Even before our initial lawsuit, we were in PT for at least a week almost every month - I think that qualifies as often. We had other “urgency” evidence like selling our UK place and needing to live in our PT home - judge didn’t care. Meanwhile our GV peer with same lawyer had none of this evidence and won with a different judge. So it’s totally based on a judge’s mood, not logic.
Our appeal is contesting the lower judge’s “you don’t live in Portugal” argument with “um, that’s because we can’t live in Portugal without a valid visa.” (Yes I know GVs who are living there pre-visa, but it’s tenuous and travelling out of PT is always iffy.) It will soon be a year since our appeal was accepted by the higher court, yet it just sits there rotting with thousands of other ones.
…so getting back to the topic of this thread: If we all have to start suing to protect our rights to citizenship based on 5 years, it will be the same random judgements and another massive backlog of lawsuits all over again.