Did you know you could join your spouse / de facto / partner to your Australian visa application?
Many clients either do not know they can join their spouse/de-facto/partner to their visa application or they forget to. Or else they enter into such a relationship before their visa is granted and yet after they have lodged their application. In other words, during the processing, things change for the better in their love life.
Here is an example of a statement from a French visa Australia applicant about why he did not join his de-facto female partner to his application:
I also believed then, that as we had not yet been living together for a year, we were not a de-facto couple even under Australian family law (this may be correct but I was confused and did not realise there is a difference between Australian family law and immigration law).
I was also very unclear about the meaning of the words used on the form 47ES, especially for questions regarding migrating family members.”
Are there any migrating family members included in this application?
I did not know before my Australian immigration attorney, Justin Rickard, (who started assisting me in January 2016) advised me that family law is very complex and that even the term “de-facto” is open to interpretation by the courts here – for instance: http://www.mondaq.com/australia/x/219966/Family+Law/
Law+insists+de+facto+relationship+is+more+than+just+friends+with+benefits.In France, there is no legal status of de-facto and if a couple is just living together pre-marriage they are regarded as being in ”concubinage” with no automatic property or other legal rights. This is very different to here in Australia.
In France we have since 1999 had The Civil Solidarity Pact (PACS abbreviated, Pacs or PACS) along with civil “traditional” marriage, one of two forms of civil union of French law. Statistics seem to show that PACS are becoming more popular than marriage in France.”
Total confusion about spouse and de facto
And so it went on – total confusion for this client. In fact, the situation is quite easy to fix if you know how. As we do, of course.
The great thing about joining such a person, a close family member, to a spouse visa application is that it is so much easier and far, far quicker than waiting until the visa applicant is an Australian resident and then sponsoring them as their partner.
What’s more, the application fee is generally zero, whereas sponsoring later could cost you well over $6,000 just in application fees.