Immigration Law
Short Answer: In most cases the pending Form I-485 survives. A K-1 fiancé(e) who married the U.S. citizen petitioner within 90 days of admission remains eligible to adjust status even if that marriage ends by divorce, annulment, or the petitioner's death, provided the marriage was bona fide when entered into. A spouse abused by the petitioner has an additional route through a VAWA self-petition. The threshold requirement on every track is that the marriage to the petitioner actually took place within the 90-day window.
There are four ways a K-1 marriage ends while an I-485 is pending, and they are not interchangeable.
Each has a different filing, a different burden of proof, and in two of the four, a deadline. Getting the track wrong costs months at a stage where months matter.
Before any of the four tracks matters, one fact controls: did a marriage to the U.S. citizen who filed Form I-129F take place within 90 days of admission?
If yes, all four tracks are potentially available. INA § 245(d) is satisfied, because the statute requires only that adjustment result from marriage to the petitioner — not that the marriage still exist when USCIS decides the case. The Board settled this in Matter of Sesay, 25 I&N Dec. 431 (BIA 2011), and USCIS adopted the same position in its Policy Manual.
If no, adjustment of status is unavailable and none of the four tracks changes that. That situation, and the reach of the statutory bar generally, is covered in my article on what INA § 245(d) actually prohibits.
A pending Form I-485 does not have to be withdrawn when a divorce becomes final. The K-1 spouse remains eligible, and the former spouse's cooperation is not required — the application rests on the already-approved Form I-129F, so no new petition and no signature from the ex-spouse is needed. Remarriage to someone else does not forfeit eligibility either.
What changes is the evidentiary work. USCIS will examine whether the marriage was genuine when it began, and the documents that prove it become substantially harder to obtain once a household has separated. A divorce filed but not yet final also leaves the case in an ambiguous posture, and the timing of the final decree relative to adjudication can matter.
Because this is the most common of the four tracks, I've addressed it in depth separately — see can you still get a green card if your K-1 marriage ends in divorce, which covers the evidence USCIS expects and what happens if an ex-spouse contacts the agency.
An annulment requires more caution than a divorce, and the reason is legal rather than practical.
USCIS guidance states that a fiancé(e) remains eligible where the marriage was legally terminated by death, dissolution, or divorce. Annulment is not named in that formulation. In many jurisdictions an annulment declares that no valid marriage ever existed — which sits uneasily against the requirement that the applicant contracted a valid marriage to the petitioner within the 90 days.
USCIS separately treats annulment as a qualifying basis at the removal-of-conditions stage, listing marriages terminated by divorce or annulment as eligible for a waiver of the joint filing requirement (USCIS Policy Manual, Vol. 6, Part I, Ch. 5). Whether that treatment carries back to the adjustment stage is not something the guidance states directly.
The grounds for the annulment matter here, and so does the law of the state that granted it. This is the one track where the outcome may turn on how a family court characterized the marriage, and it warrants individualized analysis before anything is filed.
Adjustment eligibility survives the petitioner's death. USCIS guidance names death expressly, alongside dissolution and divorce, as a form of legal termination that does not defeat eligibility — provided the marriage was valid, bona fide, and contracted within the 90-day window.
Death diverges from the other tracks later, at the removal-of-conditions stage, and this distinction is widely missed. A conditional resident whose marriage ended by divorce or annulment files Form I-751 with a request to waive the joint filing requirement. A conditional resident whose petitioning spouse died submits an individual filing request instead (USCIS Policy Manual, Vol. 6, Part I, Ch. 4).
The difference is procedural rather than substantive — both require proof the marriage was bona fide — but filing under the wrong basis creates avoidable delay.
A spouse abused by the K-1 petitioner has a route the other three tracks do not offer. Under INA § 204(a)(1)(A)(iii), a person battered or subjected to extreme cruelty by a U.S. citizen spouse may file a VAWA self-petition on Form I-360 — without the abuser's knowledge, consent, or signature. Filing does not notify the abuser, and under 8 U.S.C. § 1367 federal officials generally may not make an adverse determination of admissibility or deportability using information furnished solely by that person (USCIS Policy Manual, Vol. 1, Part A, Ch. 7).
The abuser must be the citizen who filed the Form I-129F. VAWA does not override INA § 245(d): in Le v. Holder, 732 F.3d 425 (5th Cir. 2013), a K-1 entrant who never married her petitioner, married someone else, and was abused by that person was denied adjustment despite an approved self-petition.
Two features distinguish this track:
A K-1 spouse abused by the petitioner often has both this track and Track 1 available. The ordinary route requires proving the marriage was bona fide but does not require proving abuse, which matters for someone who lacks documentation or would find assembling it retraumatizing. The VAWA route offers confidentiality protections, exemption from most bars in INA § 245(c), work authorization, and naturalization after three years rather than five.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233.
The marriage must have been bona fide when entered into. The relevant moment is the beginning of the marriage, not its end. USCIS cites Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604 (1953), for the principle that a marriage must have been genuine at inception even though later terminated. A marriage that collapsed is not the same as one that was never real — though a short marriage invites scrutiny, and the burden sits with the applicant.
Approval generally produces a two-year conditional green card. INA § 216 applies whenever the qualifying marriage is under two years old when adjustment is granted, which describes nearly every case in this posture. That means a second filing roughly two years later. My article on I-751 processing covers what that stage involves.
Eligibility is not approval. Adjustment under INA § 245(a) is discretionary, and USCIS weighs the full record. I've written separately about how the agency is approaching that discretion.
Most people in this position arrive believing the case is finished. On three of the four tracks it usually isn't, and on the fourth there is a protective route that exists precisely for this situation.
What determines the outcome is narrow and factual: the date of the wedding relative to the date of admission, the state of the documentary record, and which termination event occurred. Those facts are worth establishing early, because two of the four tracks carry deadlines.
If your K-1 marriage has ended or is ending while your green card application is pending, contact me at SG Legal Group to work out where your case actually stands. Consultations are available in English, Spanish, Russian, and Romanian.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Immigration laws and policies are subject to change, and individual circumstances vary. For advice specific to your situation, please consult with a qualified immigration attorney.
Oleg Gherasimov, Esq.
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