Many states such as California assert that your child has a right to Stability or a Right to Continuity. Unfortunately, most states use this so called right as a club against the fit parents by asserting that the State has authority to provide stability to a child by depriving the child of a fit parent in custody proceedings. This is an absurd idea on its face.
What is a child’s Right to Stability in constitutional law?
One Federal District Court put it this way:
To safeguard the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, free of government intrusion, except in cases of neglect and abandonment, is to safeguard each child’s need for continuity. This preference for minimum state intervention and for leaving well enough alone is reinforced by our recognition that law is incapable of effectively managing, except in a very gross sense, so delicate and complex a relationship as that between parent and child.” Doe v. Irwin, 441 F. Supp. 1247 (Dist. Court, WD Michigan 1977) AT 1256, 1257
So what we see is that the child’s right to stability or the child’s right to continuity is really the child’s First Amendment right to have and maintain intimate and expressive close family associations with each fit parent free from unwarranted governmental intervention into family privacy. Where a divorce court uses a divorce between the parents to insert itself into the private family unit established between each fit parent and each child, the divorcee court is destabilizing the child’s life and teaching the child that government is a destabilizing factor. When a divorce court judge enhances one parent’s time with and authority over the child and diminishes the other parent’s time and authority over the child, the divorce court judge is violating the child’s right to stability.
Parents should be careful of this one. For instance, in California they establish a state statutory fundamental right of the child to stability but in typical corrupt fashion, they use this right against parents NOT against the state. Rights protect us from government action NOT necessarily from private action. Watch out for when the state tries to reverse this on you and call it out. Object to it if it is raised in court in this way. Simply say,
Objection Your Honor, the child’s right to stability is a right as against government action, in this context, againsts this Court’s own actions. In the context of fit parents, the child’s right to stability can only be the right to maintain intimate and expressive, close family, parent-child speech, association, worship, and family privacy as against this Court’s unlawful invasion of that family privacy as punishment imposed on the child for the parents’ marital choices that this Court disfavors.
More about the child’s Right to Stability.
Ron and Sherry Palmer answer difficult family rights questions. Have a question you want them to address, you can send them that question here.
