The people that are supposed to protect you from government intrusions are opposing a Measure that strives to protect children from abuse of power in the family courts. While it is true the measure comes up a little short it’s not in the ways that the attorneys and the American Bar Association might lead you to believe. And the passage of Measure 6 is way better than what is in place right now.
I go over the measure and some of the smokescreens in this audio here: (Let me know what you think.) Tell me how you are encouraging parents to vote for this measure. And how you are using it to help your State change their laws.
Measure 6 starts to protect children from being stripped from their fit parents. We are super excited and proud to see North Dakota residents finally see through the smokescreens of their family law statutes.
It is clear that there are incentives that attorneys are not telling you about when they defend and support family laws that take children away from equal time with “many wonderful parents” as Attorney Erica Shively admits the current law does. Measure 6 will make it harder for the court to tear you from your child. Measure 6 raises the bar for the court to prove you unfit before removing your right to be with your child equally. Measure 6 does not change what is a fit or unfit parent. Your State sets that definition in their child abuse laws. Child abuse is still child abuse. This Measure does not change that. The attorneys opposing this Measure are just trying to scare you. The attorneys in family law are complaining because they won’t be allowed to use a lowered standard on divorcing parents anymore.
Child abusers can also still be prosecuted. This measure does not change that either. Actually when you hold courts to higher standards of due process you protect innocent parents from the lowered standards that divorce courts have been using when false allegations are made.
So parents will also save money when they hold courts to higher standards.
While Measure 6 is not perfect, as it still says that the State grants these rights to you, when in actuality these rights are natural rights. These rights can only be taken away, not granted. And the Measure still allows the court to apply lowered standards to divorced parents than it does to married parents. And if the judge wants to violate your 4th and 5th amendment rights he/she can still do this under North Dakota law even after Measure 6 passes. In other words, the judge can still require you to jump through hoops in order to make the court comfortable with supporting the presumption that you get equal time. These can be in the form of expensive family studies and other evaluations. But the judge will be required to support decisions where they strip a parent of equal time with the child, and unequal time will not be the starting point.
Either way, Measure 6 is an improvement over what North Dakota has in place now. And North Dakota residents who believe in the Constitution can still work on refining their laws even more as they help their attorneys get used to the fact that North Dakota residents will no longer stand there and tolerate being stripped of their equal time to their child just because their marital status or relationship status has changed, or just because they disagree with the other parent or disagree even with one of the evaluators, and just because a judge or anyone else may think that they should or can decide better than the parent.
Attorneys Erica Shively, Lisa Benson, and other people like Paul Schauer on the ballotpedia page who are against the ballot measure have misled everyone to believe that children’s rights are unprotected with this Measure. They have led everyone to believe that the attorneys and judges protect the child’s rights and not the fit parent. They fail to inform parents that legitimate State power is only invoked in that capacity after the State proves the parent is unfit or a clear and present danger.
They have gotten away with this lowered standard for so long because people may not have known that their statutes were unconstitutional or that a judge does not determine best interest superior to that of the fit parents.
Attorneys that oppose this measure have their ego bruised right now. They want you to have to do what they say. They want this change to take many years and for you to have the tough task of getting their statute overturned through the many years of battling through the appellate courts. They are clearly upset that the residents are able to bypass that long drawn out and expensive judicial process of challenging their statute’s constitutionality through this ballot initiative. This ballot initiative starts the end of their regime of terror on children of divorced parents.
Children’s rights are protected by their fit parents. Measure 6 will reduce the intrusive hand of biased attorneys involved in their lives. Again nothing in this Measure takes away the ability of the State or the parent to protect a child from child abuse.
Measure 6 is a long overdue change that moves towards constitutional protections in North Dakota’s family codes so that parents and children are protected from unwarranted and expensive government intrusions into their private lives. That is why the attorneys are fighting this so hard. It won’t be as easy for them to bully or intimidate the parents into giving their rights over to them. Parents will not be at an immediate disadvantage and will not have to give in to the rest of the court and attorney demands. The attorneys know that this is just the beginning of the tearing down of their hidden unconstitutional practices that they have been enjoying for decades.
Any statute that allows a government bureaucrat to take over the rights and decision of your child because you disagree with the other parent is wholly unconstitutional even if that bureaucrat wears a robe. Erica Shively is misleading people by stating that a statute looks out for the “best interest of the child” when the constitution demands that fit parents retain this right, both parents individually and equally. Statutes are supposed to be put into place to protect the rights of the people and to clarify what rights you enjoy. Measure 6 moves divorce courts closer to recognizing that parents and children have constitutional rights and that the parents will no longer tolerate these rights being mischaracterized or being violated.
Attorneys have gotten used to their smokescreens not being challenged. When they complain that Measure 6 puts parents first and not children. They hope that you don’t really read the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that state that a parent protects their children better than any third party or government. They also hope that you haven’t read that you do not have to be better or wealthier, or even live up to the standards of a judge’s personal belief or bias in order to continue to make the decisions for your child despite even a judge believing that they know what is best.
More will need to be done but at least Measure 6 has begun to strip power hungry bureaucrats of the ability to abuse, violate, and destroy your rights as a parent and your child’s rights to be protected by their parents and a family relationship with each parent individually and equally.
Opponents of Measure 6 would also have you believe that a child of a divorced parent can be treated different than a child that has married parents. Current laws regarding married parents support democracy, freedom, and protection of parental rights for married parents. While divorce laws impose socialism, tyranny, and denial of parental rights on divorced parents.
So the real issue here with attorneys and other organizations that are opposing Measure 6 is NOT what is in the child’s best interest but who gets to say what the child’s best interest is. Opponents of Measure 6 would have you believe that in a free society it is a government bureaucrat in a robe who gets to decide what is in your child’s best interest; or lead you to believe that one of them (the attorney, the domestic violence worker, the mental health worker, the family studies professional, the child’s counsel (GAL), etc.) get to decide, simply because you are not the kind of parent that they want to support, or simply because you get divorced or separated and are in disagreement with the other parent, or because you want to make a change in the child’s life that you weren’t able to make when you were with that other parent.
The lie the opponents seek to continue is that your rights as a parent has some relation to your marital status or a change in your marital status. However, the United States Supreme Court long ago put the final nail in that coffin when it overturned bastardy laws. Divorce statutes in North Dakota and almost every other state are the last vestiges of these bastardy laws and they need to disappear. The state of North Dakota simply cannot constitutionally create two classes of child based on nothing more than a change in the marital status of that child’s parents. It is nothing more than bias and prejudice against divorcing parents and an overwhelming desire of divorce court judges to maintain their unconstitutional power over divorcing parents and divorce court attorneys to maintain their shameful revenue streams generated on the backs of children of divorce that keeps this unconstitutional and destructive system going.
Bottom line, Measure 6 starts the process of protecting children by protecting the parents who protect the children. Anyone that opposes the application of the people’s constitutional rights is just downright un-American.
