Guide · Updated August 2026
The Affidavit of Support, in Outline
The affidavit of support is where the sponsoring partner promises, to the U.S. government, to support the person immigrating. It is a contract, not a form, and the questions it raises — whose income counts, whether a second sponsor is needed, what domicile means for a couple currently living abroad — turn on facts that vary household by household. This page maps the roles and the moving parts so you know what you are looking at. It does not, and should not, tell you whether your household satisfies anything.
Before you read on
- NVC and sponsorship
- CR-1 / IR-1 (Form I-130)
- F2A (spouse of a permanent resident)
- Who this is for
- Sponsoring partners preparing the affidavit of support during National Visa Center processing, on the CR-1, IR-1, or F2A route.
- Stage it covers
- National Visa Center pre-processing, alongside the immigrant visa application and civil documents.
- What it helps you do
- Tell the sponsor roles apart, understand what the obligation is, and know which questions need an attorney rather than a calculator.
- What this page cannot tell you
- Whether your income, assets, or household satisfy the requirement. That is a legal assessment of your facts, and we will not estimate it.
- Whether you need a joint sponsor.
- Whether a sponsor living abroad meets the domicile requirement.
- The current income figures. Those are published annually and must be read at the source.
The short version
- The affidavit is a contract with the U.S. government, signed by the sponsor, not a supporting document.
- The petitioning partner must file one, whatever their income. That obligation does not transfer.
- A joint sponsor is a separate person who signs their own affidavit and takes on the same obligation.
- A household member is different: someone in the sponsor's household whose income is being combined with the sponsor's.
- Domicile — the sponsor's U.S. residence for this purpose — is its own requirement, and a live question for couples currently living abroad.
- Whether any of this is satisfied in your case is a question for an attorney, and this page will not estimate it.
What the affidavit is, officially
Official factOrigin: official source. Official sourceStated by a US government publisher on the page we cite.Sources for this page
USCIS describes Form I-864 as a legally enforceable contract in which a sponsor accepts financial responsibility for the person immigrating. It is required in most family-based immigrant cases, it is signed by the petitioner, and the obligation it creates continues until specified terminating events occur. The Department of State collects it, with supporting financial evidence, as part of National Visa Center processing.
- The form, its instructions, and who must file are on the USCIS Form I-864 page.
- The income figures used with it are published separately on the USCIS I-864P poverty guidelines page, which is updated annually.
- How it fits the consular stage is described on the Department of State financial evidence page.
We do not reproduce the figures here, and you should be wary of any page that does. They change every year, the applicable one depends on household size and location, and a stale number copied into a summary is the single easiest way to prepare against the wrong requirement.
The roles, kept apart
Official factOrigin: official source. Official sourceStated by a US government publisher on the page we cite.Sources for this page
| Role | Who they are | What they take on |
|---|---|---|
| Petitioning sponsor | The partner who filed the petition | Must file an affidavit of support regardless of income |
| Joint sponsor | A separate qualifying person, not necessarily related to either of you | Files their own affidavit and accepts the same obligation independently |
| Household member | Someone in the sponsor's household whose income is combined with the sponsor's | Signs a separate form agreeing to make their income available; does not replace the sponsor |
| The intending immigrant | The partner immigrating | In limited published circumstances their own income or assets may be counted; the instructions govern |
The distinction couples most often collapse is joint sponsor against household member. A joint sponsor is an additional contract with an additional person. A household member is a way of counting income that already sits inside the sponsor's household. Which one, if either, applies is determined by the instructions and by facts specific to you.
Domicile, when you have been living abroad
Togetherward analysisOrigin: Togetherward explanation. Togetherward explanationOur reading of the official sources, not something an agency says.
Many couples in this stage have been living together outside the United States, which is exactly the situation the domicile requirement asks about. The published instructions treat the sponsor's U.S. domicile as its own condition, separate from income, and they describe circumstances in which a sponsor living abroad may still be treated as domiciled or may need to take steps to re-establish it. The assessment turns on the specifics of the sponsor's ties, intentions, and history.
- This is not a checkbox. It is a fact-dependent question, and two sponsors with similar-looking lives can be in different positions.
- Read the instructions on the [USCIS I-864 page](https://www.uscis.gov/i-864) rather than any summary of them, including ours.
- If there is any doubt, ask an attorney before filing, not after. This is the section of this page we would most want you to act on.
- Write down what you already have — records of ties, intentions, and dates — so that a conversation with counsel starts from facts rather than recollection.
Where we stop
Togetherward analysisOrigin: Togetherward explanation. Togetherward explanationOur reading of the official sources, not something an agency says.
We could build something that took a household size and an income and told you how it compared to a published figure. We have chosen not to, and the reason is worth stating plainly: a number returned by a product reads as a verdict, and this is a determination made by the government on facts we cannot see, against guidelines we do not administer, with exceptions we are not qualified to apply.
- We will not tell you that your income is enough, or that it is not.
- We will not tell you whether you need a joint sponsor.
- We will not score, rate, or flag a household as strong or weak.
- We will help you keep the documents and the questions organised for someone who is qualified to answer them.
What comes next
Togetherward analysisOrigin: Togetherward explanation. Togetherward explanationOur reading of the official sources, not something an agency says.
The sponsorship paperwork runs alongside the civil documents rather than after them, and the two together are what the National Visa Center reviews. Where the financial evidence is unclear or the domicile question is live, that review is a poor place to find out, and an attorney is a better one.
Figures that change
These numbers change without notice. We only show one when a person has verified it against the official source recently enough; otherwise we say so and send you to the source.
- Current Form I-864P income requirement for your household sizeNeeds review
Not shown(no recorded figure)
We do not have a current figure for this. Check the official source.
Travel.State.Gov — Affidavit of Support income requirements (Form I-864P)
- Current accepted edition date of Form I-864Needs review
Not shown(no recorded figure)
We do not have a current figure for this. Check the official source.
USCIS — Form I-864, Affidavit of Support Under Section 213A of the INA
How we put this page together
Togetherward analysisWe worked from the USCIS pages for the affidavit of support and its poverty guidelines, and from the Department of State page describing the financial evidence step of National Visa Center processing. We describe the roles and obligations those pages set out, and deliberately reproduce no figure, threshold, or calculation. Where this page interprets rather than reports, the section is marked as our analysis. A person on the editorial team compared each statement against those pages on the review date shown.
What we did not include
- Income thresholds, household-size figures, and asset multipliers. These change and are published annually.
- Any calculation, estimate, or indication of whether a household satisfies the requirement.
- Tax, benefit, and enforcement consequences of the contract, which are legal and financial questions.
- The I-134 declaration used on the K-1 route, which is a different instrument at a different stage.
Common questions
- Do we need a joint sponsor?
- We will not answer that, and we would be suspicious of any product that did. It depends on figures published annually, on household size, and on facts about your circumstances. An immigration attorney can assess it; a website cannot.
- The petitioning partner has no U.S. income. Can someone else file instead?
- The petitioner's own affidavit is required regardless. A joint sponsor, where one is used, is in addition to it rather than instead of it.
- We both live abroad. Is that a problem?
- It raises the domicile question, which is a fact-dependent legal assessment set out in the form's instructions. It is the most common reason we would suggest talking to an attorney before filing.
- How long does the sponsorship obligation last?
- The instructions describe the terminating events. Because the obligation is contractual and long-running, it is worth reading them at the source rather than in summary.
Related guides
Pages in this library that continue or qualify what you just read.
- NVC and sponsorshipWhat Happens After an I-130 ApprovalUnderstand which office holds the case after petition approval and what each one does
- NVC and sponsorshipNVC Document Checklist for CouplesPrepare the civil and financial documents the National Visa Center asks for
- Civil documents and documentary qualificationDocumentarily Qualified, and the Wait That FollowsInterpret a documentarily qualified record and understand the wait for interview scheduling
How Togetherward helps
SuggestionTogetherward keeps the sponsorship paperwork, the financial records, and the questions you want to ask an attorney in one shared place, so a conversation with counsel starts from an organised set of facts. It performs no calculation, makes no assessment, and has no connection to any government system.
- Look at the sample caseOpens a fictional, read-only sample case. Nothing is saved and nothing is shared.
- See the other guidesOpens the guide library index.
- Ask about the private betaOpens the beta page, where you can read what the beta covers and ask to join.
Who wrote this, who checked it, and how current it is
- Author
- The Togetherward editorial team. The people who build Togetherward. We are not attorneys and we do not give legal advice.
- Reviewer
- Reviewed in-house by a second person on the Togetherward team. No attorney, agency, or government office has reviewed or endorsed this page.
- Scope of review
- Review scope: a second person on the Togetherward team re-read this page against the official pages listed below and checked that every process statement still matches them. That is the whole of it. Nobody reviewed it for legal accuracy, eligibility, or how it applies to any particular case, and no attorney, agency, or government office has reviewed or endorsed it.
- Dates
- Published · last materially reviewed . We aim to re-read this page against its sources every 90 days.
- Current state: Current — reviewed inside our review interval.
- Automation and AI
- Automation and AI: an AI assistant drafted structural first passes and suggested wording for parts of this page, and automated checks flag broken links and dates that have gone unreviewed. No AI system reads government sites and updates this page on its own, and nothing an AI produced is published unread. A named person on the editorial team compared every process statement here against the official pages listed below and is answerable for what it says.
- Primary sources
- Process steps come only from official U.S. government publishers. We do not use law-firm blogs, forums, or crowd-sourced timelines as authority.
- What the labels in this guide mean
- Official factStated by a U.S. government publisher on the source page we cite.
- Togetherward analysisOur reading of the official sources, not something an agency says.
- SuggestionA way to organise your own case. Optional, and not a requirement.
- Limitations
- This is an explanation of a published government process, not legal advice, and not a prediction about your case.
- Figures that move — processing ranges, Visa Bulletin dates, fees, form editions, interview availability — are described rather than reproduced here, so you read the current number at the source.
- USCIS, the National Visa Center, the embassy, or the consular officer may ask for something this page does not mention.
- This page contains no income figure, threshold, or calculation, and makes no assessment of whether a household satisfies the requirement. Domicile and sufficiency are questions for an immigration attorney.
- Commercial independence
- Commercial independence: nobody pays to appear on this page. There are no sponsors, no advertising, no referral fees, no affiliate links, and no paid placement of any attorney, agency, or service. Togetherward makes money from couples who use the product, and a commercial relationship cannot change what this page says, when it was last reviewed, whether it is flagged as out of date, or whether it stays in search results.
- Corrections
- If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will fix it and update the review date. Reports go to a review queue — a person checks each one against the official source before this page changes. You can also email support@togetherward.app or use the support page.
Not legal advice.
This page outlines the roles created by a published government form. It is not legal advice, it does not assess your household, and it deliberately contains no income figure or calculation. Read the form's instructions and the current guidelines at the source, and speak to an immigration attorney about your own circumstances — particularly about domicile.