Marrying a U.S. Citizen: What Comes Next

File the I-130 Petition

A step-by-step look at the spousal green card process, whether you're inside or outside the U.S.

Your citizen spouse files Form I-130 to establish the relationship as the basis for your green card.

Adjust Status or Process Abroad

If you're in the U.S., you file Form I-485. If you're abroad, your case moves to the National Visa Center for consular processing.

Attend Your Interview

USCIS (or the consulate) will interview you and your spouse together to confirm the marriage is genuine.

Receive Your Green Card

If married less than two years at approval, you'll receive a 2-year conditional card and later need to file to remove those conditions.

Bottom Line

Timelines vary by service center and by whether you're adjusting status or processing abroad, and change over time — see How Long a Marriage Case Takes below rather than relying on a fixed figure.

Which Path Applies: Adjusting Here or Processing Abroad

The single biggest fork in a marriage case is decided by where the immigrant spouse is and how they last entered the United States.

Adjustment of status is the path for someone already in the United States, and it generally requires that they were inspected and admitted or paroled at the border — that they came through a port of entry and were let in, even if what happened afterward was imperfect. Spouses of U.S. citizens get meaningful statutory forgiveness on the "afterward" part: an overstay or unauthorized work, on its own, does not usually make an immediate relative ineligible to adjust. Eligible to ask and approved are not the same thing, though — the callout that follows explains why.

What that forgiveness does not cover is an entry without inspection. Someone who entered the country without being inspected generally cannot adjust status here on this basis, which pushes the case toward a consular interview abroad — and departing after a long period of unlawful presence can trigger a bar on returning. That combination is exactly the situation the I-601A provisional waiver exists for, and it is why we ask how you entered before we plan anything.

Consular processing is the path for a spouse living abroad. After the petition is approved it moves to the National Visa Center, where the immigrant visa application and financial documents are submitted, and then to a U.S. embassy or consulate for an interview.

What Gets Filed, and When

For a case adjusting inside the United States, the petition and the green card application can often be filed at the same time, because immediate relatives of U.S. citizens have a visa available immediately. That package generally includes the I-130 and I-130A, the I-485 adjustment application, the affidavit of support from the citizen spouse, and the medical examination completed by a designated civil surgeon.

Work authorization and a travel document are separate applications that can be filed alongside the adjustment. Each carries its own fee and its own processing time, and neither is automatic.

For a case abroad, the sequence is petition first, then the National Visa Center stage, then the consular interview. The affidavit of support and civil documents are submitted during the NVC stage rather than with the petition.

A biometrics appointment — fingerprints and a photo — is part of the U.S.-based path. Attend it. A missed appointment is one of the more common self-inflicted delays in an otherwise clean case.

What a Marriage Case Costs

There are two separate kinds of cost here, and keeping them apart makes the number easier to plan around. USCIS filing fees are government fees, paid directly to USCIS with the forms. Attorney fees are what you pay a firm for the work. A fee waiver or reduced fee from USCIS has no effect on what a law firm charges.

For a case adjusting inside the United States, the two main USCIS fees are the petition and the adjustment application. Form I-130 is currently $675 filed on paper or $625 filed online. Form I-485 is currently $1440 on paper or $1390 online for an applicant over the age of 14. Form I-864, the affidavit of support the citizen spouse signs, carries no filing fee.

The applications filed alongside the adjustment are extra. Work authorization on Form I-765 is currently $260, paper or online, where the I-485 was filed with a fee on or after April 1, 2024 and is still pending. Advance parole on Form I-131, for someone with a pending I-485, is currently $630 on paper or $580 online. The current fee schedule does not list a separate biometric services fee for the I-485.

Plan for the second filing too. If the marriage is under two years old on the day residence is granted, the card is conditional, and removing the conditions on Form I-751 two years later is currently $750 on paper or $700 online. That is a real cost of a marriage-based case even though it arrives years after the first one.

Some cases carry a fee that most do not. A provisional unlawful presence waiver on Form I-601A is currently $795, and Form I-485 Supplement A, for an applicant proceeding under INA § 245(i), is currently $1000.

Two costs are not USCIS fees at all. The medical examination is billed by the designated civil surgeon, who sets their own price and whose price varies a great deal between offices — call more than one. Certified translations of foreign documents are an out-of-pocket cost as well. A case decided at a consulate abroad instead carries Department of State visa fees and the USCIS Immigrant Fee, currently $235, which our consular processing guide covers.

On the attorney side, our intake call is free, a full consultation with our attorney is a flat $125 credited toward your retainer if you hire us, and case work is quoted as a flat fee before you commit to anything.

Fees current as of September 7, 2026, taken from the USCIS fee schedule (Form G-1055, edition 05/29/26) — confirm the current amount at uscis.gov/forms/filing-fees before filing.

How Long a Marriage Case Takes

We do not put a single figure on this page, because the honest answer changes. USCIS publishes its own current processing times at egov.uscis.gov/processing-times, and the tool breaks the answer out by form, by the category within that form, and by the office or service center handling the case. That is the number to work from, and it is the number we look up for each case we take.

What moves it: which service center or field office has the case, whether the couple is adjusting status here or processing at a consulate abroad, how busy the interviewing office is, and how complete and consistent the record is when it arrives. A case that draws a request for evidence, a second interview, or separate interviews of each spouse takes longer than one that does not.

One structural point is specific to marriage cases. A spouse of a U.S. citizen is an immediate relative, so a visa is available at all times and the petition and adjustment application can generally be filed together. A spouse of a lawful permanent resident is in a preference category and waits for a priority date to become current on the monthly Visa Bulletin first — a wait that is not about processing speed at all and that can run for years.

We recommend checking the current figure yourself rather than relying on a number you read anywhere, including an earlier version of this page.

Building the Evidence Record

The checklist above lists the documents officers expect. What makes a record persuasive is not the number of items but the span of time they cover and the ordinariness of what they show.

A joint account opened three weeks before filing proves less than a modest one that has been running for two years. Photographs from a single event prove less than photographs across seasons, with other people in them. Evidence that you have merged your obligations — a lease with both names, a shared phone plan, car insurance, a beneficiary designation, jointly filed taxes — carries weight precisely because it is inconvenient to fabricate.

Where documents are thin for legitimate reasons, explain rather than pad. Couples who lived apart for work or immigration reasons, who keep separate finances by custom, or who married quickly because of circumstance are common and are not disqualified. Sworn statements from people who know you both, correspondence, travel records, and a clear written account of the relationship all help fill the gap.

Include the difficult parts. A prior marriage that ended messily, a period of separation, or a large age or language difference is far better addressed in the filing than raised for the first time by an officer.

What Happens If the Evidence Is Incomplete

Everything in the section above assumes one thing: that the record you file is the record that gets decided. As of August 5, 2026, that assumption is much closer to literal than it used to be.

In Policy Alert PA-2026-05, USCIS restored its officers’ full discretion to deny a benefit request outright — without first issuing a Request for Evidence or a Notice of Intent to Deny — where the required initial evidence is not submitted or the record does not establish eligibility. USCIS stated that the guidance is effective immediately and applies to cases that were already pending as well as to new filings.

You are not entitled to a follow-up request. An officer may still send one, and often will, but a marriage case filed with thin relationship evidence is no longer a case that reliably gets a second chance to fill the gap. The same is true of a missing medical examination, a missing divorce decree from a prior marriage, an affidavit of support that does not reach the income requirement, or a foreign document with no certified translation.

If a request does arrive, the window is tighter than it once was. Twelve weeks is now the maximum an RFE response period may be rather than the standard, an officer may set less, thirty days is the maximum for a Notice of Intent to Deny, and USCIS eliminated the extra 14 days it previously added for notices mailed outside the United States. A response that only partly answers the request is treated as asking USCIS to decide on what it has.

This is why we would rather spend an extra few weeks assembling a filing than send an incomplete one early. File it complete the first time.

What the Interview Is Actually Like

Both spouses attend. The officer has your file, has read what you submitted, and is confirming two things: that the marriage is genuine, and that the immigrant spouse is admissible.

Expect questions about your daily life together as well as your history: how you met, how the relationship developed, who does what in the household, family members' names, the layout of your home. Expect the officer to go through the I-485 questions out loud, including the ones about arrests, prior immigration filings, and misrepresentations. Answer what you know and say plainly when you do not remember something. Guessing to seem prepared causes more problems than an honest "I am not sure."

Bring originals of the documents you filed copies of, plus anything new since filing — a new lease, a new account, a child's birth certificate.

Most interviews are unremarkable. If an officer has specific concerns, the case may be continued for more evidence or, in some cases, the spouses may be interviewed separately. Neither of those is a decision, and neither means the case is lost.

Life While the Case Is Pending

Do not travel abroad without confirming first. For a spouse adjusting status inside the United States, leaving the country without an approved advance parole document can be treated as abandoning the application. For someone with prior unlawful presence the stakes are higher again: since August 13, 2026, departing on advance parole is treated as a departure that can trigger a three- or ten-year bar on returning, so the trip can cost far more than it is worth.

Work only with authorization. If you are relying on a pending adjustment for work authorization, that comes from a separately approved document, not from the pending application itself.

Keep USCIS informed of address changes, and keep copies of everything filed. If the citizen spouse's income situation changes, tell us early — the financial side of the case can be adjusted before it becomes a problem, rather than after, since USCIS is no longer required to ask for a fix before deciding the case on what it has.

Who This Guide Is Not For

This guide follows a U.S. citizen married to a foreign national. If you are not yet married and your partner is abroad, the K-1 fiancé(e) guide describes a different sequence that begins with a different form — and note that a K-1 holder generally cannot switch to another basis for a green card.

If the petitioning spouse is a green card holder rather than a citizen, much of this applies, but the timing does not: those cases fall into a preference category with a waiting line, and the immigrant spouse usually cannot file the green card application until a visa is available. The family petition guide explains that distinction.

If you already hold a two-year conditional card, this guide has ended where yours begins — see the removal of conditions guide.

And if you are married to a U.S. citizen or green card holder who has abused you, you may be able to file for yourself, confidentially, without their participation. See the VAWA self-petition guide.