consider at the outset: the agreement establishes a genuine legal family relationship under Greek law and may carry consequences extending well beyond the Golden Visa, including matters of property relations, financial claims between the partners, and inheritance.
Greek cohabitation agreements have been available to same-sex couples since 2015. Following the country’s 2024 marriage equality legislation, same-sex spouses married abroad qualify directly.
Italy’s rules permit investor visa holders to include a spouse or a civil-union partner, civil unions having been equated to marriage for immigration purposes since 2016. Italian civil unions, however, exist solely for same-sex couples, and mere registered cohabitation confers no reunification rights. Consequently, a same-sex couple holding a foreign civil partnership may access an Italian investor visa by a route unavailable to an opposite-sex unmarried couple, short of marriage.
Cypriot law has recognised civil unions, including those between persons of the same sex, since 2015, and that recognition extends to the fast-track investor permit. According to Demetris Demetriades of Andreas Demetriades & Co. in Paphos, a partner in a civil union concluded under Cyprus’s Civil Union Law may be included in the investor’s application on the same qualifying investment, in the same manner as a spouse. Unions registered abroad also qualify, subject to one terminological caveat: “Civil unions are accepted, rather than civil partnerships,” as “civil partnerships do not have the same legal status in all countries.”
The distinction ends at marriage itself: “Cyprus doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage; however, it recognizes civil unions between people of the same sex,” Demetriades notes. A same-sex couple married abroad cannot rely on the marriage certificate, yet the civil-union route remains available.
Hungary’s Guest Investor Program and Singapore’s Global Investor Programme fall into the same category: both construct the family file exclusively on a marriage certificate, and Singapore confines common-law partners to a long-term visit pass rather than permanent residence. For same-sex couples, Hungary’s marriage requirement constitutes a complete barrier rather than a documentary obstacle. “Hungary does not recognize same-sex marriages, so the residence permit cannot include the partner, whatever their legal situation outside of Hungary,” states Laszlo Kiss of Discus Holdings, adding that the excluded partner “also cannot apply for family reunification” as an alternative.
Marriage Required, Any Valid Marriage
A third group of programmes draws the line at legal marriage yet accepts any marriage lawfully celebrated, irrespective of the spouses’ genders.
The US EB-5 programme is the archetype: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recognises neither civil partners nor common-law partners, regardless of the duration of the relationship. A same-sex spouse qualifies as a derivative provided the marriage was valid in the place of celebration. The certificate itself is decisive; its place of issue is not.
Thailand supplies the clearest before-and-after illustration in this survey. Until 2025, spouses of Thailand LTR (Long-Term Resident) visa holders were required to be of the opposite sex. The Marriage Equality Act, effective since 23 January 2025, redrafted the Civil and Commercial Code in gender-neutral terms, and the Board of Investment now states expressly that same-sex marriages qualify under the dependent category—part of a broader 2025 liberalisation that also removed the dependent cap and added parents. The same official guidance is equally explicit regarding the boundary: unmarried partnerships remain unrecognised under Thai law and therefore ineligible.
Panama’s Qualified Investor Visa belongs in this category, at least formally: the eligible partner is the legal husband or wife, evidenced by an apostilled marriage certificate. Because Panama does not recognise same-sex marriage domestically, couples holding a foreign certificate should treat eligibility as a matter for advice from Panamanian counsel rather than as an assumption.
Where Marriage Means One Man and One Woman
The Caribbean’s five CBI programmes share a uniform baseline: the only partner who qualifies is a legally married, opposite-sex spouse.
St Kitts & Nevis is the most explicit, recognising a family unit composed of a husband and a wife; either may serve as principal applicant. Families of any other composition may apply, but only as individuals. For a same-sex married couple, this requires two full applications and two qualifying contributions where a married opposite-sex couple would pay for one.
Saint Lucia specifies that where an applicant is in a lawful polygamous marriage, “spouse” means the first husband or wife. Antigua & Barbuda, whose dependent definitions are otherwise the region’s broadest, monetises marriage timing rather than accommodating partnership: a future spouse of the principal applicant may be added after citizenship for a US$50,000 fee.
A slower workaround exists within ordinary nationality law. A CBI citizen who marries after naturalisation can typically transmit status to the new spouse through standard citizenship-by-marriage provisions, economic citizens holding the same rights as any other citizen. For an unmarried couple under no time pressure, one solo application followed by a later wedding is often less costly than two files, although it leaves the partner unprotected in the interim.
Turkey applies the same logic through private international law: the eligible spouse is one whose marriage is valid under the Turkish conflict-of-laws framework, with the certificate apostilled and translated. Turkey recognises neither same-sex marriage nor any registered partnership institution; a foreign same-sex certificate therefore fails the validity test, and no concept of an unmarried partner exists.
The Gulf jurisdictions operate through chains of attestation. Sponsoring a spouse under the UAE Golden Visa requires a marriage certificate legalised in the country of issue, at the UAE embassy there, and by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since the 2021 personal-status reforms decriminalised cohabitation, an unmarried couple may lawfully share a Dubai apartment; neither partner, however, may sponsor the other, leaving each to qualify independently through property, employment, or talent routes.
Saudi Arabia’s Premium Residency and Qatar’s family residence framework follow the identical marriage-certificate model, layered over legal systems in which cohabitation outside marriage is itself impermissible.
Guidance for the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme states that common-law marriage and same-gender marriage are not accepted, directing unmarried couples to file two separate applications, each supported by its own fixed deposit. Vanuatu admits only a legally married spouse and, unlike the Caribbean programmes, permits no post-approval additions, rendering the decision to marry beforehand unusually conclusive.
Indonesia’s golden visa dependent category covers a legally married spouse. The country’s new Criminal Code, in force since 2 January 2026, goes further than non-recognition: Article 412 criminalises cohabitation outside marriage, punishable by up to six months’ imprisonment. Prosecution requires a complaint from a spouse, parent, or child, and officials maintain that tourists are not the intended target. No other golden visa jurisdiction requires an unmarried couple to weigh their living arrangement against a penal provision.
The Playbook
For couples structuring applications around these rules, sequencing is decisive. In marriage-only jurisdictions, marrying before filing converts a partner from an impossibility into a standard dependent at standard fees.
In Greece, couples should budget for a notarial appointment rather than a wedding and file the investor’s application first so that the cohabitation agreement may be added to an open case.
Same-sex married couples confront the sharpest divergence. Thailand, the United States, and most of Europe will honour the certificate; the Caribbean five, Turkey, the Gulf, and Malaysia will not. The practical advice in those jurisdictions is to price two applications from the outset or select a different region.
Unmarried couples targeting fact-based programmes should begin assembling the documentary record immediately: 12 to 24 months of joint leases, shared accounts, and utility bills in both names frequently determine the difference between routine approval and a request for further evidence.
The definitions set out above change more frequently than investment thresholds, and several of the finer points—from Cyprus’s treatment of civil unions to Nauru’s de facto clause—turn on how a particular officer interprets a particular file. Before structuring an application around any of these rules, the question should be put to a professional who has previously navigated the process.
If you're planning to obtain a residence permit, invest in a country's economy, or purchase foreign real estate, we invite you to a consultation with our company. During a personal online meeting, we'll discuss your questions in detail and create a step-by-step action plan for you.