The Hypocrisy of Andrew Corish, Family Law Solicitor of Australia
A Way to Walk a Mile in a Noncustodial Parent's Moccasins.
Some Practical Advice for Support Contemnors in the State of Washington.
For their sponsorship of Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox Sucker's www.paykids.com his Paykids Foundation, boycott the listed sponsors, including Art Van Furniture, Meijer Stores, Michigan State Medical Society (warning, the MSMS website does not like to let you out when you click the back button), SBC Communications, and Michigan Health and Hospital Association and tell them why you are boycotting them! Go to the Michigan Enemies of Freedom Page and read letters by Stan Rains and Terry Lear for more information as to why, and read Domino's Pizza, Inc.'s letter to me in response to my concerns about PayKid's use of Domino's Pizza gift certificates as a prize in their loathsome Billboard contest, which was CANCELLED!!
Not to be outdone, we are announcing our own billboard contest!
Not all Enemies of Freedom are Americans. The same crap is going on in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom of Great Britain, and on the continent of Europe. This is a planetary evil we are fighting. One of the fathers with whom I correspond has had a very bad experience with an attorney named Andrew Corish. What makes Mr. Corish stand out is that he puts on a public persona, as being a member of and a consultant to such organizations as Family Law Reform Association of Australia, of being concerned about fathers' rights and shared parenting, meaning equal parenting where custody is split 50-50 or close to that. Such shared parenting arrangements often negate the need for any child support order requiring either parent to pay the other because both are taking equal time responsibility for supporting the children.
Problem is: Mr. Corish, in representing the ex-wife of my Australian correspondent, has seriously limited him to one visitation every three months and allowed the ex-wife to move 600 miles from Sydney, where this family had lived, to Brisbane, Queensland. This makes seeing his children prohibitively expensive. Previous to that, he limited my correspondent first to one visit per week, then to one visit every two weeks.
My initial letter to FLRA about Mr. Corish:
From: "Roger Knight" rogerwknight@hotmail.com
Reply-To: f4jinternational@yahoogroups.co.uk
CC: secretary@familylawreform.com.au
Subject: [f4jinternational] Expulsion of Andrew Corish for Denying (Redacted for this website) Equal Parenting
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 22:26:55 -0800
Our friend (redacted for this website) has asked us to write to you to suggest that Andrew Corish, solicitor in Sydney, NSW, be removed from your organization and any organization that claims shared parenting or equal parenting to be its goal. Mr. Corish represented Mr. (redacted for this website)'s ex-wife in their divorce and custody case. In so doing, he has systematically reduced Mr. (redacted for this website)'s access to his children until it is only now once every three months and at his great expense. Mr. (redacted for this website)'s ex moved their children some 600 miles away to Queensland and Mr. Corish supported her in that move and obtained the greatly reduced access to Mr. (redacted for this website).
Even before this move, Mr. (redacted for this website) obtained a divorce and custody arrangement that allowed, at first, only two visits with his children per fortnight, and then only one visit per fortnight.
Given this practice by Mr. Corish as a solicitor, one can only conclude that all statements he publicly makes about shared parenting and equal custody are but a sham. For any organization to have any credibility as an organization that truly believes in shared parenting, it must not include members such as Mr. Corish.
I speak as an experienced father's rights activist in Seattle, Washington, USA and I know hypocrisy, dishonesty and a Nazi style government sponsored hate campaign when I see one. Please see www.antipeonage.0catch.com for information on where I am coming from. I see all three here in the way Mr. (redacted for this website) has been treated.
Nazis are quite unnecessary and most counterproductive in any organization that claims to promote the interests and rights of Jews.
So therefore, you might want to consider my humble suggestion that you no longer need the services of Mr. Corish.
After I sent this off, I forwarded it to Mr. Corish himself, after quickly finding his e-mail address on the Staunton and Thompson law firm's website. He responded thus:
From: Andrew Corish arc@stlegal.com.au
Reply-To: "arc@stlegal.com.au" arc@stlegal.com.au
To: 'Roger Knight' rogerwknight@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: [f4jinternational] Expulsion of Andrew Corish for Denying (redacted for this website) Equal Parenting
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 12:19:43 +1100
Dear Mr Knight,
I read your email with interest.
I note your concern for fathers to have a relationship with their children, which I share.
Mr (redacted for this website) is a sad instance of someone who could not separate his obsession with avoiding making any payment for the benefit of his former wife, which has unfortunately affected his relationship with his children. He says he got the urge to give away $200,000 being the parties' only property after she made a claim and thereafter has surprisingly not been able to obtain any income. He is currently paying $10 per month in child support. He left his former wife destitute. He saw his children intermittently until recently. I have tried to assist this poor woman and her children at considerable personal cost. She had little option in the end but to take such assistance and accommodation as she could get.
My personal views are irrelevant to my obligation as a lawyer to assist a client to put his/her instructions into effect, within certain ethical guidelines. However I do try to assist whoever I come across to the best of my ability and certainly not by promoting litigation.
Mr (redacted for this website) has tried writing to some of the organisations I assist on a voluntary basis, seeking that I be banned from their organisation. Such organisations know me and that I try to assist them and the people they represent, even if I do not necessarily support everything they espouse.
Andrew Corish
I read this carefully, and then composed this response:
Mr. Corish, with all due respect:
Whether a man pays any money at all to his ex-wife, or whether a woman pays any money at all to her ex-husband, is irrelevant to whether either should allow the other to see their children.
If the issue is whether Mr. (redacted for this website) should continue to support his ex-wife after they are separated, then it is unethical in the extreme to deny him access to the children to coerce payment or to punish for nonpayment.
It is no better than kidnapping for ransom.
If the issue is whether Mr. (redacted for this website) should support his children, that goal can be accomplished by shared parenting without requiring either parent to pay the other parent any money.
If the issue is Mrs. (redacted for this website) being unable to earn income sufficient to provide for her children while she has them, and Mr. (redacted for this website) has such resources, then perhaps the solution is custody to the breadwinner and job training for the non-breadwinner.
If jobs are unavailable for Mrs. (redacted for this website), then perhaps Australia, along with the United States, Canada and other nations where the standard of living has been fairly good, ought to rethink their current obsession with free trade without a planetary minimum wage. Mexico is closer to the United States than Indonesia is to Australia and maquiladora is a Spanish word that has come to mean "factory or office located where the labor is unreasonably cheap".
Perhaps this circumstance is not Mr. (redacted for this website)'s fault?
If Mr. (redacted for this website) simply no longer wants to support Mrs. (redacted for this website), then perhaps it is because he no longer considers her worth the money. As an attorney, you've no doubt have had clients fire you for that very reason!
But for you and her to use the children as a means to extract money from Mr. (redacted for this website) is no better than a robber using a threat of violence to extract money from another person, however much that person may owe the money, however much the robber may need it.
It is exactly what a kidnapper does.
If you are trying to coerce Mr. (redacted for this website)'s employment so he will pay money to you and to your client, well, in the United States some of us call that peonage.
Admittedly this law is honored in the breach, as our press, courts and politicians have been in as much denial as an alcoholic who is told he has a drinking problem, but that is what some of us Americans believe.
Further details are at www.antipeonage.0catch.com if you are curious about such American laws.
Anyway, it appears your client was so poor that she was able to move herself and her children 600 miles away and continue to retain you to represent her.
Perhaps you might advise your client to be more reasonable in allowing access to Mr. (redacted for this website). If not, the rest of us can be forgiven for thinking that thou art a hypocrite.
My Australian correspondent generously supplied me with some of the correspondence he has had with Mr. Corish. He sent it to me as Adobe Acrobat files attached to e-mails, this time with the redacting of his name and the names of his ex and his children already done. Amazing how FAST a message and attached documentation can travel 9,000 miles! If necessary, you can go to www.adobe.com and download for free the Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 file and install.
Corish to Father, May 21, 2002, .pdf file
Corish to Father, December 12, 2002, .pdf file
Corish to Father, December 23, 2003, .pdf file
If Mr. Corish does not like me revealing this correspondence on the Internet, I suppose he can sue me in King County Superior Court in Seattle. Or if he claims that the amount in controversy is greater than $75,000 American, he can go after me in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington under the diversity of citizenship jurisdiction of 28 U.S.C. §1332.
If he chooses to sue me in an Australian court, I might send a letter telling such court that as I owe more than $5,000 American in child support arrears, the United States Government might not grant me a passport. Therefore, I might move for a continuance of the proceedings until such time as I can travel to Australia and represent myself in my defense!
Feel free to e-mail me at rogerwknight@hotmail.com with any comments that you have to share.
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