Sponsoring a partner is not a signature on your partner's form. It is a separate application in your own name, with its own documents, its own questions about your past, and a legal undertaking that runs for two years after the temporary visa is granted. This guide is written for the Australian partner: what you personally have to do, what you are agreeing to, and what the next few years tend to feel like from your side of it.
Sponsor Obligations and Responsibilities
What a partner visa sponsor is actually obliged to do - the two-year undertaking in regulation 1.20, why it is not a bond, and what happens when circumstances change.
Read the guide →
Sponsoring When You Live Overseas
Can you sponsor an 820 partner visa while living overseas? What the regulations require of the sponsor, what the applicant's location means, and when the 309 fits better.
Read the guide →
Does the Sponsor Need an Income?
There is no income threshold for a partner visa sponsor and no assurance of support, but the financial side of the relationship is still assessed. What that means.
Read the guide →What is the sponsor's job, in order?
Your partner lodges the visa application first. That application generates a TRN (Transaction Reference Number) and an Application ID, and your sponsorship attaches to it using one of those numbers. The Department of Home Affairs says you can lodge through your own ImmiAccount or through your partner's, and that you should do it as soon as possible after the visa application is made.
There is one situation where "as soon as possible" is not good enough. If your partner does not hold a substantive visa when they apply, the completed sponsorship form must be in the application at the moment it is lodged, along with evidence of your status and at least two statutory declarations made within the last six weeks. The Department warns that if that material is missing, the application "may be deemed invalid" — and an invalid application cannot be repaired afterwards. The mechanics of the form are set out on the sponsor's part of the application.
Whether you are allowed to sponsor at all is a separate question with its own answer, covered under who can sponsor an 820 visa.
Key facts
the form is called Sponsorship for a Partner to Migrate to Australia. It is lodged after the visa application, attached by TRN or Application ID, and the Department says it must approve the sponsor. No approved sponsorship, no visa.
What do you have to prove about yourself?
That you are an Australian citizen, an Australian permanent resident or an eligible New Zealand citizen — and you have to prove it with the right document. The Department gives a passport or a birth certificate as its examples and says in terms that "a driver's licence or Medicare card is not sufficient evidence".
That sentence catches a surprising number of sponsors. The licence in your wallet and the Medicare card on the fridge are the two documents Australians reach for when asked to prove who they are, and neither of them says anything about citizenship. What works is an Australian passport, a citizenship certificate, or a full birth certificate showing your parents' details rather than the short extract. If your passport expired years ago it still evidences citizenship, but an expired document is a poor start; if you have never held one, a birth certificate reorder from your state registry is the usual fix, and it takes weeks rather than days.
A permanent resident sponsors on a different footing: passport plus evidence of the permanent visa, which can be produced through VEVO. New Zealand citizens should check the eligible New Zealand citizen test before assuming they qualify, because it turns on a single date in 2001 and not on how long you have lived here.
What are you asked about your police history?
More than most sponsors expect, and the questions are not optional. The Migration Regulations 1994 allow the Minister to request police checks for a sponsor from Australian jurisdictions and from foreign countries the sponsor has lived in, and they require refusal of a sponsorship in defined circumstances involving convictions. The detail of which offences count and how the discretion works belongs on sponsor character checks.
What is worth knowing before you start is the shape of it. First, old matters are still matters: a conviction from your twenties that you have not thought about in fifteen years is disclosable, and the Department is far more forgiving of a disclosed conviction than of an undisclosed one it finds later. Second, the regulations require you to consent to the Department telling your partner about certain convictions of yours — a sponsor who will not consent cannot meet the criterion. If there is something in your history your partner does not know, the sponsorship form is the wrong place for them to learn it. Third, if you have lived overseas for a year or more, you may be asked for a foreign police certificate, which takes time to obtain from some countries.
What does the undertaking actually say?
Regulation 1.20 of the Migration Regulations 1994 defines a sponsor as a person who undertakes the obligations set out in that regulation. For a concurrent application for a Partner (Temporary) (Class UK) visa and a Partner (Residence) (Class BS) visa — the 820 and 801 pair — subregulation 1.20(2)(c) says the sponsor undertakes to assist the applicant, "to the extent necessary, financially and in relation to accommodation", for the period of two years immediately following the grant of the temporary visa where the applicant is in Australia. Where the applicant is outside Australia, the two years run from their first entry after the grant.
Read the words carefully, because both halves matter. To the extent necessary means the undertaking bends to your circumstances and your partner's: it is not a promise to support someone who is supporting themselves. Financially and in relation to accommodation means it is not only about money — housing your partner is part of it. And the regulation names no figure at all. What that does and does not mean in practice is worked through under sponsor obligations and sponsor income.
Can you be swapped out later?
No. The Department's position is flat: "You cannot change your sponsor." The person who sponsors the applicant when they apply must be the same person who sponsors them for two years after the temporary subclass 820 visa is granted.
This is the part sponsors underestimate. There is no substitute sponsor, no family member who can step in, no way to convert the application into someone else's name if the two of you decide the paperwork would be easier that way. If the relationship ends before a decision, the question is not who sponsors instead — it is whether the application can survive at all under the narrow provisions that deal with that situation. Those are set out on if the relationship ends, which also explains how cases involving family violence are treated. If you are considering pulling out for other reasons, read withdrawing sponsorship first, because a withdrawal usually ends a pending application.
What are you asked at an interview?
Ordinary things, and that is what makes it uncomfortable. The Department can interview the applicant, the sponsor or both, by telephone, by video or in person, and the two accounts are compared. Questions tend to be about the everyday shape of your life together — who pays which bill, what side of the bed each of you sleeps on, what you did last weekend, the names of each other's relatives, what happened at a family event that appears in your evidence.
There is no script, and a rehearsed couple often sounds worse than an honest one. Two people who live together will disagree about small details, and a delegate knows that; two people reciting the same answer in the same words sound coached rather than credible. The useful preparation is to reread what was actually put in the application so you are not contradicting a document you have forgotten. Partner visa interviews covers the process, interpreters and what happens afterwards.
The wait, from the sponsor's side
Longer than you plan for, and harder than the paperwork. The Department publishes a processing time guide based on recently decided applications and says it is a guide only and not specific to any one application; it also says applicants may experience longer processing times than expected. There is no useful number to hold on to, so check it yourself through 820 visa processing time and the Department's tool rather than relying on a figure someone quoted in a forum.
What the wait does to sponsors is fairly consistent. You will carry the administrative load, because the Department's correspondence is triggered by your partner's account but the Australian systems — banks, leases, insurers, Medicare — are usually in your name. You may be the one explaining to family why nothing has happened. Your partner is the one whose status is uncertain, so the anxiety sits with them and the reassurance is expected from you, and that is wearing over years rather than months. Meanwhile, life keeps moving: jobs change, leases end, someone gets sick, a parent overseas needs help. Several of those are changes the Department has to be told about while the application is pending.
The most useful habit is unglamorous. Keep adding relationship evidence as it accrues rather than assembling it in a panic when a request arrives, and keep your own copy of everything lodged.
An application prepared by a migration lawyer is more likely to succeed, and the sponsor's side is where that often shows. Sponsors routinely misjudge two things: what counts as proof of their own status, and whether an old conviction or an earlier sponsorship needs to be disclosed and argued up front. Both are cheap to fix before lodgement and expensive to fix after a refusal.
Next: if you are not currently in Australia, or are about to leave, start with sponsoring from overseas. Otherwise work through the pages above in order.
Unregistered agents
An unregistered agent who gives immigration assistance is acting illegally (Migration Act 1958 s 280). They carry no professional indemnity insurance, so if their mistake costs you a refusal, your fees or your pathway, there is no insurer to claim against. A practising Australian lawyer must hold that insurance.
Common questions
What does the sponsor actually have to do?
Four things, in order. Lodge the separate online sponsorship form after your partner lodges the visa application, attaching it with their transaction reference number or Application ID. Provide documents proving you are an Australian citizen, permanent resident or eligible New Zealand citizen. Answer the questions about your history honestly, including any convictions, and consent to the Department disclosing relevant convictions to your partner. Then undertake to assist your partner financially and with accommodation, to the extent necessary, for the two years after the temporary visa is granted.
Is my driver's licence enough to prove I am Australian?
No. The Department of Home Affairs says specifically that a driver's licence or a Medicare card is not sufficient evidence of status. It gives a passport or a birth certificate as its examples. A citizenship certificate also works. A permanent resident normally provides their passport together with evidence of their permanent visa, which can be produced through VEVO.
Do I sponsor before or after my partner applies?
After, in almost every case. The visa application comes first and generates the transaction reference number that the sponsorship form is attached to. The Department says the sponsorship should be lodged as soon as possible after the visa application. There is one exception. If your partner does not hold a substantive visa, the completed sponsorship form has to be included at the moment the visa application is lodged, or the application may be deemed invalid.
Will I be interviewed?
You might be. The Department can interview the applicant, the sponsor or both, by telephone, by video or in person, and it does not always give notice of the topics. Questions are usually about the ordinary texture of the relationship rather than anything technical, and the two accounts are compared. There is no way to prepare a script for it, and trying to is counterproductive.
Can I stop being the sponsor if things change?
You can withdraw your sponsorship, because no one can be compelled to remain a sponsor. What you cannot do is hand the role to someone else. The Department says the sponsor cannot be changed, and that the person who sponsors the applicant when they apply must be the same person who sponsors them for two years after the temporary visa is granted. Withdrawing usually stops a pending application, so it is a decision with consequences for your partner's status.