Social evidence: what people outside the relationship see

What the regulation names

(c) the social aspects of the relationship, including: (i) whether the persons represent themselves to other people as being married to each other; and (ii) the opinion of the persons’ friends and acquaintances about the nature of the relationship; and (iii) any basis on which the persons plan and undertake joint social activities.

Migration Regulations 1994, reg 1.15A(3)(c) — Compilation No. 288, 1 July 2026, legislation.gov.au

For de facto applicants, regulation 1.09A(3)(c) is identical except that sub-element (i) asks whether the couple represent themselves as being in a de facto relationship rather than as married.

Published agent guidance describes this aspect with one question: do people outside the relationship recognise and treat the two as a couple? Framed that way, material generated by third parties carries the aspect, and material the couple generated about itself supports it.

Material generated by other people

• Form 888 supporting statements from people who know both partners, each with specific, dated detail of what that person has observed.
• Invitations addressed to both partners by name — weddings, parties, family gatherings, milestone birthdays.
• Cards, letters and correspondence addressed to the couple jointly, including from institutions.
• Photographs that include friends and family rather than only the couple, spanning multiple occasions and periods.
• Joint memberships and shared activities: clubs, gyms, hobby groups, religious or cultural community involvement, volunteering.
• Joint travel records — bookings, itineraries, accommodation — where the point being documented is a shared social life rather than shared cost.

Social media, and not having any

Tagged posts, shared photographs, and engagement from mutual friends and family are commonly documented as corroborating material where visible dates are present. Guidance is equally consistent that its absence is unremarkable — as one published source puts it, partner visa applications existed long before social media did — provided other social material is there.

How much, and the counting problem

The reasoning published guidance gives for a ceiling rather than a floor is worth reading: several hundred near-identical photographs are described as burying the most relevant ones rather than adding to them, and as reading like padding when the rest of the aspect is thin.

Patterns commonly described as thin

• Photographs of the couple alone, with no third party appearing in any image.
• Social material clustered around a single event or short period rather than spread across the relationship.
• No third-party-generated documents at all — no invitations, cards, witness statements or correspondence addressed to the couple.
• Witness statements that are short, generic, near-identical to each other or visibly templated. Published guidance repeatedly flags statements written for a witness, rather than by them in their own words and from their own knowledge.
• A stated claim that family know about the relationship, with nothing corroborating it.
• Dates or details in social material that do not match the relationship timeline stated elsewhere in the application.

When families do not know

Cultural, religious, family or personal-safety reasons mean some couples are known to one family and not the other, or to neither. Published guidance describes this being addressed factually in the couple's own statement — identifying who is aware and stating plainly why others are not — rather than being left as an unexplained gap. Where family and friend witnesses are limited, guidance also describes colleagues as witnesses.

Couples living apart

For couples separated by distance, this aspect is commonly documented through evidence that a shared social life continued across it: joint participation in online communities, attending each other's family or friend events remotely, shared subscriptions, group chats including mutual friends, and photographs from each visit. Guidance consistently describes communication records as more usable when condensed into a dated summary covering early, middle and recent periods than submitted as a raw export.