I'm a Kiwi studying at university and last year started a relationship with an international postgrad student (we're both mature students and around the same age) and it's reached the point where we're living together and looking at options for partnership visas. This forum has provided a huge amount of excellent advice so far, but unfortunately I found very few posts on the topic of student visas.

My partner is thinking about pausing her studies for a while because, let's be honest, international student fees aren't cheap and the employment prospects for her field of study are looking pretty dire at the moment due to the recent public sector job cuts. We've been living together for around six months, so the obvious plan is to submit an application for a partnership work visa and then, once INZ has received the application, withdraw from her studies while the application is decided. The deadline for her to withdraw is 19 July so it seems like plenty of time. Her current student visa doesn't expire until mid-2025.

However after calling INZ this plan is sounding rather risky: if she were to withdraw from her course it would immediately result in her being in breach of her student visa conditions, so that's a no-go. Whereas if she didn't withdraw and her application for a partnership work visa was successful, the work visa would replace the student visa, and then she'd immediately be in breach of the work visa conditions because she was studying a full-time course. In either case, because her student visa isn't expiring, she won't receive an interim visa.

Is there a way to thread this needle? Is there a way to make the student visa expire shortly after lodging the work visa application, such that she'd be automatically granted an interim visa? (According to the Operations Manual the interim visa would be a Visitor visa.)

Once on the interim visa it would no longer be a breach of conditions to withdraw from the course. I suppose that one downside to being on an interim visa is that, should the partnership work visa be declined, it looks like there's no possibility of making another visa application without first leaving NZ...