Meeting your partner online is not a refusal reason for an Australian partner visa. The Department judges your relationship on four pillars: financial, household, social, and commitment. How you met is one fact among many, and case officers treat it as exactly that. The real catch is time apart: less in-person time usually leaves you with thinner evidence across those pillars. One subclass adds a hard rule. The Prospective Marriage visa (Subclass 300) requires that you have met in person at least once (MIAC v Yucesan [2008] FCAFC 110).
Meeting online is not a refusal ground. Refusals come from thin evidence across the four pillars, never from how you matched.
No set minimum in-person time for 820 or 309. What matters is what each visit produced as evidence, and how the rest of the file fills the gaps.
The 300 has a hard physical-presence rule. Skype, Zoom and FaceTime do not satisfy the "met" requirement; the Full Federal Court in MIAC v Yucesan held it means being in each other's physical presence.
The 300 has the highest refusal rate of the partner subclasses. If you can marry overseas and apply for a 309, that is usually cheaper and lower risk than the two-step 300.
The 12-month de facto rule means 12 months living together. Dating long-distance does not count. Three ways around it: register the relationship, marry, or apply for the 300.
Online-met couples are now most of the partner visa applicants we see. Case officers have approved hundreds of them. They are not hunting for a reason to disbelieve you. They are checking one thing: do the four pillars of your relationship show up in the file clearly enough that a stranger can be satisfied it is genuine and continuing?
Is "met online" a problem for an Australian partner visa?
Meeting online is not a refusal ground for any Australian partner visa. The Department judges your relationship on the four pillars set out in the Migration Regulations 1994 (reg 1.15A for spouses, reg 1.09A for de facto couples). The rules set no minimum in-person time, no minimum number of visits, and no minimum time living together for married applicants.
Online-met becomes a problem only when less in-person time leaves you with thin evidence across the pillars. Couples who lived together for three years build up joint leases, shared utility bills and joint accounts almost without trying. Couples who dated long-distance for eighteen months tend to have WhatsApp logs, flight bookings and not much else. That thin file is what gets refused. A case officer opens the folder, looks for the relationship, and can't find enough of it. The dating app never comes into it. So build the evidence trail on purpose, because a long-distance relationship won't produce one on its own. Not sure how thin your file really is? Our free partner visa evidence checker gives an indicative read on how your evidence stacks up across the four pillars in a few minutes, so you can spot the gaps early.
A dating-site introduction treated as one dated event in a coherent timeline of engagement and marriage. Refusal overturned.
What does the Department actually look at?
The Department judges partner relationships on four pillars: financial, household, social, and commitment. For spouse applicants, neither the spouse nor the de facto definition sets a minimum number of visits or a minimum time living together. For the framework in full, see our ultimate guide to the partner visa; for substitute evidence when joint documents are absent, see our thin-evidence guide.
For the 820 (onshore, applicant in Australia) and 309 (offshore, applicant outside Australia) partner visas, there is no minimum in-person time. Two visits totalling four weeks can succeed. Ten visits totalling six months can fail. What case officers look for is in-person time that left a record: places you can point to, meeting each other's families, money spent together during the visit. Gaps with an outside explanation (visa rules, COVID border closures, family responsibilities) count less against you.
Five sponsor trips to Egypt and a sustained comms archive carried the household pillar through COVID border closures. Refusal overturned.
The one hard rule for the 300: Yucesan and physical presence
For the Prospective Marriage visa (Subclass 300), reg 300.214 requires that you and your sponsor have "met and are known to each other personally" after both turned 18. In Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v Yucesan [2008] FCAFC 110, the Full Federal Court held that "met" means being in each other's physical presence. Skype, FaceTime, Zoom and telephone calls do not satisfy the criterion. The Court at [28] reasoned that "the decision to marry and live together as spouses involves a commitment to physical cohabitation, not just to a meeting of minds."
This is binding authority. If you and your partner have only ever met over video, you cannot apply for a 300. You must have met in person at least once, after both of you turned 18.
Passport stamps and oral evidence about the sole claimed meeting were equivocal, so Yucesan sank the 300. Refusal stood.
Choosing between 309, 820 and 300 when you met online
Three things decide which subclass fits: where you live, whether you are married, and how long you have lived together.
820 onshore (applicant in Australia) if the applicant holds a main visa and is married, has a registered relationship in a state Home Affairs recognises, or has lived together for 12 months.
309 offshore (applicant outside Australia) if the applicant is married, or is willing to marry overseas.
300 (Prospective Marriage) if the applicant is outside Australia, unmarried, the wedding has to happen in Australia, and the couple has met in person (Yucesan).
For the full decision tree and cost comparison, see our Prospective Marriage visa guide. Here is the point for online-met couples. If you can marry overseas and apply for a 309, that route is usually cheaper, and the timing is more predictable than the two-step 300. Pick the 300 when the wedding has to happen in Australia. Don't pick it by default.
How to evidence a long-distance relationship
The four pillars apply no matter how you met, but couples without a joint lease or joint accounts have to find other evidence. The full list of substitute evidence is in our thin-evidence guide; for Form 888 witnesses see our Form 888 deep dive; for cultural pre-marriage ceremonies (Mahr, sin sod, tea ceremony, roka, lobola) see our cross-cultural partner visa post. For online-met couples specifically, two kinds of evidence tend to carry the file: travel and communications.
Travel: passports, boarding passes, accommodation
Get full copies of both passports, every page including the blank ones, because the stamp pages are the cleanest record of who entered and left where. Keep boarding passes, e-tickets and visa grants for each country you visited. Book accommodation in both names where you can. If only one name is on the booking, add payment records showing the other partner chipped in. Records of money spent during each visit (credit-card statements, roaming charges, restaurant receipts) show you were together and sharing your days. A photo in front of a landmark only proves you were both in the same city.
Communications: WhatsApp, WeChat, iMessage and call logs
Export the whole chat history. A sample won't do. In WhatsApp: Settings, then Chats, then Export Chat. Save the full log in date order as a .txt file, with media in a separate folder. Then write a short index that explains the length and date ranges, so the case officer can spot-check ("pages 1 to 8: first month, app-based; pages 9 onwards: WhatsApp after we met in person in September 2024"). Hand-picked screenshots look staged; a full export looks honest. WeChat is harder to export cleanly. Screen recordings or backup tools are the usual workaround, and a missing WeChat archive is a common gap for Australian-Chinese couples. Include FaceTime and Zoom call logs too: the pattern (how often you called, the time of day across time zones, how long the calls ran) often says more than the content does.
Messages and calls back up the household, social and commitment pillars. They do not replace them. A file with daily video calls but no contact with the sponsor's close family still reads as incomplete.
Daily video calls could not paper over the visa applicant never meeting the sponsor's adult child four years in. Refusal stood.
The 12-month de facto rule for online-met couples
If you apply as de facto, reg 2.03A requires 12 months of living together first. It counts months under the same roof, and only those. Eighteen months of long-distance dating, with two months physically together, does not meet it. You have three ways around it: register the relationship in a state register Home Affairs recognises (NSW, Victoria, Queensland, ACT, Tasmania, or South Australia, prescribed by the Acts Interpretation (Registered Relationships) Regulations 2019; WA and the NT do not run a register), marry under the Marriage Act 1961, or apply for the Prospective Marriage 300. For the full comparison see our de facto vs married partner visa guide.
Bridging visa strategy: where do you live during processing?
If you apply for a 309 or 300 from outside Australia, there is no bridging visa. While you wait, you either stay offshore or come to Australia on a separate visitor visa (Subclass 600, 601 ETA, or 651 eVisitor). Visiting while your 309 or 300 is processing is usually fine, and the visits themselves are good evidence. The one catch is that most visitor visas carry the 8503 No Further Stay condition, so you cannot use a visit to switch a 309 into an 820 part way through (we walk through visiting on a tourist visa during 309 processing and where the 8503 line falls).
What this means for online-met couples: if the applicant has a real route to a main Australian visa (student, working holiday, employer-sponsored 482), coming to Australia first and then applying for the 820 is usually the better move. You get a Bridging Visa A when you apply, work rights, evidence of living together that builds up while you wait, access to state relationship registers, and Medicare. These all matter. For how the Bridging Visa A works in full, see our ultimate guide.
Common pitfalls for online-met partner visa applications
Hiding or apologising for how you met. Owning the timeline (when, on which app, when you moved to another channel, when you met in person) is good evidence. Hiding it leaves a gap that the case officer fills with a worse guess.
Sending a sample of your messages instead of the full export. A handful of screenshots looks hand-picked; a full export with an index looks honest.
Choosing the 300 by default without considering marrying overseas first. The 309 is cheaper and has a lower refusal rate (8% vs 22% per FOI DA24/02/00115, covering Jan 2023 to Feb 2024).
Misreading the 12-month de facto rule as a dating test. It counts time living together. Long-distance dating does not satisfy the rule unless the relationship is registered, you marry, or you apply for the 300.
Forgetting that the 300 requires a physical meeting. Yucesan is binding; video-only contact does not satisfy the "met" requirement.
Not documenting visits as a stand-in for living together. Every visit should leave a paper trail beyond photos: Airbnb in both names, joint transit bookings, mail to the same address.
Letting the sponsor's evidence be thinner than the applicant's. Form 40SP, the sponsor's bank statements (showing the flights and transfers), and Form 888 witnesses from the sponsor's side matter just as much.
Treating registration as a shortcut. Registration waives the 12-month de facto rule, but you still have to prove all four pillars in full.
How Tern handles online-met partner visa applications
Tern's partner pathway, which covers the 309/100, 820/801, and 300, is designed and reviewed by an immigration lawyer. The service fee for the partner pathway starts at AUD $1,400. The lower price comes from the modern, software-led workflow we run. The lawyer review behind it is the same one you would get elsewhere.
For online-met couples, the intake builds in the Yucesan physical-presence check on any 300 and the 12-month de facto test, so you can see whether the pathway you picked actually fits before you pay. Where the cheaper, lower-risk path is to marry overseas and apply for a 309 instead of a 300, we will say so.
Start your partner-pathway application with Tern and the platform will tell you whether the 309, the 820, or the 300 fits your situation before you commit to any of them.
Frequently asked questions
The bottom line
Meeting online and living apart are ordinary ways into the Australian partner visa system. Case officers see them every day. What gets files refused is thin evidence across the four pillars, plus the 300's hard in-person rule under Yucesan. So pick the subclass that fits your facts, often a 309 after an overseas wedding rather than a 300. Build your substitute evidence on purpose. And treat your relationship statement, message archive and travel record as primary evidence, because that is how a case officer will read them.
For the broader framework, see our ultimate guide to the partner visa; for the de facto vs married pathways, see de facto vs married partner visa; for the sponsor side, see the partner visa sponsor's role.
