Permanent Partner Visa granted in less than 6 weeks

As both the applicant and sponsor had been full time students for most (if not all) of the relationship period, it was very difficult to provide evidence of all four aspects of the relationship. The most difficult aspects were financial and nature of household as they were both financially dependent on their parents during most of the relationship and had been living at home separately for some of the relationship. 

We assisted the applicant and the sponsor in the types of evidence they should gather from their 6 year relationship, reviewed and provided them with feedback to strengthen all the evidence. We prepared a 10 page legal submission to tackle all 4 aspects and used a case law to present to the case officer/Minister that they a genuine couple did not have to live together before the application for a certain period of time to constitute as a genuine de facto partner relationship. You can read more about this case here. 

We said that regardless of them being financially dependent on their respective families, they still lived their lives together by both contributing to the joint expenses together and their recent opening of a joint bank account to start saving up for their future together. 

On the basis of our submissions and the structured evidence presented, the case officer accepted that the applicant and the sponsor had been in a genuine de facto partner relationship not only at the time of application but accepted that their de facto partner relationship started from 6 years ago when they were both in high school even though there was a lack of evidence supporting the 4 aspects at that time. 

As a result of the complete evidence and preparation in the case, the case officer finalised processing of the case within less than 6 weeks and granted the applicant both the temporary (subclass 820) and permanent partner visa (subclass 801) within the same day.