non-EU B permit- separation and moving questions

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
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My partner (I suppose "former roommate" is more appropriate) and I are both non-EU, married for > 3 years, but only lived in CH for 2 years. I have a B permit through work, she had one through family reunification. We're separated but not divorced, it's not mutual or amicable so I don't have a ton of direct information about this predicament. She decided to move out of our home to be closer to her affair partner shortly before our permits were up for renewal. She is no longer on the lease and has registered in her new city.

I was able to renew my permit just fine, but she told me that there were "complications" on her end. I assume that means it was denied because she moved out (whatever letter she got didn't state the reason), but with the option to appeal. I have a few questions, would love to get some insight:

1. What's the rough timeline such an appeal could take? Like a week or two or on the order of months?

Assuming she cannot successfully apply for an independent permit through work, her only option would be to use the Art. 50 conditions.

2. The "directive" document on the Zurich migration office website says that the 3 year living together while married must be in Switzerland. How legally binding is this directive? I've seen a few posts on EF claiming people were able to successfully appeal having lived here for a shorter period of time. Is that Kantonal variation?

3. She managed to "integrate" herself pretty well with her Swiss affair partner and dishes German at a B1 level. Would I be right in assuming that her ability to support herself financially would be a bigger factor than having many Swiss friends?

3a. What would be a good salary to be deemed as supporting oneself? She currently makes ~1.5x the amount to be able to claim social support. Could she claim my income since we are not yet divorced?

4. If she successfully gets her permit renewed via Art 50, is it still linked to my permit? I plan on deregistering once I find work in my country of origin (sad to go, but it's the right choice for my personal life). Would her appealed permit be in jeopardy again in that case?

Part of this is me wondering if divorcing in CH is still feasible, but mostly I'm very curious about how this will unfold. Thanks in advance

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  1. I think she has 30 days to make the appeal, but how long it takes after that would probably depend on how straight forward or complicated the appeal may be.

  2. It could be. I’ve not seen anything that specifies it has to be 3 years in Switzerland.

3/3a. Supporting herself financially is probably going to carry more weight than how many Swiss friends she has.

  1. Yes, it would be in jeopardy since she’s appealing against the renewal of a family reunification permit. And as a non-EU national her employer would have to go through the non-EU hiring criteria for her to get an independent permit. Other course of action would be for her new partner to apply for a concubine permit for her, but I don’t know whether that would be possible given she’s still married.

If you both can’t agree to divorce then there’s effectively a 2 year wait since you have to have lived separately for 2 years before you could apply without her consent.

https://www.ch.ch/en/family-and-part…rce-procedure/

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Thanks for the response.

The document on the Zürich Migrationsamt website cites this case . It seems pretty definitive that it has to be in CH, but I've also seen contrary anecdata in old threads on EF.