Declaratory Judgement Motions

well good evening everyone Thanks for registering for tonight's webinar we're happy you could make it tonight we're here about are you prepared for divorce I'm Sherry Palmer this is Ron Palmer sitting behind me here typing away um always working as many of you know so tonight we're going to do a couple of things before we get started with the actual webinar on divorcing prosay and what you can expect and showing you some of the uh sample templates that we have we wanted to make sure we covered a couple things that some of you I'm sure have questions about this is uh Power Players in Texas that are shaping your family law statutes that you are going to be

dealing with if you're just at the beginning of a or you are dealing with right now so that's why we're talking about this at the beginning because you also need to be aware of this so um so Diana fredman like we said she's the president she um there are other directors and officers of that Foundation that she runs one is named Lynn Cayman Lynn Cayman is a director and an officer for the same family law Foundation that Diana fredman is now suing Thomas Fiddler from because he has expressed his opinions about her views and what she is promoting in the family code in Texas what her organization is proposing and what they

testified for is to continue a family code that is unconstitutional that violates the rights of both parents and their children without new process so is it any wonder that this person in this Foundation who are arguing against the constitutional rights of parents and children would argue against the First Amendment right of free speech for someone who opposes their view she is an attorney she's been to law school she knows what the court has said about first the first amendment she should know that she's educated she's passed the bar exam that those are required subjects and and um when Thomas Fiddler says you know that her attorneys are advocating against equal parenting here's the proof right here let me

switch it over to my screen and you're going to see a quick uh few minute clip of Lynn Cayman director and attorney testifying at the legislative hearing on the equal parenting bill here in Texas this year in April I have a dream today one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of that skin but by the content of that character I have a dream today Martin Luther King I have aam all but that's not it [Music] seems 26 [Music] 200 after hearing the testimony um I think it's necessary for me to say your name yeah oh I'm sorry my name is ly Cayman I represent the family law

Foundation I am a board certified family law attorney out of Houston um I've been practicing family law for 28 years U and I don't think of myself as a vulture and you're against the bill the foundation is respectfully against the bill and with Chairman's permission I'd like to go through some of the reasons why first of all I think there's a misconception under our family code now parents can agree to share joint rights now joint rights are different than as we say in Texas possession or visitation so let's address The Joint rights first if parents can agree when they get a divorce to share rights the court will approve that because our family code

dictates that the court should approve it the reality is sometimes that just doesn't work in a perfect world divorced people would be able to sit down and decide where is the best place for our children to go to school where is the whether our child needs psychiatric or psychological help we need to decide that together right now if parents cannot agree what the court has to do is make a decision should the parents have the joint decision right on each of the rights and duties and each one is in is um thought about individually should the parent have the independent right or should a parent have the exclusive right so the judge if the

parents cannot agree is going to hear evidence which parent has historically made educational decisions if historically the parents have been able to agree on education the court is going to appoint them as joint decision makers on education if one of the parties mother or father is a doctor and the parties can't agree on medical it's very likely that the court will appoint that parent who's the doctor to make medical decisions our family code encourages agreements now but if there can't be agreement ments and there's a presumption that everything should be jointly made what could happen is the following we have litigation that continues we've heard testimony that people have been in court

over and over and over again but if you have two parents who are unable to make good decisions and put their children's needs Before Their Own the following could happen one parent saysi want our child to go to private school the other parent says I want our children our child to go to public school the school semester is getting ready to begin they cannot agree what happens they have to go into court for a modification so from the very beginning we're creating problems when parents can't agree as for periods of possession and access and let me clarify something I have practiced law for 28 years I have seen as many Fathers as

mothers and I personally have represented as many Fathers as mothers in pursuing custody if custody is needed for the right reasons so I do not think and I can't speak for every judge in every court and every County but most judges are going to listen to testimony and determine what's in the best interest of the children we're looking at periods of possession and access how do you have and I think that um representative riddle brought this up how do you have a parent who lives 20 miles away from the other parent get the children to school at the right time are we doing the 202 the 5050 because it's in the best interest of the

parents or are we going to do what's in the best interest of the children if parents are came that's the alarm okay to wrap it up I'll wrap it up very quickly Our concern and when I say I I mean the family law Foundation is very concerned that we're not looking at what is in the best interest of the children and we're not realizing that our Family Code already protects the rights of parents and lets them make their own decisions if they're able to thank you any questions of Miss Cayman members okay so you all just saw Lynn came and testify and say that their statutes already protect the rights of parents

well if you're new to divorce or you've been in it then you know this is not the case Okay so it was she misleading was she telling the truth that's what we're here to talk about a little bit tonight and we're also here to make sure that you all have the resources so that you have what you need to challenge when you know that they are misleading or not telling you the truth and she you heard it from her mouth 28 years she's been in attorney yet she can stand up there and tell you mislead you and tell you that those statutes protect the rights of parents why would they protect the

rights of parents she just said that are parents thinking about themselves or are they looking out you know are they making decisions that are best for children so you you can answer those questions yourself so let me go back over to my screen so that's pretty much like the state saying that the state will respect your right to free speech so long as you follow all the state's rules and say only those things that the state agrees with but if you dare to disagree with the state of course then the state can step in and stop you from speaking that's essentially what they do in the family law system if you follow

all their rules if you go through forced arbitration and spend your money on their attorneys and jump through all of their hoops and the two of you can agree in a situation and a and in an arena that en encourage you encourages you to disagree and encourages you to fight for everything if under those extreme circumstances you can both agree and follow all those rules then and only then will they respect your fundamental rights but as we all know from civic's class in high school that's not the way fundamental rights work fundamental rights need to be protected when you disagree with the state when you are speaking out against the state when you

are not favored party when you are not in the majority if they only protect those people who agree with the state then they aren't rights they are meaningless and our constitution becomes a worthless piece of paper we have to protect those we disagree with if we're going to have these fundamental principles and so that leads me right into the segue with Ron's next presentation which is called a declaratory judgment and I'm going to let him introduce you to that first the reason we're doing this first if you're new to divorce this is you're not going to find this in the books you won't find this in the templates when you go to

find divorce prosay um uh you know pre-made divorce templates do it-yourself kind of stuff they are not going to mention declaratory judgment they're just going to show you a motion a petition for divorce they're going to show you um motions that you may need to make during you know throughout the divorce process and they're going to show you a final divorce decree that's just the basics okay they're not going to show you what Ron's going to talk about right now right so if you've been through our courses or you've read our book you know that when I was going through my divorce I asked attorneys about my constitutional rights and they basically

said yeah you kind of had constitutional rights but they're through a number of reasons you no longer have them and I proved in the book and in the courses that that was just false now I couldn't do that until after my divorce was finalized and I had time to do it but one of the things they do is they presume away your fundamental rights and they have set the Stacked the deck against you being able to assert your fundamental rights in divorce court and what we're proposing under these using these declaratory uh judgment statutes is to change that stacking of the deck to use their own statute statutes against them to force them to put their

bias and their bigotry in writing in orders that then you can challenge because as we explained in the courses in the book it's very very difficult to challenge a finding a fact that something is in a child's best interest right but if you can force the court to put their bias and bigotry in writing then you have something to challenge in the in the appet courts and what we're proposing is that anytime you get sued for divorce or you're suing for divorce that before you have any of the custody hearings or divorce hearings that you also file a suit for declaratory judgment and what this is is you are asking the Court to declare your

constitutional rights and you articulate how you want them to declare this you propose questions to them and they have to answer these questions now it's not absolutely required that they ask them they have discretion they can choose not to answer them but then you can appeal based on abuse of discretion which is something that can pretty easily be done now if you've read our book or you've been in our courses you know there are two court systems in this country there's state courts so there are 50 state courts one for each state and there is a federal court system now if you do not have any current litigation then you can propose these

constitutional federal constitutional questions in a federal court there are hurdles you have to overcome to do that one is called Rooker Feldman the others are there multiple exstension doctrines that you have to get over we talk about those in our courses but if you can get over those then you can file in a federal court and the reason the federal court is important is because federal courts and the and the federal Congress do not Grant the judges the kind of power that state courts do under best interest so these federal judges do not have a vested interest in supporting this concept of best interest of the child as an extra constitutional power of state

judges and therefore it's more likely that they will support the Constitution and the federal courts are very very very good at seeing the Constitutional law as it applies to Children even in very extreme cases such as child abuse they still follow the Constitution even though they know it's child abuse is a heinous act and that it needs to be punished where proper they still support following the Constitution just like when someone's accused of murder we have to follow the constitution in convicting them all right now with this said many states also have statutes on the books and the way you can do a declaratory judgment by the way is because there is

a federal statute that says that you can do this that you can ask the court for a declaratory judgment do you have that on that I don't have the number off top my head on the on the federal because I'm not proposing that you go there first because it's so difficult to get through these exstension doctrines if you want to do that I suggest you talk to us directly and then we can help you understand those exstension doctrines or if you've taken our course and you understand them then talk to us directly and we'll get you that but many of the states have these same statutes or similar statutes that allow you to ask

for declaratory judgments Texas has a statute the Texas statute is under chapter 37 declaratory judgments it's a very short chapter and basically what it says is that you can ask the state court the district court to make a declaratory judgment on your rights right and rights and a few other things and what we propose is that as you're filing for divorce or as you're responding to a suit for divorce that you file these declaratory judgments and you ask the court specifically to declare that you as a parent have fundamental rights that among those are your First Amendment right to Family Association to live together with your child as a family and that these rights are equal for both

parents and the child has this right equally with both parents that you have rights under the fourth and fifth amendment not to be compelled to into family studies not to be compelled to testify against yourself not to be seized by being forced to appear in these psychological studies or family studies not to have your child seized with a custody order a custody order is a fourth amendment seizure by all of the definitions used in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that's important to know you would know this if you had our our courses or our book you have a 14th Amendment right to Liberty and under the Liberty Clause you have a right to care custody and control

of your child right you can ask the court specifically if you have those rights and they will have to say you do because the Supreme Court has said you do but you can ask specifically do we have this right in the context of divorce or does the simple filing of a divorce petition wave those rights or dissolve those rights for you in favor of State action and you can also ask under the 14th amendment's equal protection Clause if divorced parents can be treated and the children of divorced can be treated as second class citizens simply because parents choose to divorce you can also ask do parents have a First Amendment free association right to make decisions

regarding their marriage up to and including the decision to terminate that marriage and the reason this is important is because the Supreme Court has been very clear that you cannot punish the exercise of a fundamental right if you have a fundamental right to get divorced the state cannot punish your choice to get divorced by depriving you of other rights such as your right to your children so all of these things we talk about in our book in our course can be challenged in state court in prior to a divorce proceeding and you can you can essentially Force the district court to put their bias and bigotry in writing before they rule in

your divorce or you can you can force a situation where they choose not to do it and then you can get the appet court to make the same declaratory judgment which is even stronger right and what I'm proposing is that parents do this by the thousands everybody in Texas who gets faced with divorce or is choosing divorce should file these declaratory judgments put in your take our course read our book find it online read our blog whatever you can do figure out what your rights are what you think your rights are as we explain them as others explain them and then demand that these courts put this in writing in orders so

that you can then expose the bias and bigotry that they're applying to you and once they do that enough people do that some of these judges these District judges are going to actually follow the Constitution and make good rulings and when that happens then in your divorce they can't then go and deprive you of those rights if they've declared you have those rights if they don't we appeal it you go to the appell at court and the pellet courts are much much better at supporting these things if they don't even if they argue against it they're going to be forced to put their bias and their bigotry in writing they're going to have to put their

flawed arguments in in writing so that the next person that does this can challenge those flawed arguments or someone in the right position with the right tactical knowledge about how to get in the federal courts can argue those specific cases in front of a federal judge who is much more likely to do the right thing this is a pretty simple easy thing to do it's a lowrisk thing the other side can't as I understand the statute it says the other side can't even object really to a at judgment you can ask for it you have the right to ask for it and the other side can't fight it basically they have to go

along with it and allow the court to to make the Declaration or choose not to right so this is another tool in our Arsenal both as an indiv for individuals facing divorce but also for the movement as a whole to do this in Mass whether you're in current litigation or not if you're and you don't even have to be subject to litigation if you're married today and you're not facing divorce but it's a potential if you have children and you're married you can still file this declaratory judgment even though you're not actively in divorce because this the divorce statutes potentially apply to you and you can potentially be punished by them therefore you can

you're you still have standing to file these declaratory judgments and by the way this is the mechanism that gay rights activists have used in the federal court system to force the issue issue of gay marriage almost all of them won at the federal district and appell at court levels on these declaratory judgments and these district court judges and these appell Court judges said that gay people have an equal protection right to get married now One Federal appell at court went the opposite way and said gay people don't have this equal protection right and as soon as there are two Federal app courts that disagree and someone uh appeals that issue to the United States Supreme Court

then the United States Supreme Court is much more likely to hear the issue and that's exactly what they've done in the gay marriage issue they have had hearings and they are just about to make rulings I believe those are coming out within the next week or two and they're going to make the final determination on whether or not gay people have a constitutionally protected right to get married all of this sprang from federal decory judgments right so we're proposing we use the exact same legal strategy that the gay rights people the gay rights movement have used so successfully and use it to protect the family rights of parents and children what a tragedy to stand here

today in America and say that our family courts most family law attorneys most of the family codes in all 50 states of America and many of our federal mandates and policies are causing the perpetuation of the worst cultural abuse of families of children ever known today it's called the family court process this process is structurally defective and we can reform it today you do have rights you can stop listening to their lies and you can stop falling for their smoke screams when they tell you that your child shouldn't be shuffled back and forth you call their Bluff and remind them that it happens during marriage parents send kids to schools out of state parents move all the time

children visit Aunts Uncles grandparents some of them live half the time with them so shuffling is a smoke screen you tell them that the case law says that that is not something the government should consider harm or something warranting the trigger of the protective arm of the government children have a right to be free of government interference they have a right to be protected from that interference by both parents I don't know how many of you think you have seen our site but we talk now about the first thing parents should be trying to do is file a declaratory judgment on your rights with those courts divorce is not an invitation to

take over your rights to your child div or should not mean losing your child control over your life or your pocketbook you can stop those practices by learning the rights the Constitution protects it's hard I know it's hard I know they'll continue to lie to you and tell you they don't apply to these courts but just remember my words they're lying to you they lied to the blacks when they told them they couldn't sit at the lunch counters they lied when they said they had to meet burdensome standards to register to vote they lied to the workers under Caesar chave is when they said they didn't have to treat them equally they're lying to the

parents and they're lying to your children keep going I know you can stop those practices by learning the rights the Constitution protects I know because I intuitively fought the Court's notion that they owned my children that they had the right Solutions one by one you can each make a difference like I did too it's scary they'll threaten you with things but you know what when their threats of jail no longer longer hold any fear in your heart in your life in your mind and your children mean more to you than their threats they no longer have power over you