What Evidence Do You Need for an 820 Partner Visa? Complete Checklist

What the Department is actually assessing

Partner visa evidence is not a popularity contest and it is not about romance. The Department assesses your relationship against four specific criteria set out in Migration Regulation 1.15A: financial aspects, the nature of the household, social aspects, and the nature of your commitment to each other.

That framework matters because it tells you what your evidence has to do. A folder of photographs proves one of the four. It does nothing for the other three. The most common reason a subclass 820 application attracts a request for further information is not that the evidence was thin overall, but that it was thick in one category and empty in another.

The second thing the Department is assessing is whether the relationship is genuine and continuing, and whether you live together or do not live apart on a permanent basis. Those are separate questions from the four criteria, and they are the reason context matters as much as documents.

A strong application therefore does two things at once. It provides evidence across all four criteria, and it explains in your own words how your relationship actually works, including anything about it that looks unusual on paper.

What kind of evidence carries the most weight

Not all evidence is equal, and volume is not the measure.

Documents produced by third parties for reasons unconnected to your visa carry the most weight. A bank statement, a lease, a council rates notice, a health insurance policy or an electricity bill was created by an organisation with no interest in your application, and it happens to show your names and your address. That is far more persuasive than anything you write yourself.

Evidence spanning time carries more weight than evidence from a single moment. Ten bank statements across two years say more than one joint account opened last month. Photographs from four different years say more than forty from one wedding.

Statements from you and your sponsor carry real weight, but only where they are specific. A statement that says the relationship is loving and committed adds nothing. A statement that explains how you met, when you decided to live together, how you divide the bills, what happened when one of you lost a job, and why you spent three months apart in 2025 does the work.

Statutory declarations from friends and family support the social criterion, but they are corroboration rather than proof. Two detailed declarations from people who know you both well are worth more than eight generic ones.

One further point on weight. Consistency across the whole application matters more than the strength of any single document. Where your statement, your sponsor's statement and your documents give slightly different accounts of when you met, when you moved in together or why you were apart, the inconsistency becomes the issue rather than the underlying facts. Draft the statements after you have assembled the documents, not before, and check the dates against each other.

Financial aspects: what to provide

The Department is looking for evidence that you have pooled your financial lives to some degree, or an explanation of why you have not.

Provide joint bank account statements covering as long a period as you have, and highlight transactions that show shared living costs rather than just a balance. Include any shared liabilities: a mortgage, a car loan, a lease in both names, a jointly held credit facility. Add evidence of major joint purchases such as furniture, a vehicle or travel.

If your finances are separate, say so and explain the arrangement. Plenty of genuine couples keep separate accounts and split costs by transfer. Screenshots of regular transfers between you, with a short explanation of what each covers, address the criterion directly. What fails is silence.

Also useful: evidence that you have nominated each other as a beneficiary on superannuation or insurance, and any documents showing you have made financial decisions together.

Nature of the household: what to provide

This criterion is about how you actually run a home together.

Provide a lease, mortgage or ownership documents in both names. If only one name is on the lease, provide a letter from the agent or landlord confirming both of you live there, along with mail addressed to each of you at that address.

Provide utilities in both names where possible, or a mix showing one account in each name at the same address. Council rates, electricity, gas, water, internet and a phone plan all work.

Provide evidence of shared domestic arrangements: how you divide household tasks, who does the shopping, how you handle the mail. This is one of the few places a written statement is the primary evidence, because no third party documents who cooks dinner.

If you live apart, this is the criterion you must address head on. Explain the reason, how long it has lasted, how often you see each other and what your plan is. Work, study, caring responsibilities and visa constraints are all accepted reasons. An unexplained separate address is not.

Social aspects and the nature of your commitment

Social aspects means evidence that other people know you as a couple.

Provide joint invitations, evidence of attending events together, photographs across a span of time with a short caption saying when and where each was taken, and evidence of joint memberships, gym subscriptions or clubs. Include travel booked together, boarding passes and accommodation bookings in both names.

Form 888 statements go here. Ask two or three people who genuinely know you both to complete a Form 888 (Supporting statement in relation to a Partner or Prospective Marriage visa application), writing specifically about what they have observed and over what period, rather than simply asserting the relationship is genuine. Each supporter must be at least 18 and must attach evidence of their identity, such as a birth certificate, Australian passport or passport containing a permanent visa. The Department can ask for up to three separate statements while the application is being processed, and it can contact a supporter for further comment or an interview.

Where you are a same sex couple, the criteria are identical, but the practical evidence picture can be different. Our page for same sex partner visa applicants covers that.

Nature of the commitment: what to provide

This criterion covers the longer arc: whether the relationship is built to continue.

Provide your relationship history in date order, evidence of how long you have been together, and any wills, powers of attorney or beneficiary nominations naming each other. Add evidence of your intentions going forward, such as a joint application for something in the future, a lease signed for a term beyond the visa decision, or plans you have committed money to.

Evidence that you know each other's circumstances also sits here: knowledge of each other's family, finances, work and future plans. Where you have supported each other through something significant, illness, job loss, a family death, say so and date it.

What not to include

Private messages, intimate photographs and detailed accounts of your relationship's private aspects are not required and do not strengthen an application. The Department is assessing a domestic relationship, not the details of it. Volume of this kind of material tends to substitute for the categories that are actually missing.

The evidence mistakes that cause refusals and delays

Four failures come up repeatedly.

1. Volume without range. Five hundred photographs and nothing showing joint finances. The application looks substantial and satisfies one criterion out of four. Spread the effort.

2. Gaps left unexplained. Every application has something awkward: a short relationship history, separate finances, a period living apart, a large age difference, a relationship formed online. None of those is fatal. Leaving them unaddressed is what invites a request for further information, and a request adds months to a process already running past two years. Evidence problems are also among the most common reasons a partner visa is refused.

3. Evidence created for the application. A joint account opened the week before lodgement, with no transactions, proves nothing and can suggest the opposite. Provide what exists, explain what does not.

4. Documents that expire. Health examinations and police certificates have a limited validity, and a subclass 820 application often runs long enough for them to lapse before the decision. Diarise them.
The practical fix for all four is to assemble the application against the four criteria as a checklist, not as a pile, and then read it as a case officer would: looking for the category that is empty and the fact that has not been explained.

How you present the evidence also matters. Organise it by the four criteria rather than by document type, name each file so a case officer can tell what it is without opening it, and provide a short index listing what is included under each heading. A case officer working through hundreds of files will find what is there faster, and is less likely to conclude something is missing when it is simply buried.

Keep going after you lodge. The permanent subclass 801 stage is assessed on evidence covering the period from lodgement onwards, so the documents you gather during the wait are the documents that decide the second stage. Applicants who stop collecting at lodgement end up reconstructing two years of a shared life from memory when the request arrives.

If you want the gaps identified before you lodge rather than after a case officer finds them, our partner visa lawyers can review what you have. You can book a consultation online.