Moving your family to the UAE is really two projects. The visible one involves flights and furniture. The invisible one is a paperwork chain where each document unlocks the next, and one missing attestation can stall everything from your bank account to your child’s school seat.
This is the checklist we wish someone had handed us on arrival, in dependency order.
Before you fly
- Passports with at least six months’ validity for every family member
- Attested certificates: marriage certificate and children’s birth certificates, attested in your home country and by the UAE embassy. School-age kids also need attested transfer certificates and report cards
- Passport photos on white background, more than you think you need
- Medical records: vaccination cards for school registration
Scan everything before it goes in a suitcase. Documents that exist only on paper have a way of being in the wrong country at the wrong time.
The dependency chain after landing
Most things in the UAE flow from your residency, in roughly this order:
- 1. Entry visa → medical test → Emirates ID → residence visa. The sponsor (usually the employed parent) goes first; family visas follow.
- 2. Bank account. Needs your Emirates ID (or application) and a salary letter.
- 3. Tenancy contract. Registered with the municipality (Ejari in Dubai, Tawtheeq in Abu Dhabi). You’ll need it for almost everything after.
- 4. DEWA / SEWA / ADDC utilities. Need the registered tenancy.
- 5. School enrolment. Needs the attested school documents, Emirates IDs, and often proof of address.
- 6. Driving licence, health insurance, phone plans. All flow from the ID and tenancy.
The pattern: keep every document from every step, because step 6 will casually ask for something from step 2.
The renewals treadmill
Once settled, the paperwork doesn’t end; it becomes cyclical. Residence visas renew every 2–3 years, Emirates IDs with them, tenancy annually, car registration annually, insurance annually. Each has its own lead time, and overstaying a lapsed document carries real fines.
The families who handle this calmly all do the same thing: every renewable document has a 90-day reminder, and both parents can see the whole picture, not just the person who signed the lease.
One place for all of it
Placi was built in an expat household in Dubai for exactly this life: a shared encrypted vault for visas, IDs and contracts with expiry reminders, guided journeys that walk you step-by-step through getting settled, and bills in AED with everyone in sync. Start with the document system guide, then let the app carry the reminders for you.