Australian Partner Visa Categories

The Pathways for Australian Partner visa – De Facto visa, Prospective marriage visa & married visa pathways

Your Next step

1. Register with us
2. A consultant can then guide and advise you on your best options, the requirements, costs and what your options are to apply on or offshore

Where can you apply ?

• You can apply for a direct permanent partner visa or the provisional Partner Visa in Australia (onshore)  or from outside Australia (offshore)
• a Prospective Marriage visa application can only be made as an offshore application

To apply onshore (in Australia) you must be the holder of a visa that allows you to apply onshore, and that visa must not have a condition on it (e.g. a 8503) that prohibits you from applying onshore

If you apply onshore, you will be granted a bridging visa (BVA) that will allow you to remain in Australia during processing of your application. You can also apply for a BVB should you need to travel while your onshore application is being processed

Speak with your consultant who will give you specific advice and assistance re. your circumstances and pathways

More research and reading material 

Spouse (married) applicants

• This is for people who are married before applying.
• If you are married, then you apply for the spouse visa. The ‘spouse’ is the Australian husband or wife, and the ‘applicant’ is the person needing the visa to enter Australia.
• The sponsor can be an Australian citizen, an Australian Permanent Resident, or an ‘eligible New Zealand citizen’. (NZ citizen who was resident in Australia prior to Feb 2001)
• An application can take between 12 and 24 months to process at the DoHA visa office – the time depends greatly on the individual circumstances.
• To a case officer, an Australian spouse visa application is just a pile of papers – one of many files on their desk!
• So rather than a tick-box affair, the application should show that the couple are in a genuine spousal relationship. This means showing evidence that family and friends are aware of the relationship, showing details of communication when apart, and ‘evidence’ of living together also.
• All of this must be VERY clearly shown, and explained to the case officer. The sad fact is that there are many people who ‘fake’ an relationship just to get an Australian partner visa. So case officers always have to treat Australian spouse visa applications suspiciously, and cautiously, doing a lot of background checks.
• When you get the visa, you have a two year provisional permanent resident visa. After 2 years, you lodge another application to show that you are still together – and then can get the full PR Australian spouse visa. (or ‘Australian visa for my wife’ or ‘Australian visa for my husband’)

At Visa Solutions, we are the spouse visa experts, and we have a 100% success rate!

Register to speak to a real person about your own situation.

Prospective Marriage applicants

• If you are not married yet, but plan to marry within a year or so, this can be the option for you.
• You lodge the visa application, which again can take up to 22 months to process. When the visa is granted, you then have 9 months in which to register the marriage (i.e. get married, sign the papers!). This is also known as the Australian fiance or fiancee visa.
• When you marry (and you can marry anywhere in the world), you then get the two year provisional spouse visa, as above, and then the full Australian PR partner visa after that.

De-facto applicants

• This is for couples who have clear paper evidence that they have lived together for 12 months or more. This can be a variety of such evidence of couples who need an Australian partner visa for ‘common law’ spouses.
• These applications are complex and our team will guide you every step of the way.
• Other than that, the process is the same as the Australian spouse visa mentioned above.

If a couple, in the spouse visa (or de-facto visa) example have either: –

1. been married for over 5 years, or have evidence of living together as de-facto spouses for over 5 years
2. have been married for over 2 years AND have a child – or have lived together for over 2 years and have a child

Then they may apply for the full Permanent Resident visa right away – no need to have the two year provisional period.

Frequent questions from clients about the Australian marriage visa, or Australian partner visa are related to being outside of Australia, or needing to get to Australia within a certain timeframe, and the travel restrictions involved.

• To get answers about this, simply register in your Client Area to speak to an experienced Australian partner visa lawyer

You can then speak about issues such as ‘how to sponsor my wife to Australia’, or ‘how to sponsor my husband to Australia’. Visas for a wife or visas for a husband are highly unique for each situation.

We will fully guide you on what information you need to get together, and then what to send to our Australian office, for your Legal representative to compile and then lodge, so the Australian fiance visa application, or the Australian marriage visa application is clearly defined, exactly as the case officer wants to see it.

At times, the case officer will make an interview for the Australian spouse visa. If you are with Visa Solutions, then because we are representing your Australian spouse visa, they must first contact us and your legal representative, before any contact is made to you.