I don’t want to scare you much, but it’s true that getting dependent visa is not that easy, especially if the primary applicant is already residing in Belgium. I processed  my dependents visas along with mine. It’s comparatively easy, yet I had to go thru’ a lot of surprises and had to sacrifice a few nights sleep with full of tension and worries.

Below is the list of basic documents that are needed , when the primary applicant is in India / your home country. 

1. Birth Certificate - should be issued in the last 6 months & Legalized
2. Marriage Certificate - should be issued in the last 6 months & Legalized
3. Police Clearance Certificate  - should be issued in the last 6 months & Legalized
4. Passport
5. Filled Visa Form
6. Color Photo (both yours and your wife/husband)
7. Medical Certificate

The list may look simple, but what made it complicated was the phrase “ - should be issued in the last 6 months & Legalized” :P

Re-issue of documents:
Belgium consulate asks for all the documents to be issued within the last 6 months. In my case my marriage certificate, Wife/Kid’s birth certificate all of them were 4-5 years old and I had to get all the documents reissued. Actually, the re-issue of documents is not that difficult. All the recent birth and marriage registrations are available online. Corresponding municipal offices reissue them with-in 10 working days from the date you apply.

I also got my Daughter’s and wife’s birth certificate on regular channel within 10 days (still I had to travel 2-3 times to my native which is 14 hours away from Bangalore :(. But it was nothing, I had yet another complicated problem to tackle with.

My marriage certificate was in Tamil Font, when we apply for the re-issue, we actually get a “true copy of the original marriage certificate”., Which means that they just take the copy of the already registered Tamil marriage certificate and put today’s date seal as reissued.  Somehow after a lot of efforts I got my marriage certificate re-issued in English.

Legalization of documents:
Legalization ( a.ka. Apostille) is the process of getting the required documents authenticated by the
Typical legalization process involves many state government and central government offices. Then no need to tell about the delays involved, right? Following-up at every stage was horrible and it's follow-up itself, was taking a big chunk of my office work time.