I often have couples ask me what evidence they should provide for time spent apart. If you and your partner have spent, or are currently spending, a lot of time apart then this blog is for you.
You might be thinking, “Why would my partner and I spend time apart?” In this blog, I’m mainly referring to couples who have lodged an offshore Partner Visa and don’t have the opportunity to live together yet on a permanent basis. I’m also referring to time spent apart because of other reasons such as FIFO workers or someone simply taking a holiday without their partner.
Why do my partner and I need to evidence our time spent apart?
Partner Visas have very strict legal criteria. You need to demonstrate that you are in a spousal or de facto relationship and that your relationship is continuing. Showing Immigration that you are maintaining contact and your relationship is continuing during any periods of separation is important when assessing your application.
After all, will a case officer be satisfied that you meet the criteria for a Partner Visa if there is no evidence of communication?
My partner and I live in different countries – how much evidence of communication do we need?
This is a common scenario for 309/100 applications where the majority of a couples relationship is via long distance and as such through different methods of communication.
There isn’t a hard and fast rule around how much evidence of communication is enough and it’s a discretionary factor too. I’ve seen applications where some couples provide a few screenshots per month of their communication and on the other hand I’ve seen a case officer request the entire WhatsApp history between a couple.
Knowing how much evidence to provide and whether you’ve provided enough evidence is something we explore first during an evidence planning session and cover again when we conduct a full review of your application.
For those of you reading, a good rule of thumb is at least 1 screenshot of a message per week.
The evidentiary threshold for a couple not living together due to distance is higher when it comes to evidence of communication.
What if we have only spent a few weeks or few months apart?
This is a more common scenario for couples who are lodging a subclass 820/801 application. I’ll give you a couple of examples here. Let’s say you and your partner are living together but you as the applicant have had to travel back to your home country for a family emergency and your partner didn’t join you. For any time spent apart here, you’re going to want to provide samples of communication that your relationship continued during this period of physical separation.
Another common scenario is where the applicant needs to complete regional work for a few months as part of their working holiday visa. It’s important to demonstrate how you maintained communication during this period of physical separation.
Do we need to provide our entire chat history?
I’m sure for most of you, this would be a massive task! It can also feel like an invasion of privacy but in saying that, I have seen case officers (on the very odd occasion) request a couples full chat history.
Generally speaking, 99% of the couples I have helped with Partner Visas just provide samples of communication so it’s up to you what messages you provide.
Do we need to provide call logs?
Evidence of communication also includes call logs. Call logs can be great because they show the duration of your communication. If you’ve ever been in a long distance relationship, you know how normal it can be to speak for hours on end, which is going to be good evidence for your Partner Visa.
How do we present our evidence of communication?
There’s again no hard and fast rule and it would really depend on how much of this evidence you have!
If it’s evidence of communication only covering a year then you could screenshot all the evidence of communication into one PDF. If it’s years worth of communication, you might consider splitting the PDF into years (e.g. evidence of communication 2021, evidence of communication 2022) and so on.
A key takeaway here is that you need to provide evidence of communication if you’re planning on lodging a Partner Visa, but how much is going to really depend on whether you and your partner live together, how much time you spend apart, and of course how much other evidence you have around the four pillars of relationship.
If you’re still unsure, get in touch with us.
IMPORTANT: Please note, this does not constitute Immigration advice. Always seek advice from a Registered Migration Agent before applying for an Australian Visa. Migration Law is constantly changing. This information is accurate only at the time of publication.
