Best Hope for Parents

Number 1 Parental Rights Book

This post contans a preview from the book "NOT In the Child's Best Interest" which is the book that placed Ron and Sherry Palmer in the forefront of the Parental Rights Movement. The supreme law of our land is actually on the side of parents. State custody courts are violating that supreme law daily. There is hope for you and there is hope for parents everywhere in this country precisely because the supreme law of our country, and for every state, is on our side.

Ron and Sherry's primary focus is helping parents compel custody courts to properly apply the supreme law and we have made great progress. Every day it gets more and more difficult for state custody judges to violate the rights of parents. You too can apply this to your child custody hearings, to make it difficult for the family courts to continue to violate your rights by applying simple easy steps. You can start to learn how to do this by starting with this book.

The following excerpt is a peek at a section from Chapter 1 of the book:

Not in the Child's Best Interest: How Divorce Courts get it all Wrong and How the Constitution can fix it

This book is now available for purchase.

Chapter 1: Declaring our Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed: that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it…

— Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Divorce Courts are acting like King George

States would have us believe that asking for a divorce from your spouse is the same as giving the State permission to take over control of your children. The Constitution and the Supreme Court say that parents have Fundamental Rights to their children that deserve an extreme level of respect. Divorce Courts not only do NOT show any respect to these Fundamental Liberties, they trample them daily as if they had never read the Constitution themselves. When entering into a divorce involving children, and your rights are being attacked, you have only two choices. You can know your rights under the Constitution and stand up for those rights to your best ability or you can take what they do to you and live with the consequences.

Standards Must Apply

The Supreme Court has been very clear that the rights of parents deserve protection, unless the State can show a strong interest to the contrary. A strong interest means demonstration of neglect, or placing the child in clear and present danger. It does NOT mean entering into a divorce with your spouse. We will show you, step-by-step, why we believe that the Divorce Courts in this country are acting in violation of your constitutional rights, and the constitutional rights of your child, when they unconstitutionally take control over the custody and control of your child. We will then show you what you can do about it. The idea that they can do this is no different from them saying that since you choose to get divorced the State can now take away your right to free speech, or your right to practice your religion, or your right to own a gun, or your right to be free from unwarranted searches and seizures. These are all Fundamental Liberties that outside of Divorce Court get extreme protection.

You walked into the Divorce Court hearing as a loving, caring, and fit parent who has always provided for the reasonable minimum needs of your child with rights that would be protected anywhere else. Once you enter that Court, however, it's as if your rights don’t exist. The Judge acts as if your rights are his to give to you as he pleases or to deny you as he pleases. They call this the “best interest of the child standard.” The practical definition of this term is, anything the Divorce Court Judge wants it to mean, provided he can trump up a legal sounding justification. Between your first hearing and your last hearing, that Judge can do this without any appellate review. The Court can issue temporary orders that deprive you of your Fundamental Liberties and you can NOT even appeal these orders. Temporary sounds short term but these can go on for years.

Do You Want to Protect your Rights?

If you want to protect your rights to your child, we will show you how to get them and keep them. Our Founding Fathers fought an angry, bitter war against an oppressive State (England) that denied them liberties that they deemed to be Fundamental. They considered these rights to be unalienable rights given to them by their creator not by the King of England. They fought a war at great peril to themselves in the name of rights held by the people not doled out by the State. They won that war. They created our Constitution. They added ten amendments in the form of our Bill of Rights. We as a Nation have amended that Constitution another seventeen times since then. Within this Constitution and the twenty-seven amendments to it we have many protections from arbitrary State power that are NOT being applied in Divorce Courts. It is time that we demand those protections with the same resolve and determination that George Washington showed when he lead an armed rebellion against King George of England.

There is nothing inherent in the power of the State to grant two people a marriage certificate that allows the State to challenge the Parental Rights of the two people getting married when those two people already have children. Likewise, there is nothing inherent in the power of the State to grant those same two people a divorce that allows the State to challenge their Parental Rights. Two fit, loving parents do NOT become unfit and unloving just because they choose to get divorced. They are NOT asking to be divorced from their child nor is the child asking to be divorced from his or her parents.

Individual Rights

Your Fundamental Liberty Interests in being a parent belong to you as an individual not to the particular family unit. They do not change if the other parent dies nor do they change if the marriage fails. There is no special marital status that automatically gives any State the authority to deny or abridge any Fundamental Liberty. The Supreme Court has said that Parental Rights attach to the individual not the marriage. The Supreme Court has said that equal protection demands that Parental Rights are the same for fathers and mothers and for married and unmarried and single people alike. Divorce Courts, however, continue to deny this reality every day and invade, deny, and abridge Fundamental Liberties as if they were nothing of any significance at all.

Divorce Courts are so arrogant in this power that they do not even attempt to articulate any legal triggering mechanism that would give them the authority to ignore Fundamental Liberties. Divorce Courts act with the same arrogance displayed by King George when he ignored the rights of or Founding Fathers and it is time for us to Declare our Independence from the tyrannical rule of unconstrained Divorce Courts and the unconstrained Family Law System.

The key to ridding ourselves of this despotic rule is to resolutely declare in our Pleadings and in our Motions that we are a Free People with unalienable Rights, that among these rights is the liberty to care for, to have custody over, and to have control over our children, given to us by God, not by the State. Divorce Courts, just like King George, are likely to laugh at and ignore our Declarations, at first. Just like King George, however, Divorce Court Judges will, in time, have to recognize a new reality. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to resort to armed rebellion. We have two processes of internal rebellion in this country. One is called appellate review. The other is called the Legislative process. These processes have been used successfully to gain civil rights for women, for blacks, and currently for the LGBT community. Each process is triggered in different ways.

To trigger the appellate process we have to make our declarations clear in the Divorce Court hearings both in writing and in our oral arguments. Once the Divorce Court Judge ignores our Declarations, we can then initiate the appellate process by filing an appeal to the next higher State Court. There are typically two higher State Courts, a Court of Appeals, and a State Supreme Court. The State Supreme Courts of Washington and Virginia have both made clear that they recognize the Rights of Parents under the U.S. Constitution and they have overturned state legislation as a result. Even if your State’s Supreme Court doesn't recognize Parental Rights you can appeal one step further, to the U.S. Supreme Court. This Court has the final say on Fundamental Liberties under our Constitution. This book will share with you what they have had to say on the subject.

Triggering the Legislative Process is much simpler and less costly on many levels. Every State has an elected legislature that creates the laws of the State. These laws only have legal effect if they fall within the guidelines established by the U.S. Constitution. You can contact your legislative representatives in multiple ways and tell them that you want your state laws to reflect the Fundamental Liberties of parents and children as they are described here in this book.

By using both of these approaches at once in every State in this Nation, we will create a voice so strong that state legislatures and Divorce Courts will have to take notice. The simple weight of thousands of divorcing parents demanding protection of their Fundamental Liberties in this way will drive change in this system. The beautiful thing about our government is that it will listen and change, if only you can get its attention. It takes bold action on a large scale to get that attention.

Conclusion

Now it is up to you to arm yourself by reading the rest of this book. Get the knowledge that will power your words, as gunpowder powered the muskets and cannons of the Revolutionary War, in this most pressing 21^stcentury battle for Liberty, and the protection of our families from unwarranted government intrusion. (THIS IS THE END OF THE PREVIEW. THE BOOK ITSELF CONTAINS MANY CASE CITATIONS AND FOOTNOTES THAT SUPPORT WHAT WE SHARE WITH YOU IN THE BOOK AS WELL AS CASE BRIEFS AND ANNOTATIONS OF THE SUPREME COURT CASES PRESENTED IN A WAY THAT MAKES THEM UNDERSTANDABLE FOR YOU AND FOR YOUR ATTORNEYS. THE BOOK IS AVAILABLE NOW.)

(We would love any feedback, comments on what you think about this first section from chapter 1. If you would be so kind to share them with us, it would be very appreciated. Subscribe to our mailing list if you would like to know when we post more informtion, tips, and tools to help you get better outcomes in your family court litigation.)

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