An 820 application has to establish identity before anything else. The Department of Home Affairs says you must prove your identity and provide true information with your application. In practice that is three jobs: documenting who each person is, accounting for every name that has changed or is recorded differently across documents, and translating anything not in English. None is difficult, but this is where avoidable delay comes from — a missing translation or an unexplained name difference produces a letter rather than a decision.
Which identity documents are provided?
The authoritative list is the checklist ImmiAccount generates once your forms are complete, because it varies with your circumstances and your country. In outline: for the applicant, passport pages showing the photograph, personal details and issue and expiry dates, a national identity card if one is held, a full birth certificate, evidence of the current visa and a recent photograph; for the sponsor, evidence of Australian citizenship, permanent residence or eligible New Zealand citizen status; for children included, a passport and a full birth certificate naming both parents. Anyone previously married also provides the divorce order, annulment or death certificate that ended it.
On sponsor identity the Department is specific, and it catches people out: it gives a passport or birth certificate as examples of acceptable evidence of status, and states that a driver's licence or Medicare card is not sufficient evidence. For an applicant without a substantive visa, that evidence must be included at lodgement, with the sponsorship form and the statutory declarations covered on Form 888 statutory declarations.
Birth certificates are worth a note: many countries issue both an extract and a full certificate, and the full version naming both parents is the one that establishes the relationships the Department may need to see. Where a birth was never registered, the usual substitutes are a late registration or a baptismal record, with a statutory declaration explaining why.
Name changes: what links the old name to the new one
Provide the document that made the change, not just the one that shows the result.
- Marriage. A certificate issued by the relevant registry — in Australia, the state or territory registry of births, deaths and marriages, not the decorative certificate signed on the day. Australian law does not require a name change on marriage, but where one has been made the certificate is the linking document for every later record. Changing your name after marriage covers the sequence.
- Change of name by deed poll or registration, done in Australia through the state or territory registry, which issues a change of name certificate.
- Divorce, where a person has reverted to a former name; cultural, religious or customary changes; and adoption.
- Overseas changes — a court order, a gazette notice, an affidavit or an administrative correction, depending on the country.
Where there has been more than one change, provide the chain in full: a birth certificate, a marriage certificate to a first spouse, a divorce order, a change of name certificate and a current passport tell a complete story, and a missing link leaves a gap the reader cannot close.
When names are spelled differently across documents
This is common, and not by itself a problem. It becomes one when left unexplained.
The usual causes are transliteration from a non-Latin script, where one name can be rendered several ways; given and family names recorded in a different order in different countries; patronymic systems that do not map onto the Australian given-name-and-surname structure; a single-name applicant whose documents have had a placeholder inserted; dropped diacritics; and clerical error.
The remedy is the same in each case: provide every version of the document, and something that connects them. That may be an official correction from the authority holding the original register, the strongest option where it exists; an affidavit or one-and-the-same-person certificate, where the country of origin issues one; or a statutory declaration setting out which documents show which spelling and why. Then use one form of the name across the application, and say in the declaration which.
Watch out
Do not omit a document because the name on it does not match. The Department can encounter the earlier spelling through police certificates or health examinations, and a version it finds for itself reads very differently from one you explained up front.
Certified copies and what certification means
Online lodgement changed this. Documents are uploaded to ImmiAccount as scans, and the general expectation is a colour scan of the original rather than of a certified photocopy; certification comes up where an original cannot be scanned or where the checklist asks for it.
Certification in Australia means a person in a recognised occupational category has sighted the original, written on the copy that it is a true copy, and signed and dated it with their name and occupation. There is no national register of certifying officers: the categories used are generally those recognised for witnessing a Commonwealth statutory declaration, a list the Attorney-General's Department publishes with the form itself, and the body asking for the copy decides who it accepts.
Translations
Any document not in English is provided together with an English translation — certificates, divorce orders, name change documents, identity cards, and relationship evidence such as leases, bank statements and correspondence.
Who may translate. For translations produced in Australia, the general expectation for government purposes is a translator certified by NAATI, the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters — a not-for-profit company owned by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments, and the body that issues translating and interpreting credentials in Australia. Its current credential is called certification, which replaced the earlier accreditation system in 2018 — that is why older guidance refers to an "accredited" translator. Certification is granted in a specific language and direction, so check the translator is credentialed for your language into English.
For documents translated outside Australia, the general expectation is that the translation identifies the translator in full — name, address, contact details, and qualifications and experience in the language concerned. Confirm this against the checklist generated for your application before commissioning anything.
What not to do. Do not translate your own documents, and do not have your partner or a family member do it, however fluent. Machine translation is not a substitute.
How translations are presented. Provide the original-language document and its English translation as a matched pair, so the reader can see what has been translated, and keep the translator's statement or stamp with it — that page is what makes it a translation rather than a retyping. Scan in colour at a resolution where the stamp and signature are legible, and either name the files so the pairing is obvious or combine them into one PDF, original first. Lodging in ImmiAccount covers uploads.
Keeping identity documents current while you wait
Partner applications run for a long time, and passports expire inside that period. If a passport is renewed, or a name or contact details change after lodgement, tell the Department — the Home Affairs forms include Form 929 Change of address or passport details and Form 1022 Notification of changes in circumstances. Australian visas are digital, with no label in the passport, so the Department's record of your passport needs to be current. Telling Home Affairs about changes sets out what has to be reported.
An application prepared with a migration lawyer is more likely to succeed on the documents, because the failures here are mechanical and invisible from the inside: a translation never provided for one page of a certificate, a former marriage never evidenced as ended, or a name discrepancy nobody thought to explain. Each is cheap to fix before lodgement and expensive afterwards.
What to do next
Order the slow items first — overseas certificates, registry corrections and translations — then work down the 820 visa document checklist. Police certificates and health examinations are the other long-lead items, and both have validity periods that can expire while you wait.
Common questions
Do documents have to be translated into English for a partner visa?
Any document that is not in English is normally provided together with an English translation. The general expectation for Australian government purposes is that translations of documents produced in Australia are done by a translator certified by NAATI, the national standards and certifying authority for translators and interpreters. Translations done overseas are generally expected to carry the translator's full name, contact details and qualifications. Confirm the requirement for your own documents against the checklist ImmiAccount generates.
Who can translate documents for an Australian visa application?
For documents translated in Australia, the standard expectation is a translator holding NAATI certification in the relevant language direction. NAATI is a not-for-profit company owned by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments and is the body that issues translating and interpreting credentials in Australia. Do not translate your own documents, and do not have your partner or a family member translate them, even if they are fluent.
What identity documents do I need for an 820 visa?
For the applicant, the passport pages showing the photograph, personal details and issue and expiry dates, a national identity document if one is held, a birth certificate, evidence of the current visa and a recent passport-style photograph. For the sponsor, evidence of Australian citizenship, permanent residence or eligible New Zealand citizen status — the Department gives a passport or birth certificate as examples and says a driver's licence or Medicare card is not sufficient evidence.
What do I do if my name is spelled differently on my passport and birth certificate?
Provide both documents, and provide something that links them. That may be an official correction from the issuing authority, an affidavit or statutory declaration from that country, or a statutory declaration explaining the difference. Do not quietly use one spelling and omit the other document. An unexplained discrepancy in an identity document is a reason for the Department to ask questions about identity.
What does a certified copy mean in Australia?
It is a photocopy of an original document on which a person in a recognised occupational category has written that it is a true copy of the original they have sighted, and has signed and dated it with their name and occupation. Australia has no single national register of certifying officers; the categories used are generally those recognised for witnessing a Commonwealth statutory declaration, and the body asking for the certified copy sets who it will accept.
Sources
Keep reading
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