The International Schools Review Forum

Hi everyone,

My partner and I are currently applying to international schools jobs for the first time. We have been together for almost a decade and definitely plan to spend the rest of our lives together, but we are not officially/legally married. I realize schools in the ME will require a marriage certificate for us to live together, but is this a requirement in other locations? Has anyone had experience being hired as a teaching couple without an official marriage certificate? All in all, if we need to have a courthouse marriage it won't be the end of the world, but it's also not something we care too much about unless we have to do it.

Thank you!

There are lots of places where it isn’t needed. Most, actually. Discuss during second interviews. Some schools / recruiters are more “comfortable” with legal marriages, but legally it’s rarely a thing.

Small but important clarification.
It’s rarely a thing if you each would qualify for employment visas on your own. Both working, fully qualified, etc. But if one of you would have to rely on the other for a visa, a legal marriage becomes more important.

Was going to disagree with @sid until after the clarification. In IE youre not married no matter how long you have been together. Youre just a dating GF/BF, who are cohabiting, in some regions (such as the ME) this will be a strict legal issue, that you will either have to get married or effectively be separate hires with separate housing, etc. who will have to sneak around. In the rest IE they wont care and it wont matter as long as each of you would qualify individually for a work visa, contract, etc. The issue becomes a problem when only one of you is appointed and the other becomes a trailing BF/GF, ISs generally dont sponsor or support GFs/BFs.