Can you apply for the Spain non-lucrative visa if your spouse is still working?

A job not yet ended

Everything was perfect, she wrote, until the refusal came.

Call her Ruth. It isn't her name. Ruth and her husband applied for Spain's non-lucrative visa, the one for people who live on savings, a pension or passive income and are not allowed to work. She prepared it herself, after years of research. She was already retired, drawing a pension and US Social Security, and they had savings as well. Her husband was still working. They had planned for that: their file included a sworn statement that he would stop about a month before they left, and a promise that he would not work in Spain.

The consulate refused the application on the ground that her husband was still employed. In her words: "They ignored everything, including all of our savings." For the appeal, she hired a lawyer. The thread doesn't say how the appeal ended.

Her story sat in a thread where people described how they had applied, and the replies covered every combination. One member consulted an attorney, then did everything themselves once it was clear the attorney would do little beyond checking the work. Another consulted one, found the fee was for being told what to do, and said they would pay for it to be done, not explained. One couple hired an attorney the first time and were refused; the second time, one of them did it alone: "Much smoother and approved." And one paid for help because rules vary by consulate and change, because some documents were hard to get, and because someone keeping the timeline on track was useful: "I paid for peace of mind."

A job not yet ended. That was what the consulate saw in Ruth's file, whatever the sworn statement said. This visa is for people whose money comes without working, and the consulate treated a salary still being paid as reason enough to refuse, even one about to stop.

This is one applicant's account, not legal advice. Consulates weigh these files differently, and the official source is the place to check before acting.

For anyone comparing quotes, the thread shows two prices that often get treated as one. Applying costs one amount, whether you pay a firm or do it yourself. Being refused costs another: the appeal, or a second application. In Ruth's case, doing it herself saved the first fee and not the second. And the couple whose first, lawyer-prepared attempt was refused show it runs the other way too: paying for help is no guarantee. The question most quotes leave unanswered: if the visa is refused, is the appeal included, priced separately, or not offered at all?

Doing it yourself saves the fee for the application. If the answer is no, a fee can come back as the price of the appeal.

For Spain's non-lucrative visa, we have fees from 8 firms on file. The typical fee is about €950. The middle half sit between €762 and €4,625. Some cover the application only, some the full package.

If you were refused, did you appeal on your own or with help? What did it cost?

Based on a real case, shared publicly in an online group and anonymised. Fees on file as of November 2026.