This article is general information about Australian Partner Visa documentation. It is not migration advice. For advice on your circumstances, consult a registered migration agent (search MARA).
The subclass 820 Partner Visa is the temporary stage of the onshore Partner Visa pathway in Australia. To approve it, the Department of Home Affairs has to be satisfied that your relationship is genuine, mutual, and continuing — and they decide that almost entirely on the evidence you upload through ImmiAccount.
There is no fixed checklist published by Home Affairs. Instead, they tell you they assess evidence across four categories and leave it to you to assemble enough material to be persuasive. This guide is a working checklist of what most successful 820 applications include in each category — what counts, what's overkill, and how to organise it for upload.
If you'd rather have a tool walk you through this category by category and produce ImmiAccount-ready PDFs at the end, that's exactly what VisaBinder is built for.
What are the four categories of partner visa evidence?
Home Affairs assesses your relationship across four categories:
- Financial — that your finances are genuinely intertwined.
- Household — that you actually live together (or apart for genuine reasons).
- Social — that you present as a couple to friends, family, and the world.
- The nature of your commitment to each other — that you intend the relationship to be long-term and exclusive.
Every piece of evidence you submit slots into one of these. A bank statement is financial. A lease is household. A wedding photo is social. A Statement of Relationship is commitment.
The four categories are equal in principle, but in practice case officers look for breadth across all four. A pack with twenty pieces of financial evidence and nothing in the social column is weaker than a pack with five solid items in each category.
Below, the working checklist for each.
Category 1 — Financial evidence
What you're trying to demonstrate: we share money like a couple does.
What counts (strongest first)
- Joint bank accounts with regular activity from both partners. A statement showing both names on the account, with deposits and withdrawals from each of you, is the gold-standard piece of financial evidence.
- Joint loans, mortgages, or credit facilities in both names.
- Shared bills paid from a joint account — utilities, internet, phone, insurance — covering at least the last 12 months.
- Designated beneficiary nominations — superannuation, life insurance, will. Showing each other as beneficiaries demonstrates long-term intent.
- Major joint purchases — a car registered in both names, furniture or appliances paid for jointly, a deposit on a property.
- Tax records showing each other as a spouse (ATO link of records).
What helps but isn't strong on its own
- Money transfers between partners (via PayID, Venmo, etc.) — supporting evidence for shared finances, not standalone proof.
- Bills in only one partner's name with the other contributing informally.
- Joint health or travel insurance policies.
What's overkill
- More than 12 months of joint statements unless you're showing a long-running relationship.
- Receipts for every grocery shop. The pattern matters more than every transaction.
How to present it
A single category PDF — 02_Financial_Evidence.pdf — works well. Lead with a one-page summary that lists each item ("Joint Commonwealth Bank account #####, opened March 2024, monthly statements attached") and then attach the source documents in the same order. Compress to under 5MB (see our PDF compression guide) and upload under the financial category in ImmiAccount.
Category 2 — Household evidence
What you're trying to demonstrate: we live together as a couple, or have a genuine reason for being apart.
What counts (strongest first)
- A residential lease or mortgage in both names covering the period you've lived together.
- Utility bills (electricity, gas, water, internet) at the shared address — ideally with both names, but a mix of bills in each partner's name at the same address is also strong.
- Driver's licences or government ID showing the shared address.
- Mail addressed to both partners at the same address — bank correspondence, government letters, parcel deliveries.
- Joint household purchases — furniture orders, appliance deliveries, NBN installation, removalist invoices.
What helps
- Photos of your shared home (spaces clearly used by both partners — both partners' clothes in a wardrobe, shared bathroom items, shared kitchen).
- Statutory declarations from neighbours or landlords confirming you live together.
If you live apart
If you don't currently cohabit (work overseas, studying interstate, family obligations), Home Affairs accepts this provided you can show a genuine reason and ongoing committed contact. In that case the household category is replaced with:
- A clear written explanation of why you're apart and for how long.
- Evidence of regular visits (flight bookings, accommodation receipts).
- Evidence of continued daily contact (chat history, video call logs).
- Plans to live together (a signed lease starting on a future date, a job offer at the partner's location).
How to present it
03_Household_Evidence.pdf with the lease/mortgage at the front, followed by utility bills in chronological order, then ID and shared correspondence. If you've lived at multiple addresses, organise by address with a sub-heading for each.
Category 3 — Social evidence
What you're trying to demonstrate: our friends, family, and community know us as a couple.
This is where Form 888 supporting statements from Australian friends and family carry the most weight. We have a complete walkthrough in our Form 888 guide, but the headline is: aim for at least two statements from people who genuinely know you both, and prefer specific observed details over generic praise.
Other strong social evidence
- Photos with friends and family across time and locations. Birthdays, weddings, group dinners, holidays, casual events. Quality over quantity — 20 well-chosen photos beat 200 of the same brunch.
- Joint event invitations addressed to both of you (weddings, parties, professional functions).
- Group chat history with your friends or family that includes both of you (WhatsApp family group, group plans).
- Joint memberships — gym, sports clubs, professional networks, community organisations.
Chat and message evidence
If your relationship has been long-distance at any point, your chat history is a major piece of social evidence. Our guide on using WhatsApp chats as Partner Visa evidence walks through how to export, summarise, and present that material without dumping the entire archive on a case officer.
How to present it
04_Social_Evidence.pdf typically opens with a curated photo timeline (5–10 photos per major year of the relationship), then any group chat highlights or event invitations. Captions matter — a photo with no context is just a photo. "Christmas 2024 with [Sponsor]'s parents in Geelong" is far more useful than no caption at all. Form 888 declarations upload separately to their own dedicated ImmiAccount category — see the Form 888 guide.
Category 4 — Nature of commitment
What you're trying to demonstrate: we are committed to each other long-term, exclusively, and have built a life around that commitment.
This is the most intangible category — and the one that benefits most from a clear narrative.
What counts
- Statement of Relationship from each partner — first-person accounts of how you met, how the relationship developed, your future plans, and how you support each other day-to-day. These are usually 1–3 pages each, in the partner's own voice.
- A relationship timeline documenting key milestones: when you met, when you first lived together, engagement, marriage, joint travel, joint major decisions.
- Joint travel evidence — flight bookings in both names, shared accommodation, photos from the trip.
- Wedding or commitment ceremony documentation if applicable — marriage certificate, ceremony photos, guest lists.
- Financial commitments to each other that already appear in the financial category — beneficiary nominations, joint loans — also speak to commitment.
- Plans for the future — joint property searches, shared career planning, fertility treatment records, joint education enrolments.
The relationship timeline sits inside this category and pulls together milestones from across the other three. Many applicants find it easiest to draft the timeline first, then go back and gather the evidence that supports each milestone.
How to present it
04_Commitment_Evidence.pdf typically starts with both partners' Statements of Relationship, then the relationship timeline (often a one-page table: date, milestone, supporting evidence reference), then any major shared documents — marriage certificate, joint travel, future plans.
Pulling it all together
A typical complete Partner Visa pack ends up looking like:
01_Financial_Evidence.pdf02_Household_Evidence.pdf03_Social_Evidence.pdf(photo timeline, joint events, social networks)- Form 888 supporting statements — uploaded directly to ImmiAccount's dedicated category, one file per witness
04_Commitment_Evidence.pdf(including the relationship timeline and major shared documents)05_Statement_of_Relationship_Templates.pdf— both partners' statements as standalone documents
Each PDF compressed under the 5MB ImmiAccount upload limit, uploaded to the matching category, and named clearly so a case officer can navigate at a glance.
What 801 stage 2 will need (two years from now)
Subclass 801 is the permanent residence stage of the onshore Partner Visa, granted around two years after the 820. The evidence framework is identical — the four categories — but you're showing continued and developed evidence over the time since the 820 grant.
In practice, applicants who keep adding to their pack through the temporary period (a folder of joint statements, a few photos per major event, ongoing Form 888 declarations from people who've watched the relationship continue) have a much easier 801 application than those who scramble in the last month.
This is one of the reasons we built VisaBinder as a single-purchase tool that stays available through both stages — your work doesn't disappear when the 820 is granted.
Common mistakes that weaken evidence
- Volume over quality. A 200-page bank statement PDF is harder to read than 12 carefully chosen pages. Case officers respond to clarity.
- Missing one category entirely. Even thin evidence in all four beats overwhelming evidence in three.
- Photos without captions. A blurry shot of two people at an unidentified location adds nothing.
- Outdated forms. Always download Form 888 and any other Home Affairs forms fresh from their website.
- Files over 5MB. ImmiAccount won't accept them. Period.
- Treating the upload as the work. The work is the gathering and curating. The upload is the easy bit.
A final note
The Partner Visa application is one of the more document-heavy processes in Australian immigration. It's also one of the most personal — you're being asked to evidence the parts of life that don't usually have receipts.
Take your time, keep a working folder from the day you start, and lean on tools that handle the formatting drudgery so you can focus on what to say. VisaBinder is the tool we built to do exactly that — a single one-time purchase, no subscription, no advice (we don't do advice — that's MARA's job) — just the document compilation pipeline.
For specific advice on your circumstances, please consult a registered migration agent or migration lawyer. The MARA register is searchable at mara.gov.au.