Partner Visa Document Checklist: What You Need Before You Apply

What documents do you need for an Australian partner visa?

An Australian partner visa application needs five groups of documents: identity documents for both people, evidence of the relationship under the four categories set by the Migration Regulations 1994, sponsorship documents, health and character documents, and the forms and statements the Department of Home Affairs requires. Every partner visa runs on the same five groups. What changes between visas is where the application is lodged and what else has to sit alongside it.

The groups apply to the Subclass 820 onshore partner visa, which is lodged in Australia and leads to the permanent Subclass 801. They apply to the Subclass 309 offshore partner visa, which is lodged outside Australia and leads to the permanent Subclass 100. They also apply, with some differences, to the Subclass 300 prospective marriage visa. A couple who prepare a document set for one of these visas has prepared most of the document set for the others.

The reason the document set matters so much is that nobody from the Department will visit your home. A delegate reads the file and decides. The delegate does not know you, has not met your family, and cannot see the life you actually live together. The only thing in front of the delegate is what you uploaded. An application that is true but thinly documented can be refused, and an application that is well documented is simply easier to grant. This is why the phrase "we know our relationship is genuine" is not an answer to a document request. The question is never whether the relationship is genuine. The question is what is on the file to show it.

Two practical points apply before any list is useful. First, gather documents that already exist rather than creating documents for the application. A joint lease from two years ago is stronger than a statement written last week. Second, start with the documents that take other people time to produce, such as divorce orders, foreign birth certificates, police certificates and translations. Those are the items that hold an application up, not the photographs.

The rest of this article sets out each group, in the order in which a partner visa lawyer would work through a file.

Identity and status documents for the applicant and the sponsor

Identity documents establish who each person is, that each is free to be in the relationship claimed, and that the sponsor is eligible to sponsor. This is the group most often assembled carelessly, and it is the group the Department checks first.

For the applicant, the Department expects a clear colour scan of the photo page of the current passport, saved as a single file. Previous passports matter as well, particularly any passport held on first arrival in Australia or used for an earlier visa application, because those pages carry visa labels and entry and exit stamps. The applicant also provides a birth certificate, and where the country of origin issues one, a national identity document. Where a name has ever changed, the change of name document is required, not an explanation of the change.

For the sponsor, the only acceptable evidence of Australian citizenship is an Australian passport or an Australian citizenship certificate. A driver licence, a Medicare card, a tax file number notice or a bank statement is not evidence of citizenship, and an application that offers one of those in place of a passport will be sent back for the real document. An Australian permanent resident provides the visa grant notice or evidence of the permanent visa. An eligible New Zealand citizen provides the New Zealand passport and evidence of residence in Australia.

Both people must then show they are free to be in the relationship claimed. That means a marriage certificate for a married couple, and for anyone who has been married before, the divorce order or the death certificate that ended that marriage. This catches more couples than it should. A divorce that has been heard but has not taken effect is not a divorce, and a person who is still married cannot register a relationship in any Australian state or territory. Where an earlier relationship was never a marriage, say so in writing rather than leaving a gap for the delegate to find.

There is one age rule that decides validity rather than merit. Under regulation 2.03A(2) of the Migration Regulations 1994, both the applicant and the partner must have been at least 18 years old at the time the application was made. That is not a matter of evidence quality. It is a threshold, and the birth certificates are what prove it.

The four categories of relationship evidence set by the Migration Regulations

Australian law sets out four categories of relationship evidence, and they are the same four for every partner visa: the financial aspects of the relationship, the nature of the household, the social aspects of the relationship, and the nature of the persons' commitment to each other. They appear in regulation 1.09A(3) of the Migration Regulations 1994 for a de facto relationship and in regulation 1.15A(3) for a married relationship. Regulation 1.09A(2) requires the Minister to consider all of the circumstances of the relationship, including those four matters.

Most published checklists list documents. The Regulations list categories. That difference matters, because a delegate assessing an application is working through the four categories, and an application organised the same way is far easier to grant. Sort your evidence into the four categories before you upload it, and you will see your own gaps immediately.

Financial aspects of the relationship

This category covers joint ownership of real estate or other major assets, joint liabilities, the extent of any pooling of financial resources, especially in relation to major financial commitments, whether one person owes any legal obligation to the other, and the basis on which day to day household expenses are shared. In practice that means joint bank account statements showing an account that genuinely operates, a joint lease or mortgage, joint loan documents, utility accounts in both names, insurance policies naming the other person, and records of transfers between the two of you.

Quality here beats quantity. Six months of a joint account that is used for rent, groceries and bills is far better evidence than a joint account opened three weeks before lodgement with a single deposit in it. If you do not yet have a joint account, open one now rather than on the day you lodge.

The nature of the household

This category covers joint responsibility for the care and support of children, the living arrangements of the couple, and any sharing of the responsibility for housework. The documents are a lease or mortgage in both names, a tenancy record showing both occupants, mail and official correspondence addressed to each of you at the same address, electoral enrolment, and identity documents showing a shared address.

Where you cannot produce a joint lease, explain why in writing and produce what you can. Couples who live with family, who live in employer accommodation, or who move often are common, and the Department is used to it. What damages an application is a silent gap.

Social aspects of the relationship

This category covers whether you represent yourselves to other people as a couple, the opinion of your friends and acquaintances about the nature of the relationship, and the basis on which you plan and undertake joint social activities. Evidence includes joint invitations, photographs across the length of the relationship rather than one event, travel booked together, membership of clubs or groups together, and evidence that you have told government, public or commercial bodies about the relationship.

Photographs are the most over supplied and least persuasive item in most applications. Twenty photographs spread over three years, dated and captioned, carry more weight than three hundred from one holiday.

The nature of the persons' commitment to each other

This category covers the duration of the relationship, the length of time you have lived together, the degree of companionship and emotional support you draw from each other, and whether you see the relationship as a long term one. This is the category the relationship statements carry. It is also where wills, superannuation nominations, powers of attorney, life insurance beneficiary nominations and day to day communication records belong.

Communication records deserve a word of caution. Exporting three years of messages helps nobody. A short, clearly labelled sample across the whole relationship, particularly from periods when the two of you were apart, does the work.

What the sponsor has to provide

The sponsor lodges a separate online sponsorship application, Form 40SP, and must provide evidence of Australian citizenship, Australian permanent residence or eligible New Zealand citizenship, together with police checks if the Department asks for them. The sponsorship is assessed in its own right. A strong relationship case can still fail because the sponsorship was not approved.

The character side of the sponsorship sits in regulation 1.20KC of the Migration Regulations 1994. It allows the Department to require the sponsor to provide police checks, and it lists the offences that matter. Those relevant offences include violence against a person, harassment, molestation, intimidation or stalking, breach of an apprehended violence order or a similar order, firearms or other dangerous weapons, people smuggling, human trafficking, slavery or slavery like practices including forced marriage, kidnapping and unlawful confinement, together with attempts at those offences and aiding or abetting them.

Where an Australian police check is required, departmental policy is that the sponsor obtains a National Police Check from the Australian Federal Police under the Immigration and Citizenship purpose. Two points follow, and both are missed regularly. The first is timing. Approval of sponsorship is a time of decision criterion, so the police check must still be valid when the delegate decides, not merely when the application was lodged. A check obtained on the day of lodgement in a matter that takes many months may have to be obtained again. The second is disclosure. Where a police check shows a conviction for a relevant offence, departmental policy is to disclose that conviction to the visa applicant, with the sponsor's express written consent, so the applicant can decide whether to continue. A sponsor who will not consent, or who will not provide a check that has been requested, risks the sponsorship being refused.

A separate and stricter rule applies where a visa applicant is under 18 at the time of application. Regulation 1.20KB then requires a Complete Disclosure National Police Check covering all recorded offences, from the sponsor and, in some cases, the sponsor's partner, and a registrable offence can require refusal of the sponsorship for everyone included in it.

The last sponsorship document is the sponsor's own history. Regulation 1.20J limits how many partner visas one person may sponsor and how closely together, and a sponsor who is caught by it needs a waiver rather than a better relationship file. Anyone who has sponsored a partner before, or who was themselves granted a partner visa, should read the position on partner visa sponsorship limitations before spending a single hour on relationship evidence.

Form 888 statements: who can make one and what one must say

Form 888 is a supporting statement, not a statutory declaration, and it does not need to be witnessed. The current form is titled "Supporting statement in relation to a Partner or Prospective Marriage visa application". It carries no witness block, no justice of the peace, no commissioner for declarations. The person making it signs and dates it, and acknowledges that under section 234(1)(b) of the Migration Act 1958 it is an offence to make a false statement in connection with a visa application.

A great deal of published advice still calls this form a statutory declaration and still tells people to have it witnessed. That advice is out of date, and following it costs couples days they do not have. There is one narrow situation where statutory declarations are genuinely required, and it is dealt with in the last section of this article.

The Department sets out who may make a Form 888 statement. The person must be at least 18 years of age, must know the visa applicant and their partner or fiancé, and must know the history of the relationship. The person must attach documentary evidence of their current name and age, and where applicable, evidence of Australian citizenship or Australian permanent residence.

What separates a useful statement from a wasted one is content. A Form 888 statement is evidence from a witness, so it must say what that witness has personally seen. When and how they met each of you, how often they see you together, what they have observed about how you live, the occasions they have attended with you, and anything they know about your plans. A statement that says the couple seem very happy and would make excellent Australian citizens carries no weight, because it records an opinion about character rather than an observation about the relationship. Four statements that each describe specific things the witness has seen are worth more than ten that repeat the same warm sentences. There is also good reason to make sure at least some of your witnesses are Australian citizens or permanent residents, because their evidence of name, age and status is simplest to prove.

Registering your relationship, and when it removes the 12 month rule

Registering a de facto relationship under a prescribed state or territory law removes the requirement that the relationship existed for at least 12 months before the application was made. Regulation 2.03A(3) of the Migration Regulations 1994 imposes that 12 month requirement on a de facto applicant. Regulation 2.03A(5) lifts it where the relationship is registered under a law prescribed for the purposes of section 2E of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901.

The registers prescribed for this purpose sit in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. Each has its own waiting period, and they are not the same. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania each apply a 28 day period before a relationship can be registered. Queensland applies a shorter period of 10 days for a civil partnership. Tasmania requires both people to live in Tasmania, while New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia require only one of you to live in the state. Those are the numbers that decide whether registration is available to a couple whose visa is about to cease, so check them against the relevant registry before you rely on them.

Timing is where most couples go wrong. Registration does not have to be in place when the application is lodged. Departmental policy accepts that an applicant who registers the relationship after lodgement but before the decision meets regulation 2.03A(5). What is not accepted is a receipt. A receipt showing that an application for registration has been lodged does not satisfy the regulation. The relationship must actually be registered.

Registration is not the only way out of the 12 month rule. Regulation 2.03A(3) also lifts it where there are compelling and compassionate circumstances. This is a high threshold, and both limbs must be met. A dependent child of the relationship is the clearest example. Pregnancy at the time of application is not accepted as meeting it. Neither is the genuineness of the relationship itself, because every partner visa application is built on a genuine relationship. Married couples do not face the 12 month rule at all, which is one practical reason some couples marry before lodging. The rule applies in exactly the same way to same sex couples, and a same sex partner visa is assessed on the same four categories of evidence as any other.

Documents for children included in a partner visa application

A child included in a partner visa application needs a full birth certificate naming both parents, a passport, and, where one parent is not migrating, that parent's consent. Consent is given on Form 1229, which must be accompanied by certified identification for the parent giving it. Where consent cannot be obtained, court orders giving the applicant sole parental responsibility, or permitting the child to live in Australia with the applicant, take its place.

Two checks are worth doing before a child is added to an application at all. The first is citizenship. A child whose parent was an Australian citizen when the child was born may already be entitled to Australian citizenship by descent, and a child who is already entitled to citizenship should not be included in a visa application. The second is dependency. Where a child is included, the Department will want evidence that the child lives with and is dependent on the applicant, which usually means school enrolment records, medical records showing the address, and a short statement from the parent.

Health and character documents

Health and character are separate criteria with their own documents, and for a Subclass 820 applicant the health criterion is public interest criterion 4007, not 4005. The difference is not academic. Public interest criterion 4007 allows a health waiver where the applicant does not meet the health requirement, and public interest criterion 4005 does not. Partner visa applicants have the benefit of that waiver. Any source that tells you a partner visa applicant must meet public interest criterion 4005 has the law wrong.

Alongside public interest criterion 4007, a Subclass 820 applicant must satisfy public interest criteria 4001, 4002, 4003, 4004 and 4009, and, if aged 18 or over at the time of application, public interest criterion 4019, the values statement. Public interest criterion 4020, the integrity criterion, and public interest criterion 4021, the passport criterion, also apply. Public interest criterion 4020 is the one that punishes bad paperwork. A bogus document or information that is false in a material particular can end an application and carry an exclusion period, even where the relationship is genuine. That is the strongest possible reason to send the Department documents you can stand behind.

The health documents themselves are produced through a medical examination arranged after lodgement, not gathered beforehand. The character documents are different. Character is assessed under section 501 of the Migration Act 1958, and the Department requires applicants to declare all criminal conduct they have been charged with that is awaiting legal action in any country, and all criminal conduct they have been convicted of in any country. Police certificates may be required from countries where you have lived, and the Department publishes the certificate it accepts from each country. The Department may also ask for Form 80, personal particulars for assessment including character assessment, or Form 1221, additional personal particulars information. Both are long. Neither is optional once requested.

Disclosure is the point to take away. An old conviction that is disclosed is usually a manageable problem. The same conviction found by the Department after it was not disclosed is a much larger one, because it puts the applicant's credibility in issue across the whole file.

How to prepare, translate and upload your documents

Documents lodged online do not need to be certified. Home Affairs guidance for online applications asks applicants to scan or photograph every document in colour, to save a multi page document as a single file, to save photographs under the name of the person in the photograph, and to label every file clearly in English. It does not ask for a justice of the peace. The instruction to certify everything comes from the old paper forms, and it survives on a great many websites that have not been updated.

Translation is a separate requirement and it has not gone away. A document that is not in English must be provided together with an English translation, and both the original and the translation go into the application. A translation prepared in Australia must be done by a translator accredited by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters. Have translations done early. They are slow, they are needed for birth certificates, marriage certificates and divorce documents, and a missing translation delays an entire application for one document.

Do not send original documents to the Department unless you are asked for them. Upload copies, keep the originals, and produce them if a request is made.

Two forms exist for the period after lodgement, and both are worth knowing about before you need them. Form 1023 notifies the Department of an incorrect answer in an application. Form 1022 notifies a change in circumstances under section 104 of the Migration Act 1958. A change of address, a change of job, a new child, or the discovery that a date was entered wrongly should be notified rather than left. Silence is what turns an error into an integrity problem.

Extra documents where you do not hold a substantive visa

An applicant who does not hold a substantive visa when a Subclass 820 application is lodged must satisfy Schedule 3 criteria 3001, 3003 and 3004, unless the Minister is satisfied that there are compelling reasons for not applying them. The waiver sits in subparagraph 820.211(2)(d)(ii) of Schedule 2 to the Migration Regulations 1994, and the documents that support it are different in kind from relationship evidence.

The Full Federal Court held in Waensila v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [2016] FCAFC 32 that a delegate must consider all of the applicant's circumstances up to the time of the decision, not only those in existence when the application was made. That is why a waiver file keeps growing after lodgement. Departmental policy is blunt about what does not work. A genuine relationship, on its own, is not a compelling reason, because every partner visa application involves one. Nor is the hardship of separation, because separation is common across the whole caseload. What policy does recognise is an Australian citizen child with a demonstrable link to the applicant, where the best interests of that child may support a waiver. Delegates also weigh any history of non-compliance with visa conditions, how long the applicant has been unlawful, why that happened, why the applicant did not become lawful sooner, the current family composition, and what steps the applicant has taken to become lawful. Those are the things a Schedule 3 waiver submission has to document.

Section 48 of the Migration Act 1958 is the other trap. Where a person in Australia without a substantive visa has had a visa refused or cancelled since last entering, that person may only apply for the classes prescribed in regulation 2.12, and a partner visa is on that list. But the application has extra validity requirements. It must include the sponsorship and two statutory declarations, each made by an Australian citizen, Australian permanent resident or eligible New Zealand citizen who is not the sponsoring partner, each declaring that the applicant and the partner are in a married or de facto relationship, and each declared no more than six weeks before the day the application is made. Form 888 does not satisfy this requirement. Getting that wrong does not weaken the application. It makes it invalid. Anyone in this position, or anyone who has already had a partner visa refused, should take advice before lodging anything.

How My Migration Lawyers prepares a partner visa document set

My Migration Lawyers prepares partner visa applications as a document set built around the criteria the delegate must apply, rather than a folder of material handed over at the end. Weiwei Zhang, Principal Lawyer, leads the firm's partner visa work.

The firm starts by confirming the applicant's visa status, conditions and expiry directly with the Department, because timing decides which pathway is available and whether Schedule 3 or section 48 is in the matter at all. It obtains the immigration history itself rather than asking clients to find old application copies and grant notices they have no reason to keep. It then issues a written checklist of the documents you can realistically produce, organised under the four categories the Regulations set, so that what is missing is visible from the first week rather than the last.

The relationship statements are your own evidence. My Migration Lawyers guides their structure, points out where an account is thin or inconsistent with the documents, and returns them to you to correct and approve, and you decide what is said. The firm then prepares the legal submission that connects your evidence to the criteria, and lodges the application.

If you are preparing a partner visa application and want the document set checked before it goes in, you can request a consultation with My Migration Lawyers online.