Worst Advice I Have heard This Week webinar

All right, I wanted to welcome everyone. Ron is here. Sometimes I hide him over to the side because it's hard to get us both into the camera and I do most of the talking on some of these webinars. But what I want to start you guys off with tonight are some of the most common things that I've heard attorneys or parents come to me and say, attorneys have said to them, and the reason we're going over these is because they are things that they're being told that are digging a bigger hole for them.

And many of you know that once you get into a hole, it's really hard to climb back out. So, we're going to try to avoid getting deeper in that hole and avoid getting into the hole at all if you're not in it already. We're also going to go over that attorney parent agreement. I'm going to introduce any of you that haven't seen it already to it.

The word document lets you fill things in and that's an attorney parent agreement that lists out your rights and your children's rights. So, it's a really popular agreement lately and you'll want to get a copy of it and work through it. If you have questions, you can ask us. If you already have it and you have questions, save those questions for later. I want I want comments and questions tonight about things you're being told from attorneys or mediators or experts that you might be wondering about how they work with your rights.

Okay. So, here's here's a real big one that I see and that is you ask the attorney to do something for you and they say the other side will never go for it. Right? So, the other side will never go for it. So this assumes that your rights are controlled by the other side. So when the attorney says that you show that attorney your attorney parent agreement and you remind the attorney your rights do not depend on the other side agreeing with you because they all believe both sides have to agree or a judge decides. So that's one of the biggies that I've heard not just this week but in the past. So don't get

trapped in that. Then the next thing is just recently there's an attorney that said, "Hey, let's make you into a success story." Now on the face that sounds great and the attorney is actually a real nice person, so I'm not picking on them at all. But sometimes they don't really realize what that means. And that means, wait a minute, will you have to sacrifice your right to ask somebody to side with that story? So let's say they're making you into a success story, but what are you asking them to do? And what the attorney says is you're asking them to choose a primary parent. And when you're asking them to choose a primary parent, does

that assume in the face in the eyes of the law, does that assume that you gave your rights to them or forfeited the decisionmaking about your rights to a jury or a judge in order for them to choose that primary parent? And yes, that does mean that that means you forfeited your ride. So while on the face it may sound really great to make you look really good, but on the back end there are some serious consequences with that. The next thing is a lot of them will tell you go through this program and prove you're a good parent. So let's say you had some drinking issues in the past and now they

think the other side's going to use that against you. What the attorney you need to really remind them to do is make sure that if they're trying to use it against you, object to it in the hearing. Now, we're not lawyers, but I'm just telling you what I would do in in my situation because I did represent myself a lot. I know I didn't introduce ourselves very well. So, for those of you that don't know who I am, I'm Sheri Palmer. Ron Palmer's sitting over here. We're with fixed family courts and we study constitutional law and the cases that use parental rights, children's rights, families rights, and privacy in them to distill this information and bring it to

you in a usable format. Please don't hesitate to get that question answered. We do want to make sure you get what you need. These things are very timely, as Mike can tell you. If you wait too long on things, sometimes the the time gets used against you. So, don't wait. Ask your question. Yeah. Type them in on the side here. You can type them in and I can see those and then re relay those to Sherry and Ron. So on that topic of having to prove that you're the better parent, there is actually a Supreme Court opinion on this very issue that says it is improper to force a parent to prove they are the better parent in

order to retain their custody. Now, this wasn't this was an adoption case where the state was trying to adopt out a married couple's child, and this married couple was fit and had never been proven unfit. And the Supreme Court said, "You simply cannot force a fit parent to prove they are the better parent to maintain custody or to keep custody." Now, just because that was done in an adoption case, it doesn't change the fundamental answer that the Supreme Court gave, right? If it's if it's improper to do it in a custody case around adoption, it's improper to do it in a custody case in divorce. The bastardy laws were overturned mostly based on insurance

cases because and um inheritance cases because people who were bastard children or children who were born out of wedlock were not able to inherit from their uh fathers and they weren't allowed to receive social security benefits is one of the cases and they weren't allowed to uh receive insurance benefits and all Those issues were overturned based on equal protection based on the idea that you cannot create secondclass children or secondass parents based solely on the marital status of the children's parents. Right? And that that same statement can be e easily modified to say you can't create secondass parents or secondass cit or children based solely on a change in the marital status

of the parents. And that is exactly what they're trying to do in divorce. No other reason to do it. You've got fit parents, no harm to the child, and they're going to deprive one of those fit parents of their rights. Is a simple, clear violation of equal protection. We have that entire argument. You can get that information. And the case citations are in that link on that page. And the argument for that is in there. And what we were saying is don't let them scare you from using cases just because it's not a divorce case. is that's how they're continuing these practices is they trick you out of not applying certain cases and then

because you can't find a divorce case that has that protection for you in it then guess what you're under their control and at their mercy which is where they want you. If you had to have precedent from another case specifically in the the context that you're addressing a constitutional question, we would never have any opinions from the Supreme Court because there have to be original questions in original context.

And the Supreme Court and all of these courts routinely take cases from other context where the basic principles apply and the difference in context doesn't change the underlying principle. So, let's go on to the next thing that attorneys say because I have several of them that I want to cover real quickly before we get into the next thing. What about do the psyche bow and prove to them there is nothing wrong with you?

How many of you have heard that? A ton of people. And what happens to parents when they're told this one? They think, "I have nothing to hide, so why not do it?" Right? wrong way to think because the first thing you're going to do is give them something to use against you. Now, make sure you check your state. There are some states that say if you refuse to do the things that the judge orders that they can assume that you are guilty of something and punish you. I believe that's somewhere that's in Connecticut, but don't quote me on that.

We look through a lot of states statutes and when they do that, they're actually wrong. All right. Now, they do it because they push some false assumptions about what type of case this is. And you'll hear divorce court judges tell you all the time that this is a civil case between two individuals. And therefore, the same rules, the fourth and fifth amendment rules don't apply as strictly as they would in a case of say termination by the state against you as a parent. That's simply not true. And but you have to understand the argument and the argument is all in our book. But essentially when they try to take your fundamental liberties away, anytime the

state deprivives you of a fundamental liberty, it is a punishment and can be seen as nothing other than a punishment. And when they punish you, it becomes quasi criminal, which means those many of those enhanced protections under the fourth and fifth amendment do apply. Right? So, but that's a that's a complicated argument and so you really need to understand it. It's it's clearly articulated in the book and we cover it in our first course and I'll introduce you guys to that a little bit later. Um, the next thing is we will just bypass the system, the politics and the corruption by using a jury. All you're doing there is inserting a jury in place

of the judge. If you're still asking them to make the decisions for you or to choose one parent over the other, you are still forfeiting your rights. So instead of So instead of having to deal with the bias and prejudice of one individual, now you have to deal with the bias and prejudice of nine or 11 people who you have no knowledge about.

At least with the judge, the your attorneys should have significant knowledge about those judges and how they tend to rule and how they tend to behave. With a jury, you have none of that, right? And there are some instances where the parents do go forward with a jury and that's like if you had had a mediated agreement and now you're trying to modify it and you had given up some of your rights in that agreement. Mediated agreements are contracts. They're very difficult to change. So sometimes the attorneys will have a jury come in and there are some good ones out here that do do this because some of your rights you had

given up and you want to change that now. So you're trying to use, you know, um I guess the bias, right? You're you're trying to get them to agree with you that you should have more time and rights with your children. And whereas a judge may say, "I'm stuck. I have to follow these statutes now that say you have to overcome these higher bars to change it and because there's contract law wrapped into it there there's a lot more complications. So there are times when you may want to use a jury if there's one available to you in your state and there are times when you're going to strategically use a jury for certain things. But there

are also ways that you can limit their bias. And that's what we help teach these attorneys for these parents is to use the least amount of things to, you know, where you're asking them to use bias. And we do that from the information in our book. And and when people come to us and ask us specific things, we'll give you examples of what to ask your attorney to ask the jury so that you're not wide, you know, making it wide open to where they just get to decide everything for you and your child in your life. So, you want to keep it limited. And we do have a slide about a year ago that we created called um it's

a judge slide where we teach you how to box the judge in so that you raise the bar to strict scrutiny. Limiting a jury is a little bit different but kind of similar. You're going to still be asking them to use um certain requirements, but you don't want it as hard for you to change it. So you will use some of the other stuff the so the technicalities come into the instructions to the jury and how the in the jury is instructed to behave and that's something that the attorneys work out with the judge outside of the presence of the jury and then the jury gets its instructions. So you'll want to be very careful there.

But the important thing about this whole jury idea is not to look at the jury as a panacea. There are people out there pushing jury trials for custody and it it it just adds complication and difficulty and they follow the rules much more strictly in that case. So, it's harder to do technically and you're not in most cases giving yourself an advantage with the jury. Okay, I want to get to something that Darren asked real quick. Um he had mentioned that he told the judge he was gonna you know fight for his constitutional rights which is great and the judge told him this is a court of equity and courts of equity

actually if you look under the Supreme Court website it will tell you that courts of equity also have to follow the constitution. So in the 1860s there's a very very famous case called Marberry versus Madison and in that case it clearly says that the United that the sup the United States Constitution is the supreme law of the land that federal laws and the United States Constitution are superior to and supersede all state laws and all state constitutions and it doesn't matter what any state law or state constitution says. It may they may not not government official at any level in any organization whether state, municipality, city, county, I don't care what form of government they're in in

this country, they may not violate the constitution. Okay, so let's go on to the next one. And just take what you can get and we'll fix it later. Bet a lot of you guys have heard that and hopefully you didn't find out the hard way that you it's not very easy to fix it later. They've got they have statutes where now the burden's on you. You have a bar to meet. A lot of times like in state of Texas, you've got to prove that it's detrimental for the child to continue the pattern that the court set.

Remember they talk about status quo and patterns. And until you learn about how to overcome those things, which is very, very difficult, don't count on getting things changed later. And not only that, it's just as expensive, if not sometimes more expensive than going back again to do it. And a lot of times it's as if you never even paid to get an order in the first place. Because in a lot of states, again, also in Texas, when you go to file for a modification, it's it's worse than when you first went through it because now they have statutes that say there's no parental presumption. And those statutes are unconstitutional, by the way. But but again, then now you're

paying to challenge those. So, it's better for you to just get strong, stand by your your rights as you know them now, and push forward with it or you could end up just becoming financially devastated as well as emotionally and destroying that relationship with your child because of all the time that goes by. So, don't buy into that at all that you can change it later. Um, unless there's some ext, you know, extenduating circumstance that we don't know about, like maybe you had a valid protective order or some something or they got you on some something that had to do with the child and now you got to let that time frame run out. So, there are

extenduating circumstances, but we're assuming everyone's a fit and loving parent. They didn't do anything wrong here. Okay? And so keep in mind if if you you're already in a situation and you have bad orders, you can change them and we can we can help you understand strate what the strategies are for changing those. And we're not saying that we're not telling you if you're in a bad situation now not to go and try to change it. What we're telling you is that from the beginning when you're getting into this, don't buy into this idea that we can go and change it later.

It's much harder to change it later. Not impossible. I'll get to some more of your questions in a minute, but I want to make sure that the parents who are on limited time get to hear some of these things that we're addressing. Um, what about attorneys saying, "We'll use your constitutional arguments if we lose and if they tell you those only work in appeal." Um, in fact, one parent just recently in Washington said that they found a case that said they could raise their constitutional issues in appeal, but and and I haven't gotten to look at that case in detail. However, I suspect that what they're talking about are certain very narrow specific ones. I don't think

that they're probably talking about family court. And this is where it gets very specific. Now, um if they used if they allowed the judge or jury to use best interest, you cannot go later on appeal and say, "Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. It's my right to decide." because they will see that as an attempt to reitigate, right? So there what you have to do is preserve your right for appeal and most cases that's absolute that you have to preserve that right to appeal. Now fundamental liberty interests get a little more leeway and you can get those in even if you didn't argue them at the trial court, but it's more difficult and you have to know how

to to argue to ensure that that happens. So, if an attorney is telling you not to make these arguments in your written pleadings and not to make these arguments orally from the from the beginning at your trial, then that lawyer is giving you bad advice from a from an appellet perspective, right? Because you absolutely need to preserve to best ensure that you can appeal these constitutional issues, you need to give the trial court the opportunity to rule on them. And that's why they don't like you bringing them up at appeal because basically what you're doing is potentially wasting the appellet court's time because you didn't give the trial courts an opportunity to do the right

thing and then you're kind of ambushing them and the other side after the trial by raising these issues that you didn't raise at trial. So they frown on it significantly which which gets me to the next thing that I hear all the time from attorneys. we'll throw in your rights at the end of the trial if we think we are losing. What that did again is it didn't really allow the trial court to decide on that issue. And if they say, well, we let them at the end, the trial court can claim that, you know, your argument didn't present it. There was no evidence presented. There was nothing to support that claim at the end. And again, the

appellet court can look at that as you didn't give the trial court first chance at at deciding that. Now, some attorneys um will say, well, we'll file for a new hearing based on some of this content. And that is that is something you can try, but again, we suggest you do it right from the beginning from the trial. The other reason we suggest you do it as soon as possible, as early as possible, and stick with it is so that you also intimidate the other side because the other side doesn't know then whether or not you're going to prevail at any of the levels. Also, the other side won't necessarily know how to defend against

that type of frame. you know, when you frame your case that way, I've seen a lot of u very intrigent sides crumble at the very end when they think they're going to have to actually go to trial and sometimes the other side will tell their client, "This is going to be really expensive because now I'm going to have to do a lot of research because guess what? Their attorney doesn't know how to defend against constitutional claims in family law." So, it gives you a ton of advantages more than just what's being presented in the court. So, you just have to stay strong. Part of the reason your attorney sometimes crumbles is they get a hint that you are

going to crumble or that you're going to back down or that you're going to get angry with them for not winning the case. And so, they want to go right back to the pattern they know that they know wins 50% of the time. They win part of the time, they lose part of the time. So they go back to what they know if they think that you're nervous about this this strategy. The other one one other thing to keep in mind with this if you try to take advantage of the unconstitutional aspect of a state statute for instance if you go in seeking sole custody and you don't justify the constitutional rights and

the grounds for overcoming those constitutional rights, then you could very well forfeit your right to argue that constitutional question on appeal because you've tried to take advantage. you've tried to have your cake and eat it too and the appellet courts will look very poorly on that. There are ways to do it, right? There are legitimate reasons to seek sole custody under these constitutional arguments, but you need to know what they are and you need to spell them out and you need to make it clear to the appellet court that you're not waving your right to pursue the constitutional question just because you're asking the court to do something that on its face looks to be

unconstitutional. Right. Okay. I know you guys are asking a lot of questions. We'll try to get to those after I get through some of this presentation. The other thing is you paid me. You paid me for my expertise. This is your attorney talking to you. You paid me for my expertise. So, you need to trust that I know what I'm doing. Well, again, if you want to put that kind of trust into it, then you might want to ask what their pattern is or what their plan is because they're probably this battle the same way that it's been been fought for generations, which has been getting the really bad results, forfeiting your

rights, and all those consequences that you hear about, draining your pocketbook, devastating people, incarcerating them, and all of those bad results. Also, um, alienation from your children, uh, lots of delays. I could go on and on and on. The other one is you have no rights. The attorneys will tell you straight up when you say, "Here's my rights." They'll say, "You have no rights in family court." Well, you tell them, "I'm hiring you to present these rights that the Supreme Court says I do have that are applicable to the state courts." We were actually told this during our uh divorces, at least I was, because I asked very specifically about my constitutional rights. And the

attorney told me basically, "Well, on paper it looks like you have constitutional rights, but you really don't have them because of a lot of court opinions, blah, blah, blah." He couldn't really explain it. But he just in his mind, I didn't have any constitutional rights. I knew that was absolutely wrong. But I didn't have time then to figure it out and fight it on those terms. And that's why as soon as we got out of our custody battles, I wrote this book. book. Sherry and I wrote this book and did all the research and pulled it all together and proved that you do have constitutional rights.

There's the book offer. The last thing that I want to tell you that I've heard attorneys saying recently again, which just really scares me to death, is telling parents when they ask for them to represent their rights that they're just not being realistic. Or if they say, "I just want equal time with my children." You're just not being realistic. Well, let's really think about that. What do they mean you're not being realistic? What about, you know, there's there's lots of times in life where people set dreams or goals or envision their life a certain way. And if they were to listen to people telling them that they weren't being realistic and being with your children, mind you,

certainly isn't the same thing as our president in the past saying Kennedy saying, "We are going to walk on the moon, right? That was a huge goal that we didn't even have the technology. We didn't even have things created yet to do that with. So, you might have thought that was unrealistic. And thinking that women would be able to vote and could be rational about how they vote was once unrealistic. Can I punch you on the believing believing that that blacks were intelligent enough to operate in modern in society and be equal with whites would want fly airplanes, you know, just I grew up in the deep south, so I'm very familiar with that. And to

say when I was a child that we would have a black president, you would have created riots where I grew up. And notice this offer on the side, you guys. If you don't have a book yet, if you purchase one within the next 4 48 hours of the webinar, and we're not doing this just so you'll spend money, this book has a ton of your rights in it and case citations. I think it's 90 97 case citations in there. 90 of them are United States Supreme Court opinions.

Others come from federal appellet courts. And there are some state opinions that are thrown in there for specific reasons. For instance, there's one state supreme court opinion that goes into great detail explaining how children are considered property. As you can imagine, it's fairly old. It was written in the 1800s, but children once were considered property. In fact, when the Constitution was written, they were considered property. So, anytime the Constitution mentions property, such as you have the right to life, liberty, and property in the 14th Amendment, property covered your parental rights. Okay, enough of all that stuff. You guys can get that book and read it. I don't want to take your time up on that because

that would take us 300 and something pages in here. So, what I want to go on to is on that note of it's just not realistic or you're not being realistic about equal time with your children because they might say you work a lot that they get to decide how you reestablish your new family life after divorce, right? So, how do you start changing all of this as opposed to you?

Okay, we've talked about attorneys and talking to them, but how do you start? Where do you start changing all of this? You start with your dreams and destiny, right? Your ideas of what your destiny was. Your dreams before all of this happened because you all had some, right? Brendan Bashard, I watch a lot of his videos. He has one called Smart Goals and Dumb Goals. I I think it's from this week. I know. I just watched it today and it really got me thinking about this and about how people have gotten so scared to do anything when they're in divorce that requires dreaming anymore. They can't even imagine being able to dream anymore

because they're so broke, a lot of them. But and so right now that's all of you. So this has been strangled out of you. You've been suffocated out of it. What we want you to do is be able to dream again. And that might mean throwing away the plans and the processes that everyone you've been told to follow. Okay? That means just throwing all of that out. That's where you start. The attorneys, the judges, the experts, the mediators, anybody that's been telling you that you're being unrealistic, that you don't have rights, all of this stuff, and that's telling you just do it their way. Throw that out. So when they say you can't do something, it's impossible,

think about when the president said we were going to walk on the moon, think about what you used to dream about and that's what you picture. That's what you think about before you go to bed at night. So you start with the dream and then you worry about how it will come later. And that's where we come in is we start mapping that out. You know, none of you build a house without a foundation. You don't drive a car without tires. So, it's if you want to talk about being unrealistic, it's going into these battles without building from that foundation. You need a base to start from, and that's what we're trying

to help you establish. So, how would you put that together? Let me kind of play a little clip from Brendan's video real quick. It's about 27 seconds worth, but I want you to see his energy and where we're trying to get you. Because once you get in this frame of mind, nobody can defeat you. Nobody can put you down. I remember when I went through it and they kept trying to say, "Oh my god, how can you keep thinking like this? How can you just keep pushing forward? No matter what we tell you, no matter how much we beat you down, you just keep coming back saying, "I'm this child's parent and I'm going to make the

decisions." So, let me just play this clip for you real quick so you can kind of hear what I'm talking about. Fantastic. But soon as you said something huge like that, you have to start thinking, well, how would we put that together? Oh, same way they did with saying, "Hey, let's go to the moon." You know what? You guys can't see it. So, hang on. Let me share my screen with you now.

Okay, I'm going to share my screen. Mike, I always have to mess up once, don't I? Share that. Okay, you'll see the infinity screen and hopefully that will go away. So, let me know when you see Brendan's funny face where I froze it here. Start from the beginning, okay? At three minutes. I just want you to hear how he talks about is I I want you to start relying on people like this and people like us to help you stay in this frame of mind so we can build this foundation up for you so you can start and to defend your rights and not get uncomfortable and not get beat down and

depressed and into the PTSD and all of that. Okay, realistic. But soon as you said something huge like that, you have to start thinking, well, how would we put that together? same way they did with saying, "Hey, let's go to the moon." We had no idea how to do that. We didn't have the the technology, the tools, the materials. We had to invent things to be able to travel through time and space to get to the moon. I mean, it was it was unbelievable. So, you start with the dream. The how will come later. It is the what. It is the why that fires the human soul much. And that's what we're

talking about right there, aren't we? It is the what. It is the why. And you know the what. You know the why. I don't know why as parents so many of you go through it and let other people change that what and that why for you and that's where you start. Okay. So now let me go on to the next thing which is I have to keep switching pages here. Um, after you get to that point where you've decided, I'm going to dream again, then you realize that the way you stay out of that hole is part of the problem was you were letting them rob you of those dreams. Right? So, the other part

is that this will go on and on and on and on for long periods of time. If you keep letting them rob you of those dreams, you'll end up in the PTSD and all those things that I mentioned earlier on about the alienation and all of that. So if you remind yourself that those are the consequences if you give up or give in, trust me, you'll find strength to not give into that or just go on to Facebook and read a few parents stories. Um Mike, you were saying yourself today that it's some days it just really really gets to you because you you you really want to tell people, "Oh my gosh, if I had known you, I would

have told you to avoid that." And it's very frustrating to see this happening to parents. So you can remind yourself and just by looking at other things that people are going through. So then you won't fall into their processes and their patterns. So I'm sure if you had looked at some of your situation differently, you might not have fallen into some of these traps.

One of them is what if you were to go into a church or maybe your own beliefs are that you don't you don't um like the gay situation. I I know my own father's uncomfortable with gay marriage of how to talk with him about that because I I personally am I'm a proponent for people being able to make their own choices, live their own lives, live their own dreams. But my father with his Christian background and his um grandfather being a minister of a church, it's very deeply ingrained in him to think that being gay isn't a natural form of life. So what would happen if you were to tell somebody you're going to have to accept

a person being gay and you put them in control or gave them power to do what family courts do? Would it, you know, don't you think they'd say, "Oh, I'm not ready yet. So, let's get some more opinions. Let's put some more paperwork in place to make them jump through hoops first before I have to accept them. Or, let's make sure that we have to approve their decisions before we have to accept them. Or, let's get some psyche vows.

Okay, that's what they're doing to you as parents. So, I'm sure if you thought about it that way, you would have said, "No way." And one of the things that never enters most people's minds is the idea that these psyche vows and these family studies and all of these things are really intimate violations of your privacy and they are forcing you to testify against yourself, providing testimony that will be used by the court to punish you by taking away your fundamental rights. And we tell you, we show you how to change this perception in the book and how to reframe this into the idea that no, we're not inviting the government to come in into our home and

invade our privacy and look for reasons to punish us. That's absurd, right? And then so another example is why do you take it from the attorneys when they say we're going to judge you, some experts are going to judge you. A judge is going to judge you. And maybe they told you something like that maybe they scare you into thinking that you should just let them do the job the way they have been doing it. Like they might say, "Oh, look, you had a drinking problem in the past." So that might be seen as a problem. So you might be seeing that you weren't making decisions that are favorable and that might not look good.

So why don't you just, you know, let us put you through this this um process so that we can make you look good. Well, ask yourself, why is it okay for them to judge your life and every decision that you made now or in the past? It's not illegal. Um yet you feel that you have to give in to them. You feel you have to give them control. Well, first of all, when you got out of that relationship and that marriage, didn't you do that because you wanted to take control back in your life? But for some reason, we get emotionally trapped. So, you you just need to be aware of that. Let other

people know so they don't end up in that trap. So, now don't take it from the attorneys or anyone else. Now, you're going to take it from a total stranger when you're going through divorce. No, absolutely not. You don't want to be under their control because that control eventually is going to be given to that other parent, isn't it? So, it's going to shift from you thought you were taking your life back by going to an attorney, but then you gave control over to that attorney and then they eventually will assign that control to the other spouse. That's exactly what's happening. And then a lot of times you'll say, "Well, my spouse was so

controlling and overbearing. How could they possibly give them control?" because most likely that other spouse, that other parent didn't give it up as easily as you did. You were the one that crumbled or got talked into it or ran out of money. Okay? So, and it's easy to it's easy to be put in that situation when you don't understand that you do have fundamental rights. You don't understand that they do not have the right to invade your Ron just robbed me of my next part here.

Okay. My bad. where I said, "Why is it that you give up control?" "Because you never learned your rights." Thank you, honey. He read this earlier, by the way. So, you might wonder then why criminals don't have to learn their rights and they yet they get protected. But think about this. They get some limited protections. Okay, Miranda rights are read to them, but even those get undermined. You know, you've heard of the Innocence Project out here. It's real big in Texas where they got convicted. You know, a lot of them made plea deals and they weren't guilty. Now they're doing DNA tests and they they get a lot of them out. Right. There's a

huge number of people that were put in jail over the last go back 10 20 years and for a 30 or 40 year period, there's a huge number of people in Dallas County that were put in jail for crimes they didn't commit and DNA has exonerated them. But a lot of them did not know their rights and they got intimidated. They got scared. They took plea deals.

Okay. Same thing's happening to parents. So, I kind of equate this to attorneys are kind of like a box of chocolate. You don't really know what you're getting. So, and sometimes even the ones you think you know you're getting, you don't really know what you're getting until you know it's in the middle of that chocolate, right? Well, the only way you know it is if you start to try to get them to protect your rights. And when you do that, they'll start revealing what they think. You want to go there with them. Once you realize what they think, you can figure out then can you work with them? Some of the attorneys

have actually gotten into yelling matches. I know one of the those parents is on here with us tonight. We appreciate your attendance. Um and eventually ended up coming back around. So many attorneys sometimes will just flip out when you present this to them and they'll come back around or you'll go find someone else. But it's best to start with this attorney parent agreement that I'm going to show you here in a minute. One thing that's one thing that's important about this when more and more more parents start doing this, when they start going to their attorneys or potential attorneys with a written document expressing their rights and asking that attorney to put their

name on the dotted line and agree to present these rights and defend these rights or you're going to go find another attorney. Eventually, these attorneys are going to have to turn around and start responding and figure out how to do this or they're going to lose all their business to somebody, some new young upstart attorney who's willing to do it, right? And I'll show you that agreement after I finish this up. But anyways, um, so after your relationship has ended, so let's go back to your dream and destiny stuff, okay?

After your relationship ends, you need to reassociate your life with instead of looking at divorce as that dread and devastation, try associating a different word with each letter of the word divorce because divorce dib look at it like an acronym. So the first step we did is we did the dream and destiny, right? You're going to think of your dreams, how you envision your life.

You want to be with your children again. you want control over your pocketbook again. So, you're gonna envision that and then you're going to go into divorce is not dread and you know and all these other things. You're going to say D stands for dreaming again. And there's actually studies behind this. If you associate a word to something, your brain will automatically start to condition itself and you will do more positive things. You will make different decisions based on it. So, this isn't just something that I'm making up. I'm making up the words, but I'm not making up the the behavioral part of it for your brain. It's to help you stay out of

that rut, that PTSD, that depression. Divorce, the DT stands for dreaming again. The I stands for investing in rebuilding and reestablishing your life with you, your child, maybe a new significant other, new home, however you envisioned it. Okay? I is for investing in rebuilding. V is valuing your decisions and your life. O is the opportunity, opening new doors. R is relationship, reshaping your relationships with your child. You don't need to be held to the standards you had in your marriage. And we go through that in other courses. But you should not be getting told that you've got to maintain the lifestyle and the rel the type of relationship you had with your child.

Maybe you weren't able to have a good relationship with your child during that marriage because the other person was constantly getting in the way. Now maybe you have time to have a relationship with that child without that pressure or that interference. So the next letter is companionship. C. The C in divorce is companionship. Now you can nurture those companionships with your children and and maybe other family members that you were missing out on. E is for excitement. That's living without fear.

So recategorize in your brain the way you look at divorce. Okay? So we're going to help you do this today by giving the decision- making back to you where you don't have to wonder anymore what leverage you have, what power or authority you have over your own life. No matter what you're told, you will know what is right and what is trying to control you. Okay?

And let me go down to this next section here. Force with dread and devastation. We just relabeled that. This is because you're vested in that pain. Like it's hard to change your idea of divorce. And we're not saying glamorized divorce. Okay? It's not what we're saying. We're saying that in order for you to stay strong, to stand behind your rights because you're going to get attacked over and over and over again every time you bring it up, you've got to reassociate things. So right now you're vested in the pain and you're easy prey.

Like I I remember we met a we met a family in Florida when we went up there to do a workshop and I remember the parents saying yes yes yes anything I'll pay anything. Just just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. They were so desperate. They were easy prey. which is what I see a lot of people complain about online is when people are asking for money for things, they feel like they're being taken advantage of because they are so desperate for somebody to save them from what's happening to help them. I actually told that parent, you need to wait and you need to hold off and we said absolutely not. I gave I

gave them a book there because the whole point here is when you notice that you're falling into that rut, you need to not invest in something until you're not emotional about it anymore because you will immediately think that things sound good. And part of that is when you go to look for a new attorney, they're going to tell you what you want to hear.

They're going to say, "Oh, that other attorney did not do what I would have done. They didn't do it right." And we'll get in we'll get into what some of you guys have heard in a few minutes. So anyways, you've not only vested yourself in the pain and become easy victim. But you're also stuck on those bad results, right? You don't know any other life.

Just like these attorneys don't know any other life. You have become conditioned to accept those bad results and responses, right? the the attorneys have become conditioned to accept a lot of the cor the corruption and the collusion and and bad results that's happening. They've become conditioned. Well, you've become conditioned, too. So, it's a lot like gambling. You and your child are way too important for that, though. For attorneys, it's gambling. They they're willing to take the risk now because they don't see any other way until you bring them a better way. You and your child are too important for those head games and those odds. So the deeper you dig your hole, the more difficult it's

going to be to climb back out. But you can climb back out. Some of you, your children will age out and perhaps, you know, you'll be one of the cogs in the in this mechanism that changes the whole system. But some of you have the time to do this. And we all know that with children growing up, you don't have time to mess around regardless. Okay. Um, so if you're going to risk something, it should be on getting punished for protecting you and your child with your rights and not for giving in and thinking that you're going to get a better result. Um, this is something worthwhile. So, if you don't know any

better, attorneys will condition you to believe that the way they've been doing things is the only way. We're telling you it's not. They will allow things like if you think back in time like when the Jewish were euthanized, people were conditioned to accept it, weren't they? A lot of people said, "Oh my god, I would never ever just turned my head the other way." What a lot of people are doing now.

That's what you're doing to yourself when you buy into their conditioning. So, I'm not saying that you're euthanizing Jews. So I apologize for that extreme example. But you know emotions that get evoked inside of us sometimes are just as powerful as those emotions. They great the idea is that great evil happens not in one fell swoop in such a way to shock people's conscience but it happens in small incremental steps. And there's a great um it's a basically a poem and the quote is in our book and it talks about and it's it's from a famous uh I think he's a a Christian preacher who talks about when the Nazis came for one group he

didn't stand up and when they came for another group he didn't stand up and when he gets to the end and said when they came to me there was nobody left to stand up they did it in small incremental steps. Yeah. And the way the way that that things have changed, like even even World War II, the way it was won is many people were punished at first, right, for trying to stop the the Germans from euthanizing the Jews. Many many people lost their lives in that war. So you could look at that as they were punished for fighting. So right now, why are you looking at this any different as parents? Yes, you're

getting punished for fighting, but what is your other option? You don't have a choice. And eventually, even though many people were punished for fighting, they eventually ended the war, didn't they? And eventually that euthanization stopped. And this will be the same way. Small groups of very highly dedicated people can can implement profound change in the world. And that's what we're looking to do, to create a group of very focused, very dedicated people to help us drive this change and eliminate these unconstitutional practices. And no parent should ever walk into a divorce court and have any concern ever again about losing their child if they're fit.

Period. The end. You get divorced 5050. That's it. If you're both fit, you both have equal rights. And I'm going to show you the offer for the courses real quick and then we'll go into the attorney parent agreement and your questions. Um this these are the courses if you click on enroll now. Uh go to the header at the top that says courses and there's four options. Pick the fourth one that if you want all three and it will give you one of the courses for free. Our pricing structure on those is set up to um match the pricing of universities because we are packaging this course into a university course where we're

going to encourage not only law schools but actual regular universities to offer the course. will we might change some of the wording in it for their their courses, but it's overall it's going to be um pretty much the same content as our book and it's going to teach people their rights so that they can't ever be victimized like this again. So the content, the duration, the format is all laid out to be equivalent to a university course. And so there are different prices, two different prices for the three courses. And that's based on the number of credit hours that would be associated with the amount of time and content covered. Right? Okay.

So, I'm going to go now over to the attorney parent agreement. So, if you guys haven't seen that, I'm just going to show it to you real quick and then we're going to answer any questions. Let me share my screen one more time. You'll probably see that infinity screen again real quick. And this is, and I know Mike loves this attorney parent agreement, but getting it in front of your attorney can be tricky sometimes. Um, if you're going to new attorneys, definitely take it with you. You don't want to put it right in front of their face immediately. You want to kind of prep them a little bit.

And then, one of Justin's questions was um, a good one, and it kind of pertains to myself. um how would um he present this to his attorney that he has already hired. Okay. Uh let me answer that Nick in a sec. Let me just show for the parents that haven't seen this. I used a a um template called statement of work from Word document. And what I did is I put language in here. If you type in the attorney name, it inserts that into the different fields. Like right here, if you type in where it says anywhere it says parent, it'll fill it in for you automatically. And for those of you who

aren't familiar with the language, generally when when you do uh business with corporations, you'll set up contractual agreements. They're called master services agreements that cover all the big repeat kind of things that you'll do on project work. And then each individual project will have one of these what's called a statement of work which assumes all the language in the master agreement and but gets into the specific details of each project and it basically a a detailed contract that would fall under your larger contract for work with that individual. So it's very common in industry to do these documents called statements of work. And here's the thing. When you go to an attorney, you hire them, they have you

sign their own their own contract, don't they? And they've defined everything for you. All their representation all based on representing themselves and protecting themselves, right? So, they want protection. So, this is how you present it to them. You're asking for me to sign a contract with you protecting you. I'm asking you to sign a contract with me protecting me. When I hire you for services, I need to make sure we're on the same page and that these are defined properly.

Okay? And that's one of the things you do typically in a statement of work. It gets into the specific details about what will be delivered, how it will be delivered, what it will look like, whether it will be something physical and tangible, whether it will be an electronic document in a PowerPoint presentation or a word document. You know, those kind of details are typically spelled out in a statement of work, right? And this you'll give them the scope to to represent that you have rights.

Okay? And then if you scroll down in the document, it gives you rights of it'll give you your rights as an American citizen. It'll give you your rights as a parent. It'll give you your rights as your rights for your minor child. And this is something that's very good for turning the tables on the other side. Right? Children have constitutional rights. And the judge cannot act in the child's best interest if the judge violates that child's rights. One of the key rights that children have is the right to free association with each of their fit parents. Okay. So now tell me your question again, Mike.

Justin's question. Yeah, he's just basically just wondering um what's a good way to present this to an attorney that he's already hired and who may have his own, you know, the attorney already has his own way of doing things. How do we convince an attorney who has kind of a know-it-all attitude, you know, on something is as old as the Constitution and present it in court. Yeah. Those those that's a very difficult situation because now you don't have as much leverage. You've already signed their contract with them. So, the approach is different. when you go to them and you've probably already spent a lot of money. Before you go to them, you're

going to have to pretty much tell yourself you're probably you probably wasted your money with that lawyer. You're probably going to need to change lawyers, but I always tell you to try and you're just going to go to them and you're going to say, "Look, we need to sit down and redefine how you're representing me. I have since learned the following." Yeah. So you walk into it and say, "Look, I got hit with this divorce and I had no concept of what the rules were, what the state statutes were, what the process was, or what my constitutional rights are. I've learned, I've been studying, and now I'm pretty certain that I have constitutional

rights and that they need to be expressed now at this level so that I can have them uh preserved for appeal if necessary." And and what I would do is go straight down to this page, Justin, limitations on state action. So you can explain to your attorney, I understand you're going to say the statute let them do this. I understand, but please look at this page. And this is right after the child's rights, okay? Limitations on state actions. It tells them how to box the state into using strict scrutiny.

See number five, at strict scrutiny, the burden of proof is either on the state or the other side. So, one thing that's very important and a case you'll learn about either in the book or in the course is Troxville versus Granville from 2000. And it's a grandparents rights case. And the state statute allowed the the family law judge to do exactly what they did. But the Supreme Court of the United States said that was not enough. That court had to show in a finding of fact its justification for involving itself in this issue. And remember, all the stuff we put into this agreement, we got from cases from the Supreme Court. This isn't stuff we made

up. It's in our book, but we've elaborated on it and we've summarized it here for you. So, these are these you can provide case citations to that attorney or you can encourage them to buy the book themselves. It's all cited in there. So, if you read the book and take the class, the first class, you'll be able to to support all of the arguments that are in this agreement, and you'll be able to to discuss them with your attorney in a way that'll let them know that these arguments are credible. Okay. So, we're done. We're done presenting that um attorney parent agreement. I think you can see us again now, right? Yep. Okay.

So, but just to add one more element to that question. If you're having extreme difficulty introducing this to your attorney or having these discussions, Sherry is incredibly good at that kind of thing. And uh you can get her to help Hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. I have a question.