Divorce and your Swedish residence permit: the three ways to stay

Your permit says you live with your partner in Sweden. The relationship is over, the card runs until March 2028, and the first question is whether you have to leave. Migrationsverket answers in one paragraph, then spends three sections on the exceptions.

What the permit is actually tied to

A permit to live with a partner is granted because of a named relationship, not because of you. The requirement to extend it is short: you must still live with the partner through whom you were granted the permit the first time, and you must have a valid passport.

That is why the ground disappears with the relationship. The permit does not switch off the day you separate, but the remaining validity is not something to plan a life around, because revocation is on the table.

Permanent residence is different. Once granted, it is valid as long as you are resident in Sweden, and it is not attached to the relationship at all. That single line is why the three-year mark matters so much in this story.

The three published routes to an extended permit

Route one: ties to Sweden

Migrationsverket can grant an extended permit even when the relationship has ended, if you show that you still have a connection to Sweden in several ways. The agency then makes an overall assessment. Several is the operative word; one strong fact is rarely enough.

The page names what counts and how to evidence it. Living with a new partner: their name, address, telephone number and personnummer, a marriage certificate if you married, and a rental agreement or purchase contract with both your names to show you live together.

Work: an employment contract, payslips or tax notices. If the employment is fixed-term, the contract has to state how long it runs. And adaptation to life here: certificates about involvement in associations, studies in Sweden, or other parts of your life.

If you have children with the right to live in Sweden, there is a separate door. You apply through your connection to the child, under Migrationsverket's pages for parents of children under 18.

Route two: violence in the relationship

You can be granted an extended permit if the relationship ended because you or your child were mistreated by your partner. Migrationsverket sets out three conditions: you or your child must have been subjected to violence or another serious violation, the relationship must have been serious from the beginning and not completely short-lived, and it must seem very likely that the violations occurred.

The agency also puts something else in writing, worth passing on to anyone who needs it. People who abuse a partner without permanent residence sometimes claim they can have the victim deported, or that social services will take the children. Migrationsverket says plainly that this is not true: the agency decides on residence permits, and social services do not remove children because a parent was subjected to violence.

If you need help now, call 112 and ask for the police. Migrationsverket keeps a page of authorities and organisations that help people living with violence.

Route three: other reasons

The third route covers cases that are neither about ties nor about violence. An extended permit is possible if you risk becoming a social outcast on return to your country of origin, or if you are seriously ill or have a severe disability.

And if it is not safe for you to return at all, that is not an extension question. Asylum is a separate application with its own rules.

The three-year line, and the money

If you have lived in Sweden with a residence permit for at least three years, you can apply for permanent residence at the same time as you apply to extend. That is the cleanest way out of a permit that depends on someone else.

The requirements are the extension requirements, plus supporting yourself and living a well-behaved life. Your income after tax must cover your monthly housing costs and still leave a set amount: in 2026 that is 6 243 kr a month for a single adult. If you live with other adults, divide the actual housing cost by the number of adults and count only your share.

Only taxed income from legal employment or your own company counts. Income from a family member, capital, unemployment insurance, activity compensation, grants, scholarships and subsidised employment do not. Parental or sickness benefit counts if you have ongoing employment and the leave is not assessed as longer than 12 months.

One trap is built into the timing. If you apply after your current permit has expired you lose the right to work while waiting, and without the right to work you cannot meet the maintenance requirement. File before the expiry date, and no more than two months before it.

The divorce itself

Divorce is a court matter, not a Migrationsverket one. You apply at the tingsrätt for the place where one of you was registered on 1 November last year, and it costs 900 kr. You never have to explain why.

If you agree, you can apply jointly in the courts' e-service. One of you starts, signs with an e-legitimation and then has to tell the other to log in and sign, because that does not happen automatically, and one of you pays by card in the service.

In some cases the court decides at once and the judgment usually arrives within about three weeks of the application. In others six months must pass between application and judgment. That reconsideration period, betänketid, applies if you do not agree about divorcing, or if a child under 16 lives with you, even when you agree and even when the children are not shared. The exception is if you have not lived together for the last two years, shown with a särlevnadsintyg signed by two adults.

After betänketid you must ask for the divorce to be completed. Skatteverket is informed by the court, so a Swedish divorce needs no report from you; a divorce granted abroad does, and Skatteverket's published queue for that is about 22 weeks.

A worked example

Nadia arrived in April 2024 on a two-year permit to live with her husband in Uppsala, extended in 2026 to March 2028. They separate in October 2026 and file jointly at the tingsrätt on 3 November 2026, paying 900 kr. Their son is nine and lives with them, so six months of betänketid apply.

By March 2028 Nadia will have had a residence permit in Sweden for almost four years, past the three-year line. She has worked at a preschool since January 2025 on a permanent contract, rents a flat for 8 900 kr a month and lives with her son only.

She therefore needs her income after tax to cover 8 900 kr plus 6 243 kr, about 15 150 kr a month, and she applies to extend and for permanent residence together, in January 2028 at the earliest and before the March expiry. Her file leads with the employment contract, payslips, tax notices and the rental agreement, not with the divorce papers.

What we do not know yet

Migrationsverket does not publish how strong ties to Sweden have to be, nor approval rates after a relationship has ended. The page says an overall assessment, and that is individual by definition.

The processing statistics are the one hard number. On 31 August 2026, 75 per cent of recently decided cases in this category had been decided within six months, which is the window your own timing has to survive.