TOOL OF THE DAY: Testifying at Town Hall meetings and Congressional Hearings
CATEGORY: Family Law Legislative Reform
If you had an opportunity to speak to your congress or your supreme court justices, what would you say? This post helps you with that.
If you’ve been hurt by family court how do you address this and overcome their excuses and objections that get in the way of getting them to apply the proper solutions? This post addresses that too.
Here are some examples of testifying at town hall meetings and congressional hearings you can use and share.
I wrote these lists to help you get started with your own testimony. And because over the last several weeks the Supreme Court Justices of Florida have opened up the opportunity for all citizens of Florida to speak to them at Town Hall meetings throughout various locations in Florida. The problem has been that most of the time people have not known what to tell them is the right solution for the problems that they bring.
At the end of this post I’ve also added a powerful summary that not only gets your point across but also addresses the objections that we know are floating around in their heads as soon as you open your mouth up about family court needing to be fixed. As Dan Clark says people talk 120 to 140 words per minute on average, but we think at about 200-400 words per minute. So it helps when you know what some of these lawmakers and justices are thinking and you address them in your presentation as well rather than letting them sit there culminating and avoiding what you are saying. This is what makes your presentation powerful and effective.
Glen Gibellina and Michelle McDonald are some of the few taking advantage of these hearings as you can see in the videos on this page. We feel that the reason that more people are not testifying is that perhaps they just don’t know what to say. Glen has the right idea, tell them you have rights, you expect them to be protected, and to send in the cavalry when they are not. And Michelle has the right idea, tell them what your rights are and where they come from, and to correct their behavior because they are causing tremendous damage and permanent harm to society. We have addressed all of these below. Ron and I have created this list from the basic principles in our book and the research that we continue to do every day.
Here are a few basic points you can hit on to make sure they understand what you want, to show them that you know what rights you have, and where they can look for support of the rights that you are claiming. You can start with the following:
- The Constitution applies to all family courts and every administrative court below them that they create to assist them in carrying out their duties.
- Your family rights are fundamental and inalienable and cannot be interfered with until the state proves that they have met the threshold set by the U.S. Supreme Court.
- This threshold is for the state to prove you unfit or a clear and present danger to your child directly in a proper adjudication hearing. (An adjudication hearing is not one where the court assumes that you have no rights until they grant them to you. And a proper hearing is not one where they hold divorced parents to different standards than married parents.)
- Explain that due process does not mean just having hearings. Due process requires the proper hearings. Right now the your state has been holding hearings that assume you have no rights until they grant them, and the hearings are more dispositional in nature. Dispositional hearings come after a proper adjudication.
- Watch our webinars on Temporary orders on our video page in order to understand this concept more and be able to answer any questions that the justices or congressman might have.
- Because these rights are fundamental they require that the court use strict scrutiny.
- Your family rights include the right to privacy, and the right to equally care for your child, to have equal custodial access to your child, to have equal control of your child, and to have the opportunity for an equal companionship/relationship with your child.
- If you need help citing case law for these, you can find it in our book, “NOT in the Child’s Best Interest.”
- The amendments that protect your family rights are all of the amendments in our book and discussed in our courses. It’s a good start to mention the 1st, 4th, and 14th. There are some more protections from some of the other amendments as well. If you want to hear more argument on these so you can persuade these justices to start ruling that the family statutes or codes in your state are unconstitutional, you can get course 1 class videos delivered to your computer by going to the course 1 link. (This course is not free but is on discount at the time of the posting of this post, so it is easily affordable for most. But if you cannot afford the courses keep checking back here on this blog. We are posting a tool for free for you every day this 2015 year. The benefit of the course if you can get it is you get a bunch of tools and argument all at once immediately.)
- Your family rights include the right to care for your child directly and to continue to have full authority over your child. This means that any state law that is taking away your ability to support your child directly with the money that you earn is unconstitutional. It is required that the state prove that you discharged your duty to do so prior to imposing any rules that they set to obtain Title IV-D money. Yes, we realize that Title-IV D is incentivizing the state to impose child support onto one of the parents. So you will have to be very clear on your argument with this one. And use some of the argument that we shared in the blog post “Child Support…How to End Cash for Kids”.
- And if you want to explain how Title IV-D is unconstitutional and what needs to change in that policy, you can read the post: Title IV-D
- Inform them at the town hall meeting or the congressional hearing that seizing your child and awarding one parent more time share and the right to receive financial incentive from the other parent for having more of the timeshare is an illegal seizure of your child. This is where you would use 4th amendment arguments about illegal seizure from the case law from the U.S. Supreme Court. (Some of our other blog posts discuss this too. Just surf around the other blog posts and you’ll find lots of gold nuggets that relate to all of these bullet points.)
- Inform them that incentivizing a parent to destroy the protected relationship of the other parent in order to be given some of the other parent’s equal timesharing right is promoting and encouraging not only harmful litigation involving the child but also making it conducive for parental alienation syndrome to develop.
- Inform them that the states are not allowed to treat divorced or separated parents and children of these parents as second-class citizens without a legitimate state interest and that this would need to be narrowly tailored to serve that legitimate interest of the state. You can download a paper on 1st amendment and equal protection rights of the children and parents here: FREE DOWNLOADS
- Then add a couple of examples of damage and harm the states have had from using the statutes that are in place now, as well as any statistics that you have that show the damage and harm that has happened to families (children and their parents) in your state and throughout the united states, and even the world. Here is where you can use the statistics from any studies to prove that the state’s policies are harming and endangering children, not protecting them. (This post has statistics from the CDC and this post “Is Excessive Child Support Destroying Families and Our National Economy?” has discussion and reference to some of the Massachusetts General Hospital study.)
- Offer solutions. And finally make sure that you offer them solutions. You don’t want to leave the solutions out because they usually do not know how to fix it or what would really fix the problems that you have brought to the table. You are much more likely to get them to take action when you make it easier for them to solve it.
You can find solutions in our book, “28th Amendment: Protecting Parent-Child Bonds.” Here is an audio reading of chapter 7 from this book (with some commentary):
End with these bullet points:
The Palmer Principles:
- Fit parents are the best protectors of children.
- Fit parents hold their children’s rights in trust, not the court until the state has met the thresholds discussed above.
- Parents going through divorce is not an invitation into the protected privacy rights of the family.
- Parents going to the courts in disagreement is not a “tie breaker” situation. These are individual fundamental family rights that each parent and child need the courts to step up and protect from the other angry parent by applying the proper law — the supreme law of the land first. The courts must protect each parent from the other parent trying to use the court to infringe or interfere or deprive the other parent and child of their equal rights and equal access. All child abuse, domestic violence, protective order requests, etc., should go through the same channels as any other criminal complaint. The state cannot lower the standards in divorces and child custody battles because it makes them feel good. There is a price to freedom and liberty. Some of that price means that we cannot have a knee-jerk reaction to claims made by parents that we might not otherwise be allowed to have in other areas of the law.
- When parents divorce or are separated there are now two family units. Each biological parent and child make a unit separate from the other parent. So now they have two parents with protected family units. In order for the court to use their state power to interfere with either of the parent’s rights the state must meet the threshold with both parents. One parent cannot invite the state into the other parent’s life without the proper pleadings that would meet this strict scrutiny requirement.
- You will encounter child identity and status quo objections here. Take course 1 “Protecting Family Rights” to learn how to overcome these objections.
- The state does not grant parents their rights, these are fundamental and inalienable.
- You will encounter “but the state gets to determine how the parents exercise their rights, the federal government has said numerous times this is a state power.” Take course 1 to address these objections.
- Currently state statutes do not have the proper triggers specified in them and this has led to lowered standards that are violating this threshold that protects parents and children. You are asking them today to create laws (congressman) and rulings (justices) that reflect these long-held cherished rights derived from the United States Constitution and interpreted in cases from the United States Supreme Court. Ask them to please pass laws and rulings to protect the children properly by protecting the fit and loving parents. Only once this is done can they stop the viral bad practices that have been perpetuated by smokescreens and biases throughout all family courts.
Bringing you paths to reforming family law:
Need an example of testimony at a congressional hearing. Here is an excellent example of Attorney Michelle McDonald testifying at a congressional hearing: (Michelle McDonald runs the nonprofit called “Family Innocence” and they are “Dedicated to keeping families out of court: Resolving conflict and injustices peacefully.”
Want more? You can learn more about how to reason through your rights and protect your rights in our books and courses. Click at the top on Store and you will find the books and training tabs. The book teaches you your rights and the training courses teach you how to argue them like I demonstrated above.]
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Come back to this blog every day this year and you will find another valuable tool posted to help you protect your family, your hard-earned money, and your ability to continue to pursue your life dreams with your child by your side.
Strategic Parental Rights Strategist, Instructor, Constitutional Scholar, and Author
Divorce Solutions and Child Custody Solutions
Co-author “Not in the Child’s Best Interest” (Book on parental rights and children’s rights)
Co-author “Protecting Parent-Child Bonds: 28th Amendment” (Book includes guide for legislators)
Website: www.fixfamilycourts.com
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Disclaimer: I am NOT an attorney or a lawyer. I do NOT practice law in any federal or State court system. Any information provided by me to you, regardless of how specific, is NOT intended to be legal advice under any state or federal law. I provide research, written strategies, and non-professional personal opinions on the Constitution and State laws as free exchange of politically important information that also serves an important public need and interest allowed under the First Amendment. You are highly encouraged to engage an attorney in your State to help you with the specifics of your legal issues and the law in your State. If you are a pro se litigant then you bear all and full responsibility for understanding the law in your state and acting under the law in your state. Nothing you receive from me is intended to be a “legal” document for purposes of any type of filing in any court. You are free to use my words for your personal non-commercial benefit, or as an aide in petitioning your government for redress of perceived wrongs, if properly cited where appropriate. YOU TAKE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY LEGAL ACTIONS YOU PURSUE AND THE RESULTS THAT YOU GET. I BEAR NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR RESULTS. MY OPINIONS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN MY PERSONAL NON-PROFESSIONAL OPINIONS OR BELIEFS. I MAKE NO CLAIMS OF LEGAL COMPETENCY IN THE LAW UNDER ANY GOVERNMENT STANDARD OF COMPETENCY IN THE LAW.
The information provided above is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. You should consult an attorney regarding your rights under the law.
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