The Philippines legal system is, I suppose, like any legal system in the world. Nothing happens in a hurry. Yet one of the things I notice from clients is that they often expect that they….an Australian in the Philippines who wants a partner visa for his Filipina lady……can navigate around the Filipino courts easily and quickly. They have their ideas, and they assume the system will bend to suit them.

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Australian visa applications with Filipino legal problems

I’ve written a mountain of articles here about problems with NSO documents. NSO = National Statistics Office aka Philippines Statistics Office. Feel free to search in the search box on the left for “NSO problems” if you want to busy yourself for the next few hours.

NSO documents = birth certificates, marriage certificates, Certificates of No Marriage (CENOMAR) and death certificates. The one national office takes care of all of these for the entire Philippines, and generally does quite a good job. Visa applicants will become all too familiar with the NSO. The problem comes from when wrong information is entered originally, often carelessly and sometimes fraudulently. And sometimes the clerk at the counter isn’t listening carefully and enters the wrong data.

Now, fortunately most of the minor typos and acts of carelessness can be cleared up at the Local Civil Registrar at the local City Hall these days rather than going to court, but acts of fraud and deliberate lies? They need to go through the court, and you shouldn’t expect to get much done in less than 6 months. Might be 12 months. Might be 2 years if it’s complicated and if the court is busy.

Now, why would an Australian man think that false information on official documents would be fixed up easily and quickly?

Haven’t quite worked that one out myself, and I do wonder sometimes. It might not appear so, but lying on official documents is a crime here in Philippines just as it is in Australia, regardless of it being not so uncommon. The fact that your Filipina girlfriend/fiancee/wife may have had no say in it, or may have had terrible advice, this has nothing to do with it. People are relying on official documents being reliable and trustworthy, and violating this is clearly a serious matter. And you being overprotective of her doesn’t change matters one iota!

So you have the Australian government which has zero tolerance of fraudulent documents in visa applications, and you have the Philippines government trying to put things right. And no court anywhere in the world simply rushes these things through, because they have a duty to do things right rather than fast. And they have little interest in whether this is holding up your visa application.

I’m sure a lot of the issue is that men in love who are missing their girls, by nature, must remain optimists to deal with the loneliness and the anxiety of uncertainty. So being a bit overly optimistic and downplaying the reality and the complexity of situations is probably a way of coping. Discovering that the love of your life has legal problems with uncertain solutions and timelines would of course bring on a case of denial in most men.

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Examples of legal problems delaying partner visa applications

Here are a few issues that have come up lately, along with the usual collection of typos and wrong dates. These are matters that need the Philippines court.

Discovering that she is already married

This is a fairly common one. Had several lately that discovered the ladies were married to two different men at the same time. The men will then ask me if they can apply for a partner visa soon! Well, you can’t! You can’t marry a married woman, even if she’s been separated for 8 years and he never supports the kids. Can’t marry in the Philippines. Can’t marry in Australia.

There is no simple no-fault divorce in the Philippines. She needs an annulment, which will take time and cost money. She either needs to go through this, or you need to look at the possibility of applying for an Australian partner visa as a de facto couple. This will normally take time too. You can marry her and apply for a partner visa in time. Just not right now.

If she has two husbands already? That’s called bigamy! She needs a good attorney, and you need some patience. You need patience with any matters to do with being married already. Assuming a legal marriage can be rubber-stamped away because something appears to you to be incorrect or invalid? Think again!

Kids with wrong information on birth certificates

Not talking about typos. Talking about fraud here. Claiming:

• Child is the child of her parents, so they can hide their public shame.
• Claiming parents were married when they were not, to hide the shame of being an illegitimate child.
• Claiming child is child of the Australian husband, when he may not have even been in the country at conception.

Sometimes this is done for noble reasons, and other times for convenience. These are still fraudulent actions, and you can’t demand “rights” or demand speedy service. You couldn’t do that in Australia either. Can you imagine how the Australian courts would view some of these matters? You could face jail time!

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How to deal with Philippines legal matters

One word! Legally!

Short-cutting the system is most likely a part of what caused your problem in the first place. Instead of dealing with a matter properly, someone took an apparently easy way out. You are now dealing with it! Don’t make the same mistake! Do it properly, regardless of how long it will take.

And should you get annoyed with poor ol’ Jeff Harvie from Down Under Visa for telling you the bad news? Preferably not! I’m just being honest. If I told you it was simple, I could stand to make more money sooner. But we don’t work like that. Half the time I tell it straight to people, they don’t even come back. There’s invariably a charlatan out there somewhere who will agree with whatever you say, but that’s not us. We like sleeping well at night. For your own sakes, please listen to us. We know what we’re talking about.

Further reading

Philippines marriage license fraud and Australian visas

Bogus documents – Poison for Australian visa applications

Visa bogus document problems? Face it! Fix it!