A partner can only join a Temporary Graduate (subclass 485) application on the day it is submitted, and only if they are in Australia at the time. After that the door shuts. Bringing them over once the visa is granted means a second full government charge of AUD $5,750. Children are treated differently, and more generously.
A partner cannot be added after submission. Not by form, not by request, not for a fee. The rule that lets someone be added to a pending temporary visa application covers dependent children only.
A partner outside Australia cannot be included at all. To be on your application, they have to be in Australia on the day it goes in.
An adult partner costs AUD $2,875 on your application, or AUD $5,750 on their own. Included at the start they pay the additional applicant charge; following you later, they pay a full base charge from scratch.
Following you later has a deadline. To be granted, your partner has to be joining someone who still holds a 485. If your visa expires while their application is in the queue, they are refused.
Children can be added until a decision is made, using Form 1436, if they are in Australia and the extra charge is paid. A baby born while the application is being processed joins automatically and free, wherever they are born.
Your partner's health and character decide your visa too. The 485 uses the health criterion that has no waiver. If a family member on your application fails it, you are refused with them.
De facto partners need 12 months, the same rule people associate with partner visas.
If you have spent an evening trying to work out whether your partner goes on your 485 application now or applies later, you have probably found three answers and no way to tell which is right. The rules themselves are not vague.
Can you add your partner to a 485 after you apply?
No. Once a Temporary Graduate (subclass 485) application is in, a partner cannot be added to it at any point before a decision. There is no form, no fee and no request that reopens it. The Department of Home Affairs says so on its 485 Post-Higher Education Work page: "You can add your children to the application until we decide on your application. You cannot add any other member of the family unit to your application during that period."
That reads like a policy preference, but it is the limit of what the Migration Regulations allow. One rule permits a dependent child to be added to a pending temporary visa application, and the 485 is expressly named on its list. A separate rule covers adding a spouse or de facto partner, and it reaches permanent visas only. The 485 is temporary, so no provision exists under which a partner can join an application already in.
Why so many people believe otherwise
Because the form says they can. Form 1436, "Adding an additional applicant after lodgement", is a general form used across many visa types. Question 5 offers two tickboxes for the relationship of the person being added: "Dependent child" and "Partner".
The catch is on the form's own first page. It can only be used, in its words, "if the visa allows additional applicants to be added after lodgement". The 485 allows children. It does not allow partners. The tickbox is real; the pathway is not.
So the decision about your partner is made on the day your application goes in. Treat it as a one-time, irreversible choice, because that is what it is.
What does it cost to add a partner to a 485 later?
The full visa application charge, a second time. Home Affairs: "Subsequent entrants, including children born offshore, must pay the full Visa Application Charge." A subsequent entrant is a family member who applies to join you after your visa has been granted, and for most graduates that charge is AUD $5,750, the same amount you paid for yourself.
A family member who applies with you sits on one combined application and pays the additional applicant charge instead: AUD $2,875 for anyone 18 or over, and AUD $1,450 for a child under 18.
So the same adult partner costs AUD $2,875 on the day your application goes in, and AUD $5,750 six months later. Same person, same relationship, same paperwork. The only thing that changed is when you asked.
A migration agent's fee sits on top of the AUD $5,750 government charge, not instead of it. Budget on their quote alone and you are AUD $5,750 short. Here is what migration agents actually charge.
Can your partner be included if they are outside Australia?
No. To be on your 485 application, your partner has to be in Australia when it is submitted, and not standing at the border in immigration clearance. Home Affairs: "You can include members of your family unit in your application when you apply, if they are in Australia."
The rule people misread is a narrow exception in Schedule 1 to the Migration Regulations. It says family of someone who, having met the criteria, holds a 485 may apply from in or outside Australia. That is about subsequent entrants, after your visa already exists. It says nothing about a partner applying alongside you.
If your partner is overseas and your six-month window is closing, there are two real options:
Apply without them, then have them apply as a subsequent entrant once your visa is granted. They can apply from anywhere. It costs a second full charge.
Get them to Australia lawfully first, then apply together. This only works if there is time and if they can hold a visa that lets them be here.
Your partner has to be joining someone who holds a 485 at the moment their application is decided, not on the day it goes in. If your own visa expires while they are still in the queue, they are refused, and no amount of relationship evidence saves it. The thing that decides it is departmental processing time, which neither of you controls.
A subsequent entrant gave the Department every piece of relationship evidence it asked for, then his partner's 485 expired while his application waited. Refusal stood.
The second route has its own traps, most often a "no further stay" condition on a visitor visa. And you are booking an international flight on your own reading of the rules. Read them wrong and you have paid for nothing, so check it with a lawyer before you book.
Your partner's health and character decide your visa too
Every family member on your application has to clear health and character, and if one of them fails, you fail with them. It is not that your partner gets refused and you get granted. Your family members clearing those checks is written into your own criteria, so their failure is your failure.
And the 485 gets the version of the health rule with no escape hatch. The health rules are called public interest criteria. PIC 4007 lets the Minister waive a health failure where granting the visa would not cause undue cost to the community or undue prejudice to anyone's access to care. Partner visas get that one. The 485 gets PIC 4005, which carries no waiver at all. Same medical examination, different consequence: on a partner visa a significant condition can be argued; on a 485 it ends the application. The AUD $5,750 you paid is not refunded.
That should change how you approach a partner with a known health condition. Not by leaving anything out, because undisclosed information carries a harsher penalty of its own, but by deciding whether they go on the application at all, before you apply.
There is a structural consequence too. Once your own 485 is granted, a later application by your partner is their application, and if it is refused your visa is untouched. Included at the start, the risk is shared. So the subsequent-entrant route costs a second full charge, buys separation of risk, and has to finish before your own 485 expires. That is worth an hour of paid advice when the health position is genuinely uncertain. Our guide to health examinations for Australian visas covers what the examination involves and what tends to trigger a problem.
Who counts as family on a 485?
Only a partner and children. Migration law calls this your "member of the family unit": a spouse or de facto partner, and your children and step-children (or your partner's). Parents, siblings, cousins and friends are not on it, at any age. If your mother is financially dependent on you, the answer is still no.
Children come with an age ladder:
Under 18: included, with no dependency test.
18 to 22: included only if they are financially dependent on you or your partner, and rely on you more than on any other person or source of support.
23 and over: included only if they cannot work because of a total or partial loss of bodily or mental function. Ordinary financial dependency is not enough, however real it is.
That last one is a hard cut-off. A healthy 23-year-old you fully support cannot go on your 485 as a dependent child. Their route is a visa in their own right.
Does a de facto partner need 12 months on a 485?
Yes. The 12-month rule people associate with partner visas catches the Temporary Graduate visa too, because the regulations group the 485 with the skilled visas and apply the rule to that group by name. If you are not married, the Department has to be satisfied you have been in the de facto relationship for at least 12 months ending immediately before the day the application is made.
Two ways out of it:
A registered relationship. Register under a state or territory scheme and the 12-month requirement falls away. Six jurisdictions run a register: NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. Western Australia and the Northern Territory do not, so a couple in Perth or Darwin cannot use this exception where they live.
Compelling and compassionate circumstances. A high bar, assessed case by case.
What is lighter on a 485 is the obligation, not the assessment. On an 820 or a 309, the decision-maker is required to work through the four pillars of a relationship: finances, household, social recognition and commitment. On a 485 they may consider them instead. You cannot demand the structured assessment an 820 applicant is entitled to, but you should expect a decision-maker to look at the same four things anyway. Less structure means less to lean on if the file looks thin, not less to prove.
The decision below is the one 485 case we found where the partner won. The couple were married, and it records what satisfied the Tribunal.
A case officer was not satisfied a married couple were really spouses. Statutory declarations, photos, tenancy agreements and utility bills satisfied the Tribunal, and the refusal was overturned.
They were married, so a certificate proved the relationship existed. A de facto couple proves the same shared life, genuineness and living together with nothing equivalent.
For the 12-month rule in full, what registering a relationship involves, and how to evidence a de facto relationship properly, see our guide to de facto versus married partner visas.
What happens if you have a baby while your 485 is being processed?
They join automatically, free, wherever they are born. A child born after the application is submitted and before it is decided is treated by law as having applied at the moment of birth, on your application, at no charge. There is no location requirement, so a baby born overseas is covered. You still have to tell the Department, using a change of circumstances form (Form 1022) with the birth certificate.
A child who already exists is a different case, and every part of it is stricter:
You have to ask in writing, on Form 1436, before a decision is made.
The additional applicant charge has to be paid: AUD $1,450 for a child under 18, or AUD $2,875 if they are 18 or over.
They have to be in Australia. The same location rule that blocks a partner overseas blocks a child overseas.
So: born during processing means free, automatic, anywhere. Already alive means paid, in Australia, and only if you ask before the decision lands. If your child is overseas, the choice is the same as for a partner: bring them to Australia before you apply, or accept a full second charge later.
What can your partner do once the 485 is granted?
More than most people assume. A 485 held as a family member carries no cap on work hours and no restriction on study. None of the conditions that limit a student's working week or tie them to a course appear in the Temporary Graduate rules at all. Your partner can work full time, for any employer, and study whatever they like.
Two things to plan for:
Health insurance is compulsory and continuous. Every applicant, your partner included, needs cover evidenced when the application goes in, maintained the whole time it is being processed, and maintained for the life of the visa. Letting it lapse before a decision is not a technical breach, it is a criterion failure, which means refusal. The Bridging Visa A you hold while waiting carries the same condition.
A second, regional 485 is different. If the main applicant is granted a second Temporary Graduate visa on the regional pathway, the partner inherits condition 8610 and has to live, work and study in a regional area too.
One small mercy: family members do not sit an English test. That requirement lands on the main applicant only.
What happens to your partner's visa if the relationship ends?
It becomes cancellable. A 485 granted to a partner exists only because of the relationship, so once the relationship ends, the circumstance the visa was granted on no longer exists, and that is a ground for cancelling it. The ground is straightforward for the Department to make out. The whole argument is then about whether the discretion to cancel should be exercised.
A partner granted a 485 as a family member had it cancelled after the marriage ended, and the cancellation stood despite his young daughter living in Australia.
Two things follow, and the second one is hard.
First, if you are the main applicant, a relationship ending is a change of circumstances you are obliged to report. Do it properly rather than hoping the question never comes up.
Second: a 485 has no family violence provisions. Partner visas do. If an 820 relationship ends because of family violence, the regulations contain a pathway that can still lead to a grant. Nothing equivalent exists in the Temporary Graduate rules. A partner on a 485 whose relationship ends because of violence is in the same legal position as one whose relationship simply ran its course: the visa becomes cancellable. Family violence can be weighed by the decision-maker choosing whether to cancel, but no rule preserves the visa.
That is a real gap. If this is your situation, get advice from an immigration lawyer early rather than after a cancellation notice arrives, because the argument you have is discretionary and discretionary arguments are won on preparation. 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is the national family violence and sexual assault counselling line, free, confidential and open 24 hours a day.
How Tern will handle 485 dependants
Tern's Temporary Graduate service is not live yet, so this is what we are building rather than what we sell today. The partner question is one of the first things the eligibility check asks, before anyone pays anything, because it is the one decision on a 485 that cannot be undone and the most expensive one to get wrong. Where your partner is, whether the relationship clears 12 months, and whether a health condition needs looking at first all change what you should do on the day, and none of them can be fixed afterwards. Applications are reviewed before submission, and complex cases get lawyer review.
If you want to know when it opens, you can join the waitlist for Tern's Temporary Graduate service.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to be married to include my partner on a 485?
Can I add my child to my 485 after I apply?
Does my partner need to sit an English test for a 485?
Can my partner work full time on a 485?
What happens to my partner's 485 if we separate?
Is there a health waiver on a 485?
The bottom line
The 485 has a small number of decisions that cannot be undone, and the partner decision is the most expensive one on the list. All of it is settled in the hour before the application goes in: where your partner is, whether the relationship clears 12 months, and whether anyone's health check is going to be a problem.
None of that requires a lawyer for most people. It requires knowing the rules before the moment passes. Your partner goes on the application on the day it is submitted, or they pay AUD $5,750 of their own to follow you before your visa runs out. There is no third option.
