Divorce Courts Act in Their Own Interests

Multiple Federal Appellate Courts have found that children have a right to familial association with their parents and that these rights are "individually protected, private" fundamental rights. The Supreme Court has placed the right to free association into the category of First Amendment rights as the right of free speech would be meaningless without the right to associate with others. First Amendment rights as we know require enhanced scrutiny.

The Fourteenth Amendment protects the "private rights of individuals" against state action. First Amendment rights of parents and children to speak with, associate with, worship with, and share family privacy with one another in an intimate and expressive, close family, parent-child relationship are the indivdual rights of each parent and each child. They do NOT come from marriage and they can NOT legitimately be made to depend on marriage. When the state seeks to convert private rights into marital rights or to deny private rights as punishsment for disfavored marital choices, the state violates the constitution.

The Fourteenth Amendment protects individual parents and individual children from the state's asserted family code authority and from the state action of the child custody judge who violates their judicial oath when denying private rights as consequence for marital choices.

When both parents in divorce are fit, there is absolutely no rational basis for depriving the child of equal association rights with both fit parents. Doing so creates a second class child based on nothing more than the marital status of the parents. This as we know violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

As far back as 1968, the US Supreme Court has held it to be unconstitutional to deny rights to a child simply because a parent made a marital choice that the state disfavors. In later cases, the Court called this an "illogical and unjust" "penalty" placed on the child that is contrary to basic American law. This was the basis for overturning the bastardy codes. Child custody as practiced today under the best interests of the child scam is nothing short of a bastardy code that illogically and unjustly punishes children for the marital choices of a fit parent. In 1972, the Court held that the state does NOT serve the best interests of the child when the state deprives the child of a fit parent.

Divorce Court Judges who deny a child's right to free and equal association with both fit parents are acting in the Divorce Court's interests NOT the child's.

To learn more about this and other family law constitutional issues read our book: NOT In the Child's Best Interest or inquire about engaging our services.