Who Can Help With a Subclass 102 Adoption Visa Application in 2026?

Who may lawfully help with a Subclass 102 adoption visa: the three groups that can give immigration assistance, who can receive documents, and forms 956 and 956A.

Published: 10 July 2026 Reading time 12 min

Under the Department of Home Affairs' Adoption visa (Subclass 102) official page, help splits into two very different jobs. Only three kinds of people may give you immigration assistance — a registered migration agent, a legal practitioner, or an exempt person — but you can appoint anyone at all to receive documents about your visa matter. Getting that distinction right determines which form you file.

What counts as "help" — immigration assistance, or just receiving documents?

"Helping" is used loosely in everyday conversation and narrowly in the visa system. Immigration assistance covers the guidance and application work done in relation to your visa matter; receiving documents is the much smaller administrative role of getting correspondence on your behalf.

The Subclass 102 page treats these separately and gives each one its own form. Anything else — answering questions about eligibility, advising what tends to satisfy a criterion, preparing or checking the submission — belongs on the assistance side, and the assistance side is where the qualification requirement sits.

Who may lawfully give immigration assistance?

If you appoint someone to give you immigration assistance, the official page lists exactly three options:

a registered migration agent
a legal practitioner
an exempt person

There is no fourth category in that list. A friend, a relative, a community elder, or an unregistered consultant is not among them, no matter how experienced they are with forms or how well they know your family. The overview page says plainly: if you are getting help with your visa, read the Department's guidance on who can help with your visa application before you pay someone.

Nothing here stops you from writing your own application.

Who can simply receive correspondence for you?

That role is unrestricted. You may appoint anyone to receive documents on your behalf relating to your visa matter, and no migration qualification is needed to do it.

That makes it the correct route for the common arrangement where someone in Australia is better placed than the applicant to collect letters. The trade-off is narrow scope: receiving correspondence is not the same as advising you on what the correspondence means.

Which form do I need — Form 956 or Form 956A?

Each appointment has a designated form, and using the wrong one records the wrong relationship.

What you want them to do	Who can be appointed	Form to use	How it is withdrawn
Give immigration assistance	Registered migration agent, legal practitioner, or exempt person only	Form 956 — Appointment of a registered migration agent, legal practitioner or exempt person	Form 956
Receive papers and correspondence on your behalf	Anyone you choose	Form 956A — Appointment or withdrawal of an authorised recipient	Form 956A

How do these forms reach the Department on a paper Subclass 102?

Subclass 102 is a paper-only application, which is unusual now and catches people out. You complete Form 47CH (Application for migration to Australia by a child) and Form 40CH (Sponsorship for a child to migrate to Australia), in English, and send them together by prepaid post or courier to the Child and Other Family Processing Centre.

Either written notification or the completed forms themselves go with that paper application — so the 956 or 956A travels in the same envelope as the visa forms, not separately afterwards.

The postal and courier addresses set out on the official page are:

By post: Department of Home Affairs, Child and Other Family Processing Centre, Locked Bag 7, NORTHBRIDGE WA 6865
By courier: Department of Home Affairs, Child and Other Family Processing Centre, Wellington Central, 836 Wellington Street, WEST PERTH WA 6005

A few related points from the same page tend to decide whether an application is valid at all: the application charge must be paid before you post it and evidence of payment included, because nothing is processed until payment is made. Submitting at any other office, or in person, does not produce a valid application. Send certified copies rather than originals. All of this remains your responsibility even when someone else is assisting.

What should I check before paying anyone?

Four questions cover most of the risk:

Which of the three categories are they in? If the answer is none of them, they are not among the people the Department lists as able to give immigration assistance.
Is the fee for assistance, or only for receiving documents? Anyone can do the latter without a migration qualification, so paying assistance rates for it is paying for the wrong thing.
Will a Form 956 naming them actually be lodged? An appointment that is never notified to the Department has not been made in the way the page requires.
What has been promised? No appointee can change the eligibility criteria, and the Department does not provide progress updates within global visa processing times.

A hypothetical makes the boundary clear. Suppose an applicant asks a cousin in Perth to collect and forward mail from the Department, nothing more. That arrangement needs a Form 956A, and the cousin's qualifications are irrelevant to it. Suppose instead the cousin reviews the adoption documents, decides which evidence is sufficient and fills in Form 47CH for payment — that is immigration assistance, and unless the cousin is a registered migration agent, legal practitioner or exempt person, the arrangement is outside what the Subclass 102 page permits.

This article is general information only and is not advice tailored to any particular family's circumstances; the eligibility rules, forms and current versions published by the Department of Home Affairs govern an application, and anyone weighing a specific arrangement should check those pages or obtain help from someone in one of the three listed categories.

Does having help change who must meet the visa requirements?

No. The child must still meet the requirements set out in the visa listing:

under 18 years of age when adopted, when applying, and when the decision is made
outside Australia when the application is made and when it is decided
adopted, or in the process of being adopted, by the sponsor parent

A sponsor relationship also has to exist and be documented through Form 40CH. Help affects who may advise and act, not who carries the substantive criteria. The page also notes that COVID-19 visa concessions may be relevant in some cases, and those concessions are assessed against their own published terms.

How do I stop someone acting for me later?

Use the same form that appointed them. Form 956A covers appointment and withdrawal of an authorised recipient; Form 956 covers appointment and withdrawal of a migration agent, legal practitioner or exempt person.

Delivering the withdrawal depends on whether the paper application has been brought online. After you receive the acknowledgement letter, an application made outside Australia on or after 1 April 2020 can be imported into ImmiAccount using the application ID, the applicant's date of birth, and the identity document number. Once imported, completed forms can be uploaded there. Where ImmiAccount is not being used, completed forms are attached to the Child and Orphan Relative Visa Processing Centre online form.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to use a migration agent for a Subclass 102 application?

No. The visa requires Form 47CH and Form 40CH lodged on paper with the Child and Other Family Processing Centre, and nothing on the official page makes representation compulsory. The requirement is conditional: if you appoint someone to give immigration assistance, that person must be a registered migration agent, a legal practitioner, or an exempt person.

Can a friend or relative fill in the forms and charge me a fee?

Only if the friend or relative fits one of the three listed categories. Receiving documents is open to anyone, but providing immigration assistance is limited to registered migration agents, legal practitioners and exempt persons on the official page.

Can anyone be my authorised recipient?

Yes, subject to no qualification requirement at all. You nominate them on Form 956A, Appointment or withdrawal of an authorised recipient, which you can also use later to withdraw them.

Where do I send Form 956 or 956A for this visa?

With the paper application itself: send written notification or the completed forms together with Form 47CH and Form 40CH, posted to Locked Bag 7, Northbridge WA 6865, or couriered to 836 Wellington Street, West Perth WA 6005. The forms are lodged at that stage, not filed separately first.

Do I still have to pay the application charge if someone else is handling the paperwork?

Yes. The application charge must be paid before the application is posted, and evidence of payment included with it, because an unpaid application will not be processed. The charge is not refunded if the application is refused.

Can I change or remove my authorised recipient after applying?

Yes. Complete Form 956A, which serves both to appoint and to withdraw an authorised recipient. If the paper application has been imported into ImmiAccount, upload the completed form there; otherwise attach it to the Child and Orphan Relative Visa Processing Centre online form.