Going in to the new year, I encourage people to think before judging the parents who do not have equal custody with their child. Before you judge them you need to know that they were not represented properly in the family courts. I can assure you that their attorney did not insist that the court follow the supreme law of the land because very few of them believe that this applies in family law. So before you judge the parents, judge the judges and attorneys refusing to apply the constitution.
If the courts really wanted to reduce child custody litigation they could do what they are known to do to parents trying to get equal custody, they could require that any parent filing to take custody from another parent get approved first before they are allowed to file suit with the court. They could require this complaining parent to show that there is a crime against the child to prosecute like child abuse, neglect, or abandonment to the same level of proof and credibility required to find a parent guilty of a crime.
Did you know that most of the time a parent loses because they cannot afford to fight? Yep fit, loving, kind, and involved parents are stripped from their children and their children lose this parent many times because there isn’t the money to keep fighting. And so many of them lose the parent because the parent is encouraged to stop fighting because they are told that the fight is going to cost them more than they have.
The reason the children get hurt is because the judges and attorneys will stoop low and will involve the child. Look at the laws in your state they make you think that they are doing a good thing with statutes that say the child can talk to the judge or that they can appoint an attorney for the child to speak on their behalf. They make you think that they are giving the child a voice, when what they are really doing is perpetuating a bad idea that children should get to choose one parent over the other. And in most states now, the courts appoint an attorney to speak on the child’s behalf under the name of a GAL or an Amicus. This has been used as another way to force parents out of the fight by making it more expensive and another way for them to manipulate the voice of the child.
There are parents out there who are barred from filing any further custody requests to have their equal custody restored. Those courts are in the wrong, if they have taken those parent’s rights without applying the proper law. The parent that should be barred is the parent they gave the custody to without proper constitutional protections. Those courts should restore the noncustodial parent’s equal time, remove the NCP label so that both are called a parent without the conservator or NCP label and then the court should make sure the other parent does not continue to harass the parent who has had their time restored. Too bad there is not an executive order that could be signed to repeal all of these horrible custody orders and one that would put a stop to expensive litigation.
Parents and their children should be able to have confidence that if the parental relationships don’t work out that their rights will be self-executing and will be protected from the outset without the need for thousands of dollars and a lengthy, destructive court battle. It is difficult enough when a relationship is going bad, you don’t need bad actors to come in and take advantage of the vulnerable and emotional state you are in during the process of de-coupling.
That would be justice and that is my wish for the new year for all parents and children in all states…for all fit and loving parents to be restored and all those children to have the benefit of their equal access to all. And for all of those children to be able to get to know their relatives on both sides of the family without the stress of adopting an alienating parent’s negative and poisonous views of the other parent. When the courts remove the winner-loser model, the children will always WIN!
