Moving to the UAE with your family: bringing a spouse, children and parents

How to bring your family to the UAE: the family visa, children’s documents, schools and healthcare. A step-by-step guide for those moving with their nearest and dearest.

Moving on your own is not difficult. Bringing a family is another story altogether: extra visas, schools, children’s healthcare, the logistics of paperwork. Here is how it works in the UAE and what to watch out for.

Who can arrange family visas?
In the UAE a resident with a valid visa can act as a sponsor for family members. One important condition: your monthly income must be at least 4,000 AED (~1,100 USD) for basic family sponsorship. In practice banks and landlords expect considerably more.

A family sponsorship visa lets you bring:

• Your spouse
• Your children: sons up to 25 years old, unmarried daughters with no age limit.
• Your parents — subject to additional conditions (a special visa fee applies)

The golden visa: the best option for a family
If you qualify for a golden visa (property investments from 2 million AED or other criteria), it covers the whole family at once — your spouse and children of any age — for 10 years. It is the most comfortable status: no minimum stay to keep track of and no annual proof of income.

Documents for a family visa
For each family member you will need:

• The sponsor’s original Emirates ID (spouse or parent)
• A scan of the sponsor’s passport
• A legalised marriage or birth certificate
• Scans of the passports of those receiving the family visa
• Passport photos of those receiving the family visa, in a digital format
• Ejari (residential tenancy contract) or Title Deed (proof of ownership)*

* For parents only; it is not required for a spouse or children.

Schools: choose before the move, not after
Dubai has schools following the British, American, IB, French, German and other curricula. There are Russian-language private schools and classes taught in Russian. Demand is high and places at good schools run out — join the waiting lists while you are still in Russia.

The cost: primary school — 35,000–70,000 AED a year, secondary school — 45,000–90,000 AED, sixth form (IB / A-levels) — 55,000–120,000 AED a year.

Nurseries
Nurseries take children from 45 days to 4 years old. The typical range across Dubai in 2026 is 3,000 to 8,000 AED a month (~36,000–96,000 AED a year) depending on the programme and the district. The lower bound of 2,500 AED is rare — those are the most budget options. Russian-speaking nannies and carers are available in Dubai and are easy to find through the Russian-speaking expat communities.

Healthcare for children
Public hospitals in the UAE charge expats. Insurance covers most costs at accredited clinics. The standard of care is high, paediatricians speak English, and there are Russian-speaking doctors in Dubai as well.

Parents: how do you bring them?
Bringing parents over is possible, but harder. There are two routes:

1. A family visa with you as the sponsor — with additional income requirements and fees.
2. A retirement visa — for people over 55 who own property, hold a deposit of 1 million AED or receive a pension of 15,000 AED a month or more.

In practice many families first move the main resident with a spouse and children, and bring the parents later, once status and income have settled.

The main piece of advice
A family move is several parallel processes: your visa, your family’s visas, the school, the housing, the insurance. All of it has to be coordinated at once. A mistake in one document sets the whole thing back.

The Wesupport team is ready to take on the entire paperwork end to end: from legalising certificates to arranging visas with the Emirates ID delivered to your door. Leave a request on our site and we will get back to you within minutes, go through your situation and propose the best plan of action.