 Welcome back to our YouTube channel. My name is Jolie Greenbong. I'm Mary Kearick's executive assistant and today we're going to be talking again about spousal sponsorship applications but this time we'll be focusing on chat records. So chat records are essentially a way of showing proof of contact between the couple and this is important and it's actually a requirement by IRCC according to the document checklist if you have not been living together. So just to further explain this that so if you've been living together as a couple technically according to the document checklist you do not need to provide chat records however I think it's important to note that with our office regardless of whether the couple has been living together or not we always include excerpts of chat records. If you are however submitting this application by yourself according to the checklist it says you will submit a maximum of 10 pages of chat records but again with our office we usually submit between 10 to 25 pages again depending on how long or short the relationship is or how much extra supplemental documentation we feel the couple needs to build a strong application. But like I said we like to include it with all of our applications because we really feel that it helps build a strong case for the genuineness of the relationship. So when it actually comes time to choosing the chat log this can be a little bit daunting for couples because for couples that have been together for two, three, five, ten years it's really hard to be able to go back through all your chat logs and sort of take out these pertinent excerpts that demonstrate that you're in a genuine relationship. However it is really important that even if you've been in a relationship for 10 plus years that you do not provide pages upon pages of chat logs it is really important to choose quality over quantity so quantity. So that means going back and just choosing very pertinent excerpts that really demonstrate the genuineness of your relationship. And something else that is really important when you're choosing these chat logs is to show that the couple has been speaking and communicating consistently and regularly over time. So that would mean not necessarily choosing excerpts that all fall within the same month for all 25 pages because that doesn't necessarily show that the couple has been talking for 10 plus five plus years. So it's really important that when you're choosing these chat log excerpts that you're choosing them or maybe it's spread out over a few months, a few years, so maybe for the 25 pages you would choose a few excerpts from January 2017 and maybe from October 2017 and so on until you show that the couple has been speaking consistently. Another important thing to note is that all chat logs need to be either in English or in French. So if you do not have chat logs in English or French because you and the couple communicate in Spanish or in Urdu, this is fine but you will need to have it certified translated. So I know that this may be a bit of a hassle but all of our applications, every single document that we submit to IRCC needs to be in either English or French. So like every other document in the application you will need to have it certified translated. And now when it comes time to actually looking for these chat logs you can find these on a variety of platforms. So if you've been speaking over Skype, over WhatsApp, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Viber, you can really choose it from any platform that you've been speaking over. It's just important to show that really that the couple has been speaking consistently over a certain amount of years. So if you have any questions or concerns regarding chat logs and spouse or sponsorship applications please feel free to contact our office and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.