Partner Visa Refused Onshore: What Happens to Your Bridging Visa and How Long You Have
If You Have Just Been Refused, Three Things Need to Happen Before You Do Anything Else.
- Find the refusal letter and read the review deadline on it. That date governs. Write it down.
- Work out when you were taken to have been notified. The clock starts earlier than most people think.
- Do not leave Australia and do not book travel until someone has confirmed what that would do to your position.
The rest of this page explains why those three steps come first and what the choices are after them.
A partner visa refusal arrives with two separate clocks running, and almost everyone confuses them. The one people remember is longer. The one that actually matters is shorter, and in most cases it cannot be extended.
Both Start on the Day You Are Taken to Have Been Notified. They Finish on Very Different Days.
Your Bridging visa A generally continues for this long after refusal. This is the number people remember.
Your right to apply for review of the decision. Shorter, and the one the whole case hinges on.
There Is No Fixing a Missed Deadline
In most migration categories the Tribunal has no power to extend the time limit. A late application is not accepted late. It is invalid, which means it is treated as never having been made, and the refusal simply stands. This is not like a court deadline where you can ask for indulgence. There is no indulgence available.
Why This Page Will Not Tell You Whether Your Deadline Is 21 or 28 Days
We looked at five Australian migration law sources for this article. They do not agree.
| Source position | What was said |
|---|---|
| 21 days | Two firms state 21 days for an onshore partner refusal, one of them emphatically, adding that the Tribunal cannot extend it. |
| 28 days | One firm gives 28 days for most onshore visa refusals, citing the relevant sections of the Migration Act. |
| Both | One firm writes "21 or 28 calendar days" and tells the reader the letter states the exact deadline. |
| Inconsistent with itself | One page uses 21 days throughout its text and 28 days in its own summary table. |
We are not going to pick one and present it as fact, because for any given reader at least one of those numbers is wrong, and the cost of being wrong here is the entire application.
Part of the explanation is probably timing. The Administrative Review Tribunal replaced the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on 14 October 2024, and pages written before that change may be carrying forward an older figure. But we could not confirm that, and guessing would be the same mistake in a different direction.
The Rule That Protects You Either Way
Your refusal letter states your review deadline. That letter governs, and every reputable source says so, including the ones that give a number. Read it, write the date somewhere you will see it, and work backwards from there.
If for some reason you cannot access the letter right now, act as though the deadline is 21 days from the date on the decision. Acting early costs you nothing. Acting late costs you everything.
Send Us the Date on Your Letter and We Will Tell You Today Where You Stand.
If you have been refused and you are not sure how long you have, send us the date on the decision and how it reached you. We will come back with the deadline that applies to your case. If it is close, we will say so immediately rather than scheduling a call for next week.
When the Clock Actually Starts, Which Is Earlier Than You Think
The deadline runs from when you are taken to have been notified, not from when you read anything. The difference matters.
| How the decision reached you | When you are taken to have been notified |
|---|---|
| The day the email was sent. Not the day you opened it, and not the day you understood it. | |
| Letter posted within Australia | Seven working days after the date on the letter. |
| Through your migration agent or lawyer | Notification to your authorised representative generally counts as notification to you. If you have lost contact with a former agent, this is urgent. |
Two practical consequences. If the refusal was emailed on a Friday and you opened it the following Wednesday, you have already used five days. And if you appointed an agent who received the decision and did not tell you, the clock has been running regardless. That second situation is more common than it should be, and it is a reason to find out today who the Department thinks your authorised recipient is.
The Trap That Voids an Application Lodged on Time
This one is rarely mentioned and it catches people who did everything else right.
The Review Application Fee Must Be Paid Before the Deadline, Not Merely Lodged Before It.
An application submitted on day 20 with the fee paid on day 23 is not properly made. The lodgement does not hold your place while you sort out payment.
The same applies to the fee reduction. The Tribunal offers a 50 per cent reduction on grounds of financial hardship, but the request has to be made before the deadline as well. Leaving it until you have scraped the money together is how people end up with neither the reduction nor the review.
The standard migration review fee is $3,727, current from 1 July 2026, with the hardship reduction bringing it to roughly half that. If the Tribunal decides in your favour, 50 per cent of the fee is refunded.
What Happens to Your Bridging Visa, in Each Scenario
| What you do | What happens to the bridging visa |
|---|---|
| Lodge the review within the deadline | Your Bridging visa A generally continues while the review is pending, on the same conditions. Work rights carry over if you had them. |
| Do not lodge a review | The Bridging visa A ends roughly 35 days after notification. After that you are unlawful unless you have departed or obtained a Bridging visa E. |
| Lodge late | The application is invalid, so nothing holds your status. Treat this as the same outcome as not lodging. |
| The Tribunal affirms the refusal | The bridging visa typically ceases around 35 days after that decision, which gives you a second short window rather than an open-ended one. |
| You leave Australia | A Bridging visa A ends when you depart. You cannot use it to return. If you need to travel during a review, you apply for a Bridging visa B before you go. |
If you have already passed the 35 day mark without lodging anything, you are probably unlawful now, and the first step is regularising that rather than arguing about the refusal. A Bridging visa E exists for exactly this situation. Do not simply wait and hope. The conditions attached to your bridging visa, and what you can and cannot do on one, are set out at bridging visa work rights while waiting for the 820.
What the Tribunal Can Actually Do for You
Expectations here are usually wrong in both directions, so it is worth being precise.
1. Affirm the refusal
Which means the decision stands.
2. Set the decision aside and substitute its own
Which in some categories means the visa is effectively granted.
3. Set the decision aside and send the matter back to the Department
With directions to continue processing, for example to finish health and character checks. This is described as the most common successful outcome, and it is worth knowing in advance that winning often means going back into the queue rather than walking out with a visa.
What it cannot do is change the rules. It applies the law as it stands to your facts. If the refusal was correct on the law, a sympathetic story does not alter the outcome.
The One Real Advantage of Review Over a Fresh Application
It is a merits review, which means you can put new evidence in. The gaps that caused the refusal can usually be filled. Updated joint financial records, household evidence, statutory declarations from people who know you both, and communication history are the usual material. Our guidance on building that evidence is at proving a genuine relationship for a partner visa.
Be realistic about time. Commentary puts the wait for a hearing at somewhere between one and three years, with the written decision following weeks or months after that. You will be living on a bridging visa throughout. For how the process runs step by step, see the ART appeal process.
Review, or Apply Again?
These are not alternatives you get to try in sequence. Choosing one usually closes the other, so it is worth five minutes of thought.
| Apply for review | Lodge a fresh application | |
|---|---|---|
| Deadline | Hard, short, cannot be extended. | No deadline, but your status is running down while you decide. |
| Cost | $3,727, half refunded if you succeed. | The full partner visa charge again, reported at $11,710 from 1 July 2026, and not refundable. |
| New evidence | Yes. This is the point of it. | Yes, but you are starting the whole assessment again. |
| Status while waiting | Bridging visa A generally continues. | Depends entirely on what visa you hold when you lodge. |
| Main obstacle | The wait, measured in years. | The section 48 bar and Schedule 3. |
That last row is the one that decides most cases. If a visa has been refused while you were in Australia, section 48 restricts what you can lodge onshore. Partner visas are generally treated as an exception, which is why reapplying is possible at all, but it is not automatic and it is not the end of the analysis. Our page is at the section 48 bar.
Then there is Schedule 3. If you are no longer holding a substantive visa when the new application is assessed, you have to satisfy compelling reasons for the Department to waive those criteria. Relationship length, emotional hardship and financial difficulty are generally not enough on their own. That is covered at the Schedule 3 waiver.
The Short Version
Review is usually the better route if the refusal turned on evidence that can be fixed, and a fresh application is usually only better if something has genuinely changed about your circumstances rather than about your paperwork.
What to Do in the Next 48 Hours
- Find the refusal letter and read the review deadline on it. Write the date on your phone, your calendar and somewhere physical.
- Work out when you were taken to have been notified, using the rules above. Count from that date, not from when you read it.
- Check who the Department has as your authorised recipient. If a former agent received the decision, the clock has been running longer than you think.
- Read the refusal reasons properly, not just the outcome. The reasons determine whether review or reapplication makes sense, and they are the brief for whoever helps you.
- Work out whether you can pay the fee before the deadline, and if not, request the hardship reduction now rather than later.
- Get advice while there are still days left. The single most useful thing about contacting someone early is that they have options. After the deadline nobody has any.
- Do not leave Australia, and do not book travel, until someone has confirmed what that would do to your position.
If your refusal was offshore rather than onshore, the position is different in an important way: review rights for a 309 refusal generally sit with the sponsor in Australia rather than with you. The general refusal pathway and how it differs is at Australia visa refusal, what to do next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Send Us the Date on Your Decision Letter. We Will Come Back the Same Day with the Deadline That Applies to Your Case.
You do not need to know what to do yet, and you do not need a long call. You need the date, and whether it is close.
Written by
Founder and Editor, Aussie Migration Guide
Karan Rawat is the Founder and Editor of Aussie Migration Guide. With nearly 4 years of experience in SEO and digital content, including work with Australian migration law clients, he specialises in turning complex Australian visa rules, fees and eligibility criteria into clear, practical guides. Every article is checked against current official sources such as the Department of Home Affairs before it goes live. Karan is not a registered migration agent, and the content on this site is general information, not migration advice.