Have you ever been told, “Well you had an attorney didn’t you? So what are you complaining about?” You are treated like that was enough, like that was sufficient. And then they look at you funny and act like they don’t understand why you are complaining. They act confused about why you didn’t like the outcome of mediation, why you didn’t like the outcome of your trial. They treat you like you actually got the representation that was necessary to get you the results that were equivalent to justice.
Few parents really know what kind of justice they should be getting. Most are so emotional and wrapped up in their preconceived ideas or the ideas an attorney has told them about divorce process and child custody that they don’t even know what their rights and their child’s rights really are. Often parents will assert their rights for a brief moment but give in to the system until they receive an intolerable result—having lost their child and having to pay their ex for that privilege.
When you later try to assert your rights you are seen as just trying to re-litigate because you are unhappy with the results. Which might be really what we believe you are doing at that point because of the way that you (or your attorney) presented your case. You most likely went in there and used all the old patterns and wrongheaded thinking that has been used for generations. [See Chapter 2 in our book “NOT in the Child’s Best Interest” for more examples of more wrongheaded thinking.]
How much better off would you be if you had asserted your constitutional rights from the beginning?
HARMLESS ERROR ANALYSIS
You could even be shut out from seeking justice afterwards based on something called a “harmless error analysis.” What this means is that the court believes that even if there was error that error was harmless to you and your case, therefore, they will do little or nothing about that error. You need to know how to challenge this effectively especially when you have an attorney. If your attorney doesn’t tell you that you have constitutional rights as a parent and you lose those rights, is it error and is it harmless?
INEFFECTIVE COUNSEL
Q:Does your attorney have a duty to inform you of and to protect your constitutional rights? The rules of attorneys do not say that they have any duty to inform you about any fundamental parental rights. In fact, Department of Human Services in Indiana just recently changed their policies because they finally came to the “belief” that parents have a right to a relationship with their child!” Has it really taken them this long to figure this out when the Supreme Court has been saying this for more than 100 years?
A:You would think that this would have been part of the consideration before they start ripping your child out of your home. That’s the problem though, it has not been part of the process and still isn’t in most States. States have never integrated the 14th amendment into the family court process and procedures. The legislatures have never integrated this into the family code statutes either.
So when you are obtaining legal counsel, you are basically hiring someone to create a problem that gives the court a reason to invade your private family life and take over your child and take over your authority to make decisions regarding your child. They want you to believe that getting divorced or no longer being with the other parent warrants this. They also want you to believe that you created the problem and that they are just cleaning up your mess. So what happens when you find out that you have rights and that there is a way to prevent most of this battling and expensive litigation and lengthy delays? Perhaps could it be time to STOP WASTING MONEY ON ATTORNEYS THAT REFUSE TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS!
THEN YOU CANNOT FIND AN ATTORNEY TO DO IT
If you have tried calling attorneys and asking them to fight using your parental rights, you might have discovered that there aren’t any attorneys that will agree with you. If you tell them that you are unhappy with being told that you have to beat up the other parent regardless of whether or not you like the parent, you just want to go on and raise your child peacefully and without the control and bullying from the other parent, they tell you then you better get along with the other parent then and make an agreement with them, or you’ll have to fight the traditional way.
You start hearing attorneys telling you, this isn’t the way it is done, and that family courts don’t care about this unless it is a termination hearing. And that you are better off just getting the children on your side and getting the other parent to mess up and get the judge on your side. Or you are told that you should just take what you can get or what they are giving you because you cannot afford to fight and what you are proposing just isn’t going to work at the trial court level. And then you are told you cannot afford an appeal, and that appeals take a long time. And the list of excuses goes on and on like a story that never ends... And it really doesn’t if you keep following those patterns.
How many attorneys do you have to call before the panic sets in and you realize that there just might not be any attorneys who know how to protect your family rights? Parents tell us that they have called 50 to 100 attorneys only to be told that they have never heard of fundamental parental rights being protected at the trial court level in family courts. More than 40,000 law students graduate from law school every year.[i] How many of them have we found who know how to protect family rights in divorce – zero!
So how then can they call this harmless error if you cannot even find an attorney who even knows how to do the job properly with the least amount of harm to you and your child? What is being family law board certified then anyway if they don’t even know how to present your fundamental family rights? Here is what the Indiana court said about harmless error:
“But under the circumstances of this case, we do not think that the notion of prejudice can be viewed that narrowly or parallel a harmless error analysis. The harm here was more than merely the additional weight C.C.’s personal participation might have carried at the hearing.”[ii]
The additional weight that presenting your constitutional fundamental family rights from the beginning might have carried on your case is insurmountable. We feel that it isn’t harmless error for your attorney to fail to inform you of your rights and to fail to assert your rights at trial or in your motions and pleadings either! Trying to prove that though isn’t where we are going with this post. We raise this issue because too many parents and children are falling victim and are easy prey to the family court process because they don’t know that they have rights in the first place, they aren’t being told they have rights, they are being tricked into following patterns that can be more harmful to them than the divorce itself, and they don’t know where to go when they cannot find an attorney to represent them to protect their rights!
If you cannot find an attorney to do this for you, then what are you paying that attorney to do! Sometimes there isn’t anyone to pay to do the job for you, you just might have to do it yourself. We otherwise would tell you to find an attorney or consult with an attorney, we have done that, and the attorneys are not stepping up to the job. So what do you do when that kind of problem exists, you have to solve that problem too. We have done that.
Many people in the past have been faced with injustice and have had to stand up to it as well. They too had to face the fact that those that they thought were there to protect them are now attacking them.
If you want to maintain your rights with your child in the face of an inhuman system designed to destroy families that refuses to acknowledge, respect, and protect the rights that empower you and provide you with leverage to stand up to and against abuses of power by the State and by the other parent, then you can...
START YOUR TRAINING HERE: Stop Being Afraid of Family Court Tyranny
Read the book “NOT in The Child’s Best Interest” and learn your basic fundamental parental rights.
Once you understand your rights you won't be easy prey to wasted money and wasted time. Close the window of opportunity for controlling and narcissistic parents that want to cut you out or alienate you from your child. This is where you start. This book is used in the classes.
Get into the classes and learn your rights, how your rights protect you and your child, and how your rights work in the face of family court abuse of power:
The classes are all on video on the internet. You can do them on your own time. You can do them at your own pace. The time that it takes to take these classes is shorter than most people spend in battle in the family courts. Once you understand your rights you could save hundreds of thousands of dollars and delays and more loss of time with your children and loss of everything that you have earned and worked for.*
Practice with us in a simulator so you know how to live your rights:
Practice with us in a simulator so you know how to live your rights and know how to respond when faced with attack on your rights whether it be in a courtroom or outside a courtroom. [Only students are allowed to use the simulator at this time, so STEP 2 is required in order to practice in the simulator. It does you no good to practice and not know what your fundamental parental rights are.]
Anyone that tells you that appeals is a longer process than fighting the family courts the old way, check with others that have been through the family court battles the traditional way. Mine was 7 years, a parent in the movie Divorce Corp was 10 years. And those that I’ve read about or spoken to where it was initially shorter have ended up back in court over and over again and in a continuous battle where the parent they gave in to or the court forced them to be subject to chip away more and more at the little rights they were left with. In our experience, those that have allowed others to chip away at them and gave in to the bullying or gave in to their excuses why they needed to agree to give up some of their rights (some saying that it was putting the child first by giving the other parent your time with the child so the child could stay in the same routines and not have to make any changes) have found themselves back in battles over and over again, and many have found themselves alienated and in a situation where now they are dealing with parental alienation syndrome, depression, and PTSD from being made totally powerless and hopeless. They have no leverage and are just milked for everything they own and make. They have no way to live any longer and no hope to ever change it. We provide these courses and webinars and tools because it has become of such public importance and a public need, and with the hopes that these help you get free of the family courts so you can thrive again and have the freedom to make your own decisions on how you want to live again and be able to do this with your child.
Sherry Palmer and Ron B Palmer
Strategic Parental Rights Coach, Instructor, Constitutional Scholar, and Author • Divorce Solutions and Child Custody Solutions
“NOT in The Child’s Best Interest”
Foundational book on constitutional parental rights, children’s fundamental rights, and overcoming best-interest overreach.
“Protecting Parent-Child Bonds: 28th Amendment”
Comprehensive treatise and guide for legislators and parents to protect family bonds under constitutional law.
Footnotes & References
- [i]"The Real Problem with Law Schools: They Train Too Many Lawyers." Posner, Eric. April 2, 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/04/the_real_problem_with_law_schools_too_many_lawyers.htmlaccessed August 24, 2014.↑
- [ii]Indiana Court of Appeals Judicial Decision: http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/07101401SHD.pdf↑