Stable Union vs Marriage

In Brazil there is something called "stable union" (união estável), which is best described as a "de facto marriage".

It differs from most European "civil partnerships", in the sense that you do not even need to declare it to some official authority or even sign some contract. You are deemed to be in a stable union, if you live together with your girlfriend or boyfriend, with a longterm perspective with the aim of founding a family - whatever that means in practice...

Recognition of a stable union is either through a judge or through a certificate emitted by a cartório, according to this "instrução normativa" of the CNJ (Conselho Nacional de Justiça).   It tells you essentially the documents you need to bring along to obtain this certificate.

This document seems to be first list of nationwide "objective" criteria of what documents are necessary to prove a stable union!   Before the notion of a stable union was even vaguer...

A notarized "stable union contract" is for example is helpful, BUT NOT ENOUGH to prove the existence of the stable union.   A few people I have to talked seemed to think that such a contract is enough.    It is not!

Being  in a stable union or in a marriage both give you the right to apply for a Brazilian residence/work visa based on family reunion.

But, in practice, if you have a Brazilian partner and you would like to live with her/him in Brazil, it is absolutely NOT advisable to apply for a residency/work visa based on a stable union.

This is the opinion shared by Danielle in her blog, where I first read first-hand how long and excruciating this way to obtain a visa can be.

Until this year the regulations for obtaining a visa based on stable union and marriage were completely different:
for example, the applications based on stable union were decided by the CONIg (Conselho Nacional de Imigração), who meets only once a month and the process for a marriage based visa was decided by the MRE (Ministério das Relações Exteriores), where the process seems to be much more streamlined.

(This seems though to have changed with the Resolução Normativa RN 108/2014 of February this year: Now it seems that the process is the same in both cases, and is taken care of by the MRE.)

Still the the vague juridical nature of the stable union seems to make the visa simply twice as complicated and possibly exponentially longer.   After all the Brazilian authorities, on top of having to decide whether to give you a visa, have to decide if they agree with you whether you are actually in a stable union or not!

So if you have a Brazilian partner and plan to apply for a visa to live with them in Brazil you should definitely consider this!