Hi,

I am British; my wife, who is Japanese, was given a spouse visa last year under the old rules.   We then moved to the UK and she will have completed her 2 year qualifying period next year, so we intend to apply for her ILR.

Problem: we are living in a part of the country where there is no work in her area.  We are here because I am doing a 3 year PhD, and I have to be based here most of the week at least.  So far we have got by on my funding and our savings, but it has got to the point where she needs to find a source of income.   She has exhausted all possibilities for meaningful employment locally, and has turned to applying for jobs in London and other cities in the UK, where naturally the prospects are better.  She now has offers.    The idea is she will rent a place and will be based there at least during the week, with one of us going to see the other every one or two weekends.   During our relationship we have had to live in separate cities, countries and even continents on several occasions, so this is not really a novelty to us.  Is the UKBA going to take issue with it?

More specifically, if she keeps our current address as her main address so continues to have mail sent here, so we have the 2 years worth of letters addressed to us, do we even need to declare her other address?   The payslips evidencing her employment will of course show that she is working in a different city.   So I guess we will have to explain the situation to the UKBA..  We can potentially say it is a temporary arrangement and that I plan to move to join her, this is not completely unrealistic but it would not be ideal at this stage of my PhD.   

The alternative is she stays here, remains unemployed (or gets a low paid part time job which does not use her skills) without sabotaging the ILR application.  We will be nearly broke by the time it comes around, though hopefully we will still be able to prove that we can continue to subsist here together (I haven't checked the precise requirements in this respect but I believe her being employed is not one of them).    

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.