This is the largest family sponsorship category and the one that produces the most refusals. You can sponsor a spouse, a common law or conjugal partner, or a dependent child. The application turns on one question above all others: whether the relationship is genuine, and whether it was entered into primarily to gain status in Canada. Everything else is administration.

The choice between applying inland and outland is made at the beginning and it decides what happens if you are refused. An outland refusal carries a right of appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division, where new evidence is allowed. An inland refusal does not.

Eligibility requirements

• Sponsor must be 18 years or older and a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.
• The relationship must be genuine and legally recognized.
• Both sponsor and applicant must meet financial and legal requirements.
• The sponsor must not have a criminal record or be bankrupt.
• The sponsor must sign an agreement to financially support the applicant.

Processing is measured in months rather than weeks, and the file is assessed on the evidence as filed. Building the relationship evidence properly at the start is cheaper than answering questions about it later.

Spousal and partner sponsorship in fullInland against outland, evidence of a genuine relationship, and what to do if it is refused

Adoption files run on two legal systems at once, Canada’s and that of the child’s country of origin, and both have to be satisfied before a visa is issued. The adoption has to be complete and lawful where it took place, and it also has to meet Canadian requirements, including that it created a genuine relationship of parent and child and was not arranged mainly to bring the child to Canada.

Where the child’s country is a party to the Hague Convention on intercountry adoption, that process must be followed as well, and the provincial authority in the province where you live has its own role. These files take longer than most people expect and the sequence matters.

Eligibility requirements

• The adoption must be legal and final.
• The sponsor must be 18 years or older and a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.
• Must comply with both the sending country’s and Canada’s adoption laws.
• The sponsor must provide financial support for the adopted child.
• The sponsor must sign an agreement to financially support the applicant.

Provincial adoption authorities and IRCC assess different things. Approval from one does not guarantee the other, and starting the immigration side late is the most common source of delay.

This category is far narrower than most people expect, and it is worth understanding before you build plans around it. In practice it covers an orphaned brother, sister, nephew, niece or grandchild who is under eighteen and unmarried.

There is also the provision often called the lonely Canadian rule. If you have no living spouse, common law partner, child, parent, grandparent, sibling, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew, whether in Canada or abroad, you may sponsor one relative of any age. The bar is exactly as high as it sounds. A single living relative anywhere in the world removes the option.

Eligibility requirements

• Sponsor must be 18 years or older and a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.
• Sponsor must demonstrate the financial ability to support the relative.
• Relatives who can be sponsored include siblings, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren who are orphaned, under 18, and not married or in a common-law relationship.
• In special circumstances, other relatives can be sponsored if the sponsor does not have any other immediate family members in Canada.

If neither situation applies to you, the honest answer is that this route is closed, and the time is better spent on a program the relative may qualify for in their own right.

This program has been closed to new applications since 15 July 2026. IRCC is not accepting new interest to sponsor forms and is not issuing invitations to apply, and no reopening date has been announced. Applications already in the system continue to be processed normally.

For most families the practical route now is the super visa, which allows a parent or grandparent to stay for up to five years at a time and had both its income and its insurance rules relaxed during 2026. If you were assessed as not qualifying before those changes, that assessment may be out of date.

Eligibility requirements

• Sponsor must be 18 years or older and a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.
• Sponsor must meet a minimum necessary income requirement for the past three years.
• Must sign a sponsorship agreement to provide financial support for the parents/grandparents for 20 years.
• The parents/grandparents must also pass medical, criminal, and background checks.

The super visa, and why it is now the routeIncome from either of the two preceding tax years, insurance from an approved insurer outside Canada

If a family class sponsorship application is refused, you generally have a right of appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division. It does not follow that you should use it.

Here is the point clients are almost never told before they commit. If you appeal and the appeal is dismissed, that dismissal is a decision on the merits, and it closes the door on simply filing again. A fresh application after a dismissed appeal runs straight into the finality of that decision. Whereas if you do not appeal, and you are otherwise eligible, a better prepared application is often still open to you.

So the real question after a family class refusal is not whether you can appeal. It is which of the two roads actually gets your family here.

This applies across spousal and common-law sponsorship, dependent child sponsorship and other relative sponsorship. It is a strategic decision with a deadline attached to it, and it is worth thirty minutes of proper advice before you commit to either road. We will tell you honestly which one we think is stronger, including when that answer is to wait.

• Spousal, Common-Law Partner, and Dependent Child Sponsorship
• Parents and Grandparents Sponsorship
• Super Visa
• Immigration Appeals