Tools for Creating Parenting Plan Calendars and Motions for Child Custody Suits.

Doing these things can reduce litigation and result in a parenting plan that you can live with. All of this works even if you are dealing with a narcissistic parent or a toxic parent as well. Planning parent hood whether in a divorce, separated, or single should not be so difficult or expensive. Protecting your rights to your child in a child custody dispute and controlling your case through the process is key. We make it easy for you by giving you the top 5 most important steps you should start with if you are going through a divorce or modification. If you were never married and are separated or single, you would follow these same steps.

Before you hire an attorney, you should do the following things: (Even if you have already hired one, you should go through these steps.)

  1. Draft a parenting plan yourself before you go into mediation.
  2. Look at your family code or marital dissolution statutes in your state before you file anything and make sure you know what your challenges will be if you and the other parent cannot agree —  (If you have already filed something, you might be able to amend or supplement.)
  3. Learn what ex parte hearings are and standing orders.
  4. Before you ask for things know the cost, know whether you are waiving rights or appearing to concede any rights. An example is asking for an amicus or a guardian ad litem, child custody evaluations or mental health exams. These all violate constitutional rights, but you have to know how, and how to argue them credibly, and how to back up your argument.
  5. Know the rights the attorneys will not tell you about, your constitutionally protected parental rights (your fundamental rights) and have examples of how you want your attorney to protect your legal rights and your child’s rights and be ready to give to your attorney.

Let’s briefly go over each of the 5 steps that we just gave you above.

Number 1: Planning for parenthood after divorce or separation with unmarried parents can become very expensive if you are not careful. 

Do not just use one that your state has in their family code if they do not have equal ones in there, even if you think you shouldn’t ask for equal because you have a toxic parent or a narcissistic parent. We will get to that in a minute. Let me give you an example, Texas family code has what they call a Expanded Standard Possession Order. And parents in Texas are fooled into thinking that the parents should accept that as their plan. Because the state has planned out all of the details down to the time and days of the exchanges most attorneys and parents use it. Being lazy in the beginning could hurt your relationship with your child in the long run and cost you more than the original divorce later by thinking that you can go back and modify when things are working out so well. That’s not reality. Modifications are often more costly than the original final parenting plan and final order or final decree was to get. You can start with creating a parenting time calendar. You can use a program that makes it easy to create your parenting calendar, like CustodyXchange (Notice that CustodyXChange however does make a comment under their equal parenting plan pros and cons that shows that they don’t like equal parenting by showing a sad face next to the idea that the child would have two homes — just ignore that if you support equal parenting and want it, and go to our post that shows that equal parenting time is beneficial for children and strengthens the parent-child relationship.) You can also use parenting plans from the Ohio Supreme Court Parenting Guide like this parenting time schedule from page 20 of their guide. You can get their guide from our post here.

If you are not going for sole custody and qualify for joint custody, start with equal parenting time as the default. Even if the other parent has parenting styles that you do not like, you still start with equal parenting time. If there is a bit of distance between the two parents or one parent lives more than 100 miles away, then adjust the way the parenting plan works. Try to be reasonable without waiving or conceding your rights. You can be creative with your parenting schedules, you could offer the other parent more time over the summer and more time over the holidays and the extended weekends. Just keep in mind that you need to be as fair as possible because you are protecting your child’s rights too. Your child has a right to be with this other person even if they are a narcissist. As long as each of you are a fit parent, try to be as fair as possible in your proposal of your parenting plan. Put your emotions aside. If you plan using your rights, your emotions will not be making decisions for you, and you could save yourself a ton of money and a ton of heartache and stress. Only your rights can do this for you. Not trumped up ways to beat up the ex or to prove how much better parent you are then the other. Those are very expensive and take a toll on your future ability to deal with the other parent at future events your child will have, like graduations, their marriage, and the birth of their child.

Using your rights does not mean that your case will not reveal that the parenting plan should be un-equal. But you have to use them if you want them to protect you. If you want your rights to protect you, then you have to use the same standards that you are pleading should apply to you with the other parent as well. This does not mean that you cannot ask for unequal parenting time when you use your rights, it means that you have to apply the same standard you are asking the court to hold the other parent to. So you start with the default position, which should be equal parenting time. If you do not understand your rights and these standards and want to understand what it takes constitutionally before the court can issue an unequal parenting time order, you can get access to our books and online course under our really cheap membership. The cost is less than the cost of the book, NOT in the Child’s Best Interest. We try to write up as much as we can on this blog for free. If you need more though, get a membership for less than a dollar a day here. You will get access to member only blogs too as well as annotated case law and access to material we are working on before it is available to the general public too! This will save you a ton of money and help you frame your case and tell your story without going broke or being driven into bankruptcy.

Number 2: Reading your family code or marital dissolution statutes can be daunting as they can be very voluminous. Look for the ones that address the issues that you have in your case. Specifically look at the ones on the topics that you feel you and the other parent disagree on. Then write your parenting plan according to how contentious you feel your relationship is at the time so that the parenting plan can work even when the two of you are in disagreement. Do this before you file a Petition for Divorce or divorce pleadings, a paternity law suit, or just a child custody suit like in Texas a SAPCR or Suit Affecting Parent-Child Relationship. (Even if you have already filed one, you might still be able to amend or supplement. If you are out of time and cannot do this, there may still be options for you getting some of the legal rights protection arguments in to your trial. You can contact us if you need some assistance with making sense of how we understand parental rights and how we have helped parents and their attorneys argue these so that they can possibly avoid having to go to appeal, so that they can try to get justice by persuading their trial court in the first place, and so that they have protected their ability to argue these things on appeal if it ends up going that far. Father’s rights attorneys also need you to bring this information to them. Mother’s if you find yourself fighting a father who is trying to take away your rights to your child you need to as well.) Be wary if you are still wondering “can a judge violate your constitutional rights if you are in the right and you are telling the truth. Yes, they are doing it by making you fight over who is the better parent.

Attorneys will ask you to do expensive discovery and take you down a path that has you asking for things that cost a lot of money, and by a lot we mean, the average protracted, high-conflict, contentious child custody battle costs $77,000.00! So start by making a list of things you think you should ask for and then put a dollar figure next to them. Look in your family code to see what rights you would be giving up. If you do not know how to do this, contact us.

And even after doing everything your attorney tells you to do, you could still end up with a joint custody agreement that you cannot live with, you could still end up paying child support and alimony or spousal maintenance. Then you will find yourself in desperation and looking for ways to go back and you will see all the violations they made but now you will have made it more difficult if not impossible to challenge the parental civil rights violations.

Number 3: Learn what ex parte hearings are and standing orders. This is where you will experience the unlimited power of the state. They will swiftly strip you of rights and you might not ever see them back again. Ex parte hearings happen a lot at the very beginning of filing a law suit and usually end in temporary orders being issued, and many times restraining orders too. These temporary orders can set the tone in your case so you want to be very careful that you do not go into these unprepared. You might have to deal with child false allegations in one of these types of hearings as well. An ex parte hearing involving false allegations can happen at any time especially if you are dealing with a narcissistic parent or toxic parent. These also happen a lot when you start dating. If you are thinking about dating during the child custody suit or there is a step parent involved you have an increased chance of ex parte hearings in your case. Or if the other parent has re-married and they are wanting the step-parent to exercise your rights, or you might be upset that the step-parent has more rights and time to your child than you do. Before you end up in that situation, get in the know now, and stop buying empty, weak promises from attorneys who say that your only option is to get your child on your side and to dig up as much dirt on the other parent as possible. Lawyers have been selling this approach for decades now and look at how many fatherless homes and single parent homes we have now. They are not all because a parent wanted to walk away from their child. Many are because they are not told they have any constitutional parental rights rights, it is difficult to find an attorney who is willing to fight for these rights, and the attorneys make the process more expensive than it needs to be. Yes, using your rights is hard now because they have set a precedence now that stripping parents of their rights is usual and customary. But your life will be hard anyway after your rights are stripped and you are only left with $82 every paycheck. Let’s see you try to live on that. How hard will life be then?

Number 4: Before you ask for things know the cost. You might think that it is a good idea to ask for a right of first refusal clause and think that the first right of refusal when the other parent is pushing to be the primary residential parent and you won’t get as much custody time with your child, is a good idea. Living with this is another story however, and could lead to filing for modifications and enforcement frequently. This can get expensive, especially when the courts rarely enforce those. On top of that if you get a new significant other in your life and your job schedule changes and you would like this person to be able to care for your child during the time you are not personally available, you might not be able to have this benefit. This is especially important if parental alienation is a factor, which is most the time if there is a toxic parent involved. You would want someone who supports and encourages your relationship and your choices with your child as opposed to having to hand your child over to the narcissistic or toxic parent. The right of first refusal might force you to expose your child to the other parent’s bad parenting. If the other parent is taking more time away from you with your child, we totally understand you wanting to ask for it. So there may be circumstances where you will ask for this. If you need to help thinking of all the things that you should consider, you can contact us.

Your attorney or friends might be telling you to get a third party involved and to ask for an amicus or a guardian ad litem when the other parent is insisting that you are not the better parent and that your parenting is substandard to theirs. To avoid a lengthy and protracted child custody battle you should consider the cost of this. This will cost you money and stress. You cannot control who the amicus or GAL sides with and you will be paying half of the expense in most states. And sometimes if you are the higher income earner you could pay for a higher percentage of the cost. We have seen the cost be as high as $100,000 in six months. That is extreme. The average costs that we have seen is between $15,000 to $30,000 for a GAL or amicus. The cost tends to be dependent on how much you file and how long your case goes on.

Number 5: You probably don’t have a lot of time of your own to spend on learning your constitutional rights through your own research, so we have simplified it for you and your attorney. The motions are general enough where you can adapt them to your case. If there is something in them that is not an issue in your litigation then remove that section. These are in Word format so you can add and delete anything you want. If you aren’t sure about what to do, you can contact us here.

These motions are intended to help you frame the case and change the dynamics of how the courts are screwing parents, the broken system is not going to fix itself. In addition there is a Pre-Trial Conference motions* in there as well. These are all designed to provide you with the protections to the rights you are entitled to and help you protect your child from government interference — these do more than just equal parenting, it gets the family courts out of your wallet, protects your right to challenge the illegal practices of the courts, to protect you from constitutional violations, and to protect your right to protect your child from the interference of the courts and your ex and your right to decide the best interest of the child, your child. Before you proceed any further in your child custody suit reset the court and your attorney, and protect yourself from a who gets the child in legal separation” ongoing battle, protect yourself from the court bankrupting process, and protect yourself from unnecessary delays, and prevent “court-induced parental alienation”™.

As promised, we have been working on more tools to help you get your attorneys to do this for you. The newest motion that has been added to the Fix Family Courts declaratory judgment package is a new breakthrough. it is simple, direct, and easy to use.

This motion alone could solve the problems you have been having with the family courts. Get the other parent in a position to want to negotiate. Remove the threats of the process and get a joint custody agreement in place that you can live with and that can grow with your family, that reduces the need for modification later, and that allows you to breathe, re-establish yourself after separation with your resources intact. Using your rights does this for you without having to be rich or dependent on the state and giving up your rights to be controlled by the state forever after.

New Motion for Equal Parenting – Getting Justice in the Family Courts

 

The courts have been denying that constitutional rights apply to you in your child custody dispute. The judge scolds and punishes you for bringing up your rights at all and says that you are failing to put your child first when you bring up your rights. They are wrong and we prove it, and now you can too.

The real reason the judge does not want you to bring up your rights is because that is the only thing that protects you from them taking over your life, taking your child, and from spending your money. The court cannot appoint a GAL or an amicus or force you to undergo investigations and prove your worthiness as a parent if your attorney applied your rights properly. This motion teaches your attorney how to use your rights in your court to block the court from inserting itself into your life unconstitutionally. This motion uses the current court process.

The Pre-Trial Conference Motion asks important questions of law. These are questions that traditionally have not been addressed before trial. In fact, these questions were probably never addressed. And prior to this motion, you were probably trying to tell the court that you have rights and that you wanted the protection of these rights, and the judge rolled their eyes and told you to sit down and shut up, and that the constitution does not apply in his court, right? The problem was that you were asking for these after the court decided it was cleared to proceed to trial. There is a common cultural belief out there that if you end up in court you have waived your rights. Many parents are waiving them because they do not understand their rights. We would argue however that what they are considering a waiver may not be enough. Ideally, you need to raise the issue regarding your legal rights prior to the trial itself. However, if you are just learning about this, and you are heading into final trial you should modify your approach and how you have framed your case where you can. We are happy to meet with your attorney to work with him/her on this.

This motion simplifies the process and gets these questions in front of the court prior to your trial. This motion encourages settlement and reduces the issues that can be or need to be litigated.*

For those of you who got the declaratory judgment motions, those motions are still good and useful. This motion is designed to be used before those motions, and if the court does what it is supposed to do, those motions will not be necessary. They remain useful if the court rejects this motion or if the rules in your state do not require them to hold the hearing being requested in this motion. Each gives you a different way to fight back on appeal against a trial court denying your rights. Each helps preserve the constitutional questions for appeal. YOUR ATTORNEY STILL NEEDS TO SPECIFICALLY OBJECT ON THE RECORD.

This motion gives you the step to take before you file the declaratory motions and helps transition the court more easily. This motion is designed to take an easier less confrontational path than the declaratory motions that should be available as a standard process in other civil cases. Therefore, it should be more familiar to your judge than a declaratory motion. This process should also be more familiar to your attorney if they do any other type of civil case work

So in hopes of utilizing a less confrontational process than the declaratory motions, we embarked on what we could do further to help you use their current process. We have been involved in multiple federal and state appeals and have learned much since the declaratory motions were first created

We started looking through the rules again, using this new knowledge, and found that there is another way to assert your rights.

This motion is designed to work by itself and also works in coordination with the declaratory judgment motions.

This one motion could solve the issue. But if it does not, you have the next step and can file the declaratory judgment motions. All of this is necessary to protect the record if the court continues to insist on ignoring your rights. If you want to argue this on appeal, you must assert it all the way through your case and be sure to raise the issues in the record of the final trial..

What Else is Different About this Motion?

The Pre-Trial motion has training within it. Every section of the motion has explanation. We list the rules in the appendix to help you guide your attorney.

Now most of your questions are answered in the motion. No more wondering what to do or how to do it.

More Stuff Coming

We want you to also have access to all of the training about your rights. For less than the price of the book you can start learning about your rights right now. Become a monthly member and you get access to all of the training videos. Consume as much of the training as you want when you want. Every month we are adding more training.

This is a brand new monthly member program coming on board where you will be able to get all of the training videos in one place for one low monthly price. Consume as much of the video training as you want every month. So, you won’t ever be without the training that you need, when you need it.

You won’t find any of this anywhere else. Ron and I have spent thousands of hours researching and figuring out the problems and creating solutions. These are created by us and not copied from anywhere else. We are not just re-stating information that is already out there. We have distilled the research into specific guidance and tools to empower you and your attorney to compel family court judges to start respecting the protection that only your constitutional rights provide.

And as you requested and we responded it is now cheaper for you to do this.

Why is This Necessary?

Attorneys have monopolized the law industry. There is no competition, making them lazy and complacent. They have no incentive to challenge abuses in the system because too many benefit from those abuses. In fact, those attorneys who want to have not been able to challenge abuses in the process because the monopoly punishes them and pushes them out if they try. The only protection good attorneys have from this monopoly pressure is strong well-informed parents demanding application of specific legal tools in specific ways. Behind the scenes your good attorney can argue with their peers and with the judges that parents are coming to them with specific information demanding specific actions. They are powerless to resist this and should not be seen as willing disruptors of the current corrupt system.

How Did Non-Attorneys Figure This Out?

Ron spent 25 years working in and consulting for the world’s largest companies. He has been well trained in the methodology that these companies use to apply external consulting expertise and pressure in identifying where important systems have become stagnant or dysfunctional and creating systemic ways of correcting these systems. The law is little different from the policies, processes, and procedures that the world’s largest companies use to succeed.

Companies experience group think; people do what the culture demands not what the rules say to do; people do things because it is the way they have always done things and resist change; power structures distort rules, processes, and outcomes; and powerful actors bend the organization to their wills. Ron has worked through and provided consulting advice to break through these issues for decades and now we bring that experience to bear on family law. In corporations, the goal is efficiency and effectiveness towards greater revenue at lower costs. In law, the goal is more justice at less cost to litigants and reduced harm to individuals produced by government action.

The law and family law particularly have a complex structure, history, and language that has made our investigation stage a very long process of many years to get to where we are now in our materials. However, we have discovered enough to now provide specific targeted solutions to break up the current stagnant, dysfunctional system and get it back on track to producing proper justice under our constitutional system of government. You will see many new materials and new training released over the next several weeks and months.

In business, consultants are often brought in to say what many key people already know but cannot change from their internal positions. When an outside consultant says the right things, the internal people, like your good attorney, receive the cover they need to make the changes they have always known need to be made but that couldn’t be made before. Competition drives corporations to change or die.

It is no different in family law. It takes non-attorneys to say the things that the good attorneys have always known but that the system has made impossible to implement. Courts survive only on the perception that they provide honest justice, parents can openly challenge this perception and create the same effect in law that competition provides in business. You create the pressure for the courts to change by attacking the one thing they cannot survive without, the belief that they honestly attempt to provide justice.

You can get the new motion and the other tools you need in this total package with the declaratory judgment motions, petition insert, some attorney training, some responses to objections,

and more here.

or

You can get just the new motion here.

You will save by getting the total package.

 

*You can copy and paste anything you need out of the motion. You should always customize your motions and pleadings to meet your needs. This motion is in Word format. It is not intended to meet the filing standards of any particular court and is not file ready. You will have to copy what you want into your state’s motion format. We are not attorneys, do not practice law, and are not a substitute for an attorney, so check with your attorney for how they want to file. Some attorneys have copy and pasted the motion content in their entirety and filed like that with only minor changes. For instance one attorney took out the child support argument. If child support is not an issue for you, you remove it. If you are in child support enforcement you do not use these motions for that.

**Ohio Equal Parenting Guide can be accessed from this blog post here.