It is indeed a very sad turn of events if your spouse’s visa gets refused. It all adds up to zero efforts after waiting for long processing queues, evidence gathering, form filling, researching and spending an amount of 7000 Australian dollars. The road ahead is very difficult. But there are guidelines to help you nix the chances of spouse visa rejection in the first place. Usually, people hire migration agents for filing the application. But if you are among those who are brave enough to file their own application, there are some mistakes we would like you to avoid-

• Inconsistent Dates

The Australian visa application must contain the following documents –

1. Form 47SP ( application form for the visa applicant)
2. Form 40SP (application form for the visa applicant’s sponsor)
3. Form 80 (the visa applicant’s character assessment)

These forms include questions related to your relationship, travel history, and current address. The partners should be careful about mentioning the dates regarding the commencement of their relationship in such forms. This might sound like a tiny discrepancy but it can lead to major complications in your application for partner visa being accepted.

• Conflicting evidence of living together

Of course, if you are in a steady relationship, then both the partners must mention the same address. Such personal information must be the same in both the applications as a difference will lead to the department believing that the relationship no longer exists. Mentioning the same address will prove that the relationship exists and is very much genuine.

• Form 888

It is another form which causes trouble in the application process. It is used by the applicant as well as the sponsor to provide evidence. The documents submitted by third parties must be checked thoroughly for not providing conflicting information. The statements by the witnesses regarding the relationship between the sponsor and the applicant and where they met each other must match.

• Insufficient Evidence

Here the golden rule is that go by relevance. When you need to give the evidence related to your relationship, you must keep the relevance of the information in mind. Instead of giving many pieces of evidence which are irrelevant, it is better to give evidence which is relevant in the true sense. How does one determine the relevance of the information? For knowing the answer to this question, try to find out if it fulfills the above criteria –

1. Is it relevant to the application?
2. Does it prove my relationship with my partner?
3. Is this piece of evidence in accordance with the rest of my application?

If the answer to all the above three of the questions is affirmative, then you should include it in your application. If not, you should do away with it.

• Missing certificates

The following list of documents should be certified or notarized before submission –

1. Identification  documents
2. Birth certificates
3. Marriage certificates
4. Copies of original documents
5. When having your documents certified, ensure that  the certifier states something like: I certify that this is