Hi,
Yes, Brooke’s blog is amazing…she is so generous, responsive and thorough.
For our 801 we really used the same type of evidence. By the way I am the sponsor (Australian citizen).
When it was time to submit the 801 application we organised and submitted the application and the documents of evidence all at the same time. Together with the online application we uploaded 68 documents as supporting evidence. Only 9 of these documents were used as part of the submission for the first stage ie., the 820, of the partner visa. These 9 documents were my partner’s passport, driver’s licence, identity card; Our Relationship Certificate, My Superannuation Statement and some real estate documents outlining both our real estate ownership. I was really unsure whether to upload these documents again but I did as I thought they were relevant to the process and also we referred to them in our statements.
The 58 new documents were all updated evidence of our continuing relationship, so they were similar to what we had submitted before but they only covered the period from when we submitted the 820 to when we submitted the 801 application, so for example, when we wrote about our financial commitment we only included bank statements that covered the period in between both applications. We did not, for example, go right back to the beginning of our relationship because we had already included that in the 820 stage of the application. I hope this makes sense. The same applied to all other evidence whether it was evidence to support the social aspects of the relationships like holiday bookings, photos etc, messages and photos from friends etc.
When you start the process the applicant is required to make a new application which is the Family- Stage 2 Permanent Partner Visa Assessment (801). In much of this online generic application form the applicant will have to fill in similar info that was included in the 820 online application. You will notice that there is space in the online form for the applicant to do statements on the 5 generic areas ie., Financial, Household, Social Aspects, Nature of Commitment and Development of the Relationship. When it came to writing these statements we just wrote “See attached document” in each individual box and then did the statement as a seperate pdf and then uploaded it, so the 5 statements were part of the 58 document uploads. The Sponsor (me in our case) is required to submit a Stat Dec (provided by Home Affairs - I will supply a link to this later in this reply). You will notice that as part of this Stat Dec that the sponsor must do a statement for 4 out of the aforementioned 5 areas. The Sponsor does not have to do a Statement on the Development of the Relationship? Don’t ask me why but I was happy not to do it!
In my opinion these statements ie., what the applicant and sponsor write about the 5 and 4 areas respectively are the most important documents and all other evidence should relate back to or used to support these statements. We put enormous effort into our respective statements but for the 801 we again only wrote about the period from when we submitted the 820 application until we submitted the 801 application.
I hope the above clarifies the process we used and helps you. I am happy to answer any further questions you may have or share some areas of evidence we submitted, but, it was all used to support our statements. The Stat Dec (including the sponsor statements) that I did, as the sponsor, had to be certified along with a certified copy of my passport. The statements from my partner (the applicant) were not required to be certified. The Stat Dec was one of the 58 new documents uploaded for the 801.
Happy to keep corresponding if it helps you,
Here is a link to the Stat Dec
https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/form-listing/forms/stat_dec_sponsor.pdf
Good luck,
Grant
