ART Deadlines and Fees for Partner Visa Reviews

If your 820 has been refused and the letter says there is a right of review, you have 28 days after the day you are notified of the decision to apply to the Administrative Review Tribunal, or 14 days if you were in immigration detention on that day. Section 347 of the Migration Act 1958 sets those periods and then disapplies the Tribunal's general power to extend time, so there is no late lodgement and no good-reason exception. Everything else here — the fee, the concessions, the paperwork — can be fixed later. The date cannot.

Who may apply for the review

The visa applicant, not the sponsor. Section 347A of the Migration Act 1958 provides that an application for review of a decision to refuse a visa that could be granted while the applicant is in Australia, applied for in Australia, may only be made by the non-citizen who is the subject of the decision, and requires that person to be physically present in Australia when the review application is made.

For some other sponsored visa decisions the Act makes the sponsor or nominator the review applicant. An onshore partner visa refusal is not one of them.

How long you have, exactly

Section 347 requires the application to be made within 14 days after the day you are notified if you were in immigration detention on that day, and within 28 days after that day in any other case. The Act says these periods apply despite the general timing rule in the Tribunal's own legislation, and that the Tribunal's power to extend the period to apply does not apply to reviewable migration decisions. Older material still describes this period by reference to regulation 4.10 of the Migration Regulations 1994. That regulation has been repealed and no longer sets anything.

How notification is counted

This is where deadlines are lost. The clock runs from the day you are taken to have been notified, not the day you opened the envelope. The regulations require the Department to notify a refusal by one of the methods listed in section 494B of the Migration Act 1958, and section 494C then fixes when you are taken to have received the document:

• handed to you in person — when it is handed to you;
• handed to an adult at your last residential or business address — when it is handed to that person;
• posted, or sent by other prepaid means, to an address in Australia — 7 working days after the date of the document;
• posted to an address outside Australia — 21 days after the date of the document;
• emailed, faxed or sent by other electronic means — at the end of the day it is transmitted;
• made available through an online account such as ImmiAccount — at the end of the day it is made available.

Two further rules matter. If you have an authorised recipient, including a lawyer appointed on Form 956, the Department gives the document to them instead, and the Act treats that as giving it to you — so the period runs from their deemed receipt, not from the day they forward it. If the Department makes an error in giving the document but you receive it anyway, you are taken to have received it at the usual time, unless you can show you received it later.

What happens if the deadline is missed

The Tribunal must review a decision only if the application is properly made under sections 347 and 347A. An application outside the period is not properly made, and the Tribunal has no jurisdiction to review the decision at all.

Merits review is then gone. What remains is a fresh application if one is open to you — see reapplying after a refusal, and check the section 48 bar first — and, in a narrow set of cases, judicial review on the basis that notification was legally defective. A request for ministerial intervention normally requires a Tribunal decision first, so missing the deadline usually closes that door too.

The application fee

The application must be accompanied by the prescribed fee. Regulation 4.13 of the Migration Regulations 1994 sets a base amount, and regulation 4.13A increases it on each 1 July, using a Consumer Price Index formula in regulation 4.13B and rounding to the nearest dollar. So the number printed in the regulations is not the number you pay, and neither is a figure on a page that does not say when it was written.

As at 23 September 2026, check the current amount published by the Administrative Review Tribunal, which publishes its fees and forms on its own site.

When less is payable, or nothing

• Financial hardship. If the Tribunal's Principal Registrar considers, having regard to your income, expenses, liabilities and assets, that paying the fee would cause or has caused you financial hardship, the prescribed fee is 50 per cent of the full amount.
• Family violence, secondary applicants. No fee is payable where a person was refused because they did not satisfy a secondary criterion, that criterion failed because the primary applicant — their former spouse or former de facto partner — was refused, and the Department was satisfied that the person, or another person mentioned in the criterion, experienced family violence committed by the primary applicant. See family violence provisions.
• Bridging visa decisions. No fee is payable on review of certain bridging visa decisions.

Refunds

Regulation 4.14 sets out when the fee comes back:

• the whole fee — where you were not entitled to apply for review, where the decision was not reviewable by the Tribunal, or where the Minister gave a conclusive certificate;
• 50 per cent — where the decision is set aside or varied, or where the application is remitted to the Department for reconsideration; and, separately, where you paid the full amount and the hardship finding is then made;
• the fee paid — on withdrawal in defined circumstances, including the death of the visa applicant, a member of their family unit or the review applicant.

Note what is not there. An affirmed refusal produces no refund, and neither does the Department's: Home Affairs will not refund the visa application charge on a refusal. See paying and refunding the charge.

How to lodge

The application is made to the Tribunal with the prescribed documents, information and fee. Under the regulations, if you have a copy of the notification of the decision, that copy is the prescribed document. If you do not, you must give your full name, address and contact details, the date of the decision if you know it and a description of it, and at least one of your date of birth, country of birth, citizenship or nationality, or the country of issue and number of your passport.

Lodge first and build the case afterwards; missing evidence is no reason to miss the deadline.

Where professional help changes the result

The commonest way a partner visa review is lost is not at the hearing. It is a deemed-receipt date counted wrong, or an application lodged on day 29. A migration lawyer will compute the date from section 494C the day the letter lands and lodge against it, and a review run that way is more likely to succeed.

What to do next: work out your date, lodge, and then read appealing at the ART for what the Tribunal actually does with the case. If you are unsure whether the letter gives you a review right at all, go back to why 820 visas are refused.

Keep reading

Appealing an 820 Refusal at the ART

How review of an 820 partner visa refusal works at the Administrative Review Tribunal: who can apply, the strict deadline, the fee, the hearing and the outcomes.

Read the guide →

Ministerial Intervention After a Partner Visa Refusal

How ministerial intervention works after a partner visa refusal is affirmed by the ART: section 351, why the power is personal, non-compellable and rarely used.

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Reapplying After an 820 Refusal

Whether you can lodge a second 820 after a refusal, how the section 48 bar works, what a PIC 4020 refusal blocks, and when the offshore 309 is the better path.

Read the guide →