Want Equal Parenting but Cannot Get an Equal Parenting Bill Passed? Try This:

Brad Pitt's family was ripped apart by the family court process, yours won't be any different. You don't have time to wait on changing the laws, and you don't want to keep going through the same insanity.

Did you know that equal parenting is actually a required default constitutionally?

That's right, it is your legal right. So how do you get this to apply to your case and help you get justice and win child custody without having to beat up the other parent's character? Child custody battles have been a forum where being vindictive and narcissism is rewarded. Brad Pitt admits that the divorce process took a toll.

“I was really on my back and chained to a system when Child Services was called. And you know, after that, we’ve been able to work together to sort this out. We’re both doing our best,” he said. “I heard one lawyer say, ‘No one wins in court — it’s just a matter of who gets hurt worse.’ And it seems to be true, you spend a year just focused on building a case to prove your point and why you’re right and why they’re wrong, and it’s just an investment in vitriolic hatred. I just refuse. And fortunately my partner in this agrees. It’s just very, very jarring for the kids, to suddenly have their family ripped apart.”*

Brad admits that he had weaknesses that allowed the divorce process to take advantage of him. He said "I'm an asshole when it comes to this need for justice. I don't know where it comes from, this hollow quest for justice for some perceived slight. I can drill on that for days and years. It's done me no good whatsoever. It's such a silly idea, the idea that the world is fair." Attorneys use a person's belief that the world if fair to get them to participate in a child custody battle. They will feed your desire to fight over every perceived slight that happened to you during your separation. Those types of quest for justice are hollow and will make you bankrupt. Divorce is a common reason for bankruptcy. And yes divorce has broken many celebrities, remember Robin Williams. He had to go back to accepting roles he didn't like to be able to continue to pay the bills and the alimony / spousal maintenance.

Brad never dreamed that all of his planned parenthood and marriage would crumble with a single anonymous phone call to a CPS worker.

Why Equal Parenting?

An equal parenting starting point along with protection of your legal rights reduces the fighting; reduces the fear responses which are usually expressed through anger, crime, and suicide; reduces the need to trump up false allegations; increases the protection your child receives from government interference and protection from losing the full influence and development the child receives from both parents; reduces the likelihood that a child will be placed in the hands of the abuser and stripped of the fit and loving parent; eliminates supervised visitation of fit parents; eliminates the need for costly child custody studies and psych evals just to hang on to your child equally; and de-escalates the emotions and leads to clearer heads and better likelihood that the parents will calm down and can forge their own agreements like Brad and Angie did. The less you have to fight over the less it will cost you financially and emotionally. And when it is all said and done, in Brad's words, “People on their deathbeds don’t talk about what they obtained or were awarded. They talk about their loved ones or their regrets..." When the courts respect that the proper constitutional presumption is equal parenting, there won't be the bitter fighting, it won't be allowed.

The courts are using unconstitutional authority or using your ignorance to grant themselves the authority to strip you of your equal parental rights to your children so they can extort money from you to get you to fight over who they will grant, award, or appoint them back to, so that they can get the federal incentives from Social Security Title IV D.

You are entitled to equal parenting right now.

If your state law is contradicting this entitlement, then your law is unconstitutional and harmful to your child. Children are harmed when their parents are forced to fight and they are stripped of a fit parent. Do not believe them when they tell you that they are not stripping you of anything and that you have all of your rights intact still, when they have limited your time to exercise those rights, and most orders also have some form of prior restraint / gag orders in them as well. And everyone knows that you are not free to make parenting decisions truly, as you never know what is going to be unfavorable to the judge and just one slight mis-step and angering the ex could lead to another face-to-face showdown in the courtroom. This is happening because you are not seeing your equal parenting rights. The states have left those hidden, hoping you will not read between the lines. Your rights come from interpretation of the constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States interprets the constitution and thus interprets your rights. States are supposed to translate those into their laws. But the states have not integrating these interpretations into their laws completely. They have bits and pieces, but just the ones that leave the doors of discretion flung wide open, and their power to manipulate divorced and separated families and grab the federal incentives in the process. They can use your hardship and your hard-earnings to pad the state's budget and their own pockets in the process.

If you live in a state that does not have equal parenting and you are having to fight the old barbaric ways, and need case law to help you understand how to argue and win child custody equal parenting time regardless of whether your state has this in their statute or not, you will find the information you need to argue this effectively by becoming a member and gaining access to the information and education you will need to help you keep the courts and attorneys from stealing more of your money and your child's future. Become a member**and get access to our books, online education, member's only posts that go into more depth regarding your rights and our research, and also access to some of our research notes, annotated cases, and a whole lot more. Get access to new stuff before the general public. Get more information about our membership here.We look forward to helping you protect your rights and fight for what is already yours!

The State Tricks You by Making You Think They Grant or Award Your Parental Rights.

Take a look in your Family Code right now and we bet you will find the words "grant" or "award" in there. If you want something granted or awarded to you, what do you have to do, you have to beg or compete. That's what those words can reduce your courts down to, you pay money to get an opportunity to beg the king or queen to grant you a license to be with your child. The California Family Code states "In making an order for custody with respect to both parents, the court may grant joint legal custody without granting joint physical custody." The Texas Family Code states "Joint managing conservatorship does not require the award of equal or nearly equal periods of physical possession of and access to the child to each of the joint conservators."

Once Brad had time to reflect on what was really happening, he was able to see that the process was sucking the life out of him and that he was being asked to follow an empty and ugly path. His children were stripped from him for several months but he was able to get Angelina Jolie to work with him so that their family wouldn't be ripped apart further by the family courts.

With his new Netflix movie “War Machine” out this month and a commitment with Jolie to “act as a united front,” Pitt is focused on ensuring a better future for himself and his six children.*

Of course the attorneys never told Brad that there is an injustice here that is worth fighting for, that is much more than a mere perceived slight. Brad is one of the fortunate ones where he gets to continue to provide his children with his guidance because Angelina agreed to work with him. Not all fathers are this lucky. Not all mothers are this lucky. Not all children are this lucky. I think we can all agree with Brad when he said, "Kids are so delicate. They absorb everything. They need to have their hand held and things explained. They need to be listened to." I wonder whether Brad would be fighting still if he was not able to hold his kids hands and influence and guide them anymore. There are so many parents out there where the alienation never ends and they never get to be a Dad or a Mom to their own children again. Brad gets the opportunity to continue to be a father to his children. He is fortunate that he will be get to know his children on a deeper level than he ever had before. There are so many parents who in divorce realize that their relationship with the other parent took a toll on their relationship with their child as well. And many of them never get the opportunity to re-create that relationship with their children.

I grew up with a Father-knows-best/war mentality—the father is all-powerful, super strong—instead of really knowing the man and his own self-doubt and struggles. And it's hit me smack in the face with our divorce: I gotta be more. I gotta be more for them. I have to show them. And I haven't been great at it.

Brad is fortunate that he and Angelina were able to come to an agreement and work together, but many parents do not have that fortune. The laws need to change and integrate the constitutional protections so that their rights can protect them from the corruption and fraud that is used against them to rip their life apart. Stealing rights is the only way that the courts can get away with stealing your children.

Re-frame your case and change your strategy.

Even if your Family Code says that the judge does not have to give you equal time with your child even if you are fit and not a danger to your child, you don't have to wait for the legislator to change the statutes. A recent Arizonacase made a ruling that the statutes do not give the judge unlimited discretion. You would argue that your court has to harmonize the statute with the Constitution. If you don't know how to do this, you can become a member and read more in our membershipsite.

Can Equal Parenting Bills Prevent Courts from Stealing Children from Fit Parents?

I remember when I went through the divorce and child custody high conflict battle and process. Whenever I would say that they were stealing my children, they would deny it and refer me to the technical term in their laws for stealing or kidnapping children, and tell me to quit referring to the courts that way. They would tell me that what they were doing didn't qualify as kidnapping. They play those kinds of games while you are stripped from your children. They try to defeat you by getting you tangled up in their definitions, they stall so long that your children age out of the process and then it didn't matter whether you were right. If you are going to take the time to try and change the laws, if your goal is to end the gladiator style fighting, then what you want is to integrate the legal rights protections that you are supposed to get before a court can infringe your fundamental parental rights.

Bills You Can Propose in Texas and How to Fight for Equal Parenting in Your Court Now

Kentuckyrecently passed the first equal parenting presumption law. If all you want to do is put in there that the court must start with equal parenting, then you should consider writing a bill similar to HB528in your state. However, take out the sections that invade your privacy and discriminate against you based on your marital status. Where the bill says that the court is required "to consider the motivation of the adults involved when determining the best interest of the child for custody orders," do not include that section. I have provided a sample of wording you could consider below. (You are amending the best interest sections of your code, the modification section, and the temporary orders section.)

The court is to apply the presumption that joint custody and equally shared parenting time is in the best interest of the child, as long as the parent does not have a protective order or a domestic violence conviction in the last three years.

Next under your modification statutes, also amend them with the following:

If a court modifies a custody decree there is a rebuttable presumption that it is in the best interest of the child for the parents to have joint custody and equally shared parenting time and that the parents are to be presumed fit, and fit parents decide the best interest of the child. The presumption for joint custody and equally shared parenting time shall not apply when there has been a domestic violence order entered between two or more of the parties; the presumption for joint custody and equally shared parenting time shall not apply in cases where a domestic violence order, a protective order for domestic violence is being entered, or the parent has been convicted of child abuse.

Last, amend your temporary orders section with the following:

When the court issues a temporary order there is a presumption that it is in the best interest of the child for the parents to have joint custody and equally shared parenting time, as long as the parent does not have a protective order, a domestic violence conviction, or been convicted of child abuse in the last three years.

If you have any statutes in your code like Texas does where it says that equal parenting time is not required, add that to your bill for that language to be removed from your code. The court is required to presume that both of you are fit and entitled to equal custody time. Only after proper procedures are followed is the court supposed to take any of your custody time and rights away beyond what is naturally split by the separation. The Texas Family Code Sec. 153.135. says that equal possession does not have to be awarded. Your radar should be on high alert as soon as I mentioned the word "awarded." You know now that the state does not award you rights you already have, they can only take them. Challenge this statute and move on to the next step to win child custody equal parenting time. The statutes exact language reads as follows and applies to all SAPCRs in Texas.

Sec. 153.135. EQUAL POSSESSION NOT REQUIRED. Joint managing conservatorship does not require the award of equal or nearly equal periods of physical possession of and access to the child to each of the joint conservators.

Texans should have that section deleted. Equal possession is required until the court has overcome the constitutional barriers. Regardless, you can fight for equal parenting now. Don't know how, get the motions package with procedural, substantive, and equal protection motions with a bonus pre-trial motion to help you make your arguments. You can these here.

What are The Constitutional Barriers?

We go over these in more detail in our Protecting Family Rights course online in our membership site. But we will introduce you to a couple of them here:

  1. Least restrictive means.
  2. The state must show a compelling state interest.
  3. There must be a constitutionally compliant cause of action.

Ron and Sherry noticed while reviewing the family code in Texas that part of the problem in the family courts is that there is no guidance for the judges on how to protect fundamental rights between fit parents in SAPCR (Suit Affecting Parent Child Relationship). This problem is not unique to Texas, it is a problem in all of the 50 states in the U.S. Not one of them has integrated Troxel into their family codes completely. A proper interpretation and application of Troxel by your family court judge would prevent the constitutional violations that are happening in droves today.

The judges have been left to come up with their own ways of dealing with conflicts between parents without having to apply a constitutionally compliant procedure for fundamental parental rights before infringing or interfering with the basic inalienable parental rights that all fit bio parents had before they entered a family court.

The following is a proposed procedural bill for the Texas Family Code that will help you get the protection of your rights. In fact, your court can and should be doing this regardless of whether there are legislative bills saying it in your state statutes. (download the bill below) (Take the concepts and adapt them to your state's code and submit to your legislator.)

Propose the Following Procedural Protection Bill

This proposed procedural bill would make the process less adversarial and protect parents from unnecessary expenses and fighting.

procedural-protections-for-parental-rights-v1_2

If you cannot get equal parenting passed in your state, propose a bill similar to this one. This bill is how you protect your legal rights to be treated like an equal parent and to protect your parental right to decide what is in the best interest of the child, your child. End excessive costs of litigation between fit parents. End lengthy delays. Eliminate waiting on studies. No more burden on the fit parent. End encumbrances on your families financials. Protect all that you have worked so hard to earn, protect your savings, your retirement, and your assets. Preserve your hard-earned life savings and your child's inheritance and future college fund.

Turn the courts into a fortress that protect legal rights, with this bill.

If you have questions, you can contact the authors of this bill at our contact page here.

NOTE: All topics in public blog posts may not have the depth and detail that you need to actually persuade your court of law during your hearing or trial. We strongly encourage anyone who is going through this even those with attorneys to become a member so that you can stay in control of your case, frame your store properly, and guide your attorney effectively. Knowing what you are doing and not leaving this up to chance or up to the way attorneys have always done this could mean the difference between you continuing to be in control over your life and protecting your freedom.