Many state court judges believe that you waive your rights when you enter a custody battle because they say you are asking the court to decide what you cannot decide together.

This, of course, is total baloney, but you need to know how to fight it.

What should you do to protect your parental rights?

There are many ways you can waive your parental rights, so you have to identify what these are and eliminate them. Let’s look at one of the biggest ones today in this blog post. Best interest of the child. Almost every parent who enters the court has a pleading filed by their attorney that says to the court, these two parents could not get along so we are asking the judge to make decisions for the parents regarding their child. The court takes this as you have now turned over all of your rights to the judge.

First: Update Your Pleadings: You need to review your pleadings, your petition, counterpetition, or your response to the other party. Look for any place where you may be asking the court to make a best interest determination directly or by reference to statute. If you find any, remove them.

Second: If you are the petitioner and have already filed your petition then modify your petition*. If you are the respondent and have already filed a counterpetition, then amend your counterpetition* making your intentions and requests explicitly clear. Make a plain statement in this petition that you are asking the court to protect and preserve your constitutional rights and your child’s constitutional rights through your state court’s federal jurisdiction under the supremacy clause. (Learn more about these plain statements in the book Beginner’s Guide to Family Law.)

We show you how to do this in our Motion samples. These contain the language and arguments on how to do this. These are not customized by state, so you will have to pull up your own statutes and rules and conform the arguments to address any caselaw that your court is using to continue these civil rights violations. There are a lot of excuses they will use. So we did the hard part for you and created the core argument in the motions, in our online classes, and our books.

Third: Make a plain statement that you expect the court to uphold the federal public policy, to safeguard your and your child’s constitutional rights, [wlm_private “Gold Member”]see Burt v. Titlow, 134 S. Ct. 10 (Supreme Court 2013), (Indeed, state courts have the solemn responsibility equally with the federal courts to safeguard constitutional rights, and this Court has refused to sanction any decision that would reflect negatively upon a state court’s ability to do so.)[/wlm_private]

Fourth: Make a plain statement that you expect the court to enforce the federal public policy over any state public policy including the state’s best interest of the child public policy and to fail to do so is a violation of the supremacy clause, [wlm_private “Gold Member”] see Howlett v. Rose, 496 US 356, 374 (Supreme Court 1990), (The policy of the federal Act was to be considered the prevailing policy in every state which the state court could not refuse to enforce because of conceptions of impolicy or want of wisdom on the part of Congress in having called into play its lawful powers.)[/wlm_private]

Fifth: Make plain statement that you do NOT waive any federal or state constitutional rights by entering these proceedings and that if the trial court conditions access to this court upon a waiver of rights the court commits error because it violates the due process right to open access to the courts, [wlm_private “Gold Member”]see Johnson v. Avery, 393 US 483, 485 (Supreme Court 1969), (it is fundamental that access … to the courts for the purpose of presenting … complaints may not be denied or obstructed.)[/wlm_private]

Sixth: Make a plain statement that failing to act on this federal public policy would be error because it would constitute discrimination against federal rights. [wlm_private “Gold Member”] see Howlett v. Rose, 496 US 356, 373 (Supreme Court 1990), (the refusal to hear the FELA action constituted discrimination against rights arising under federal laws… in violation of the Supremacy Clause.)[/wlm_private]

This is just the bare minimum you need to do to assert your parental rights against the many tricks that the custody courts use to take your parental rights from you. We write about these additional steps in our members site and in our books. You need to force the trial court to exercise its federal jurisdiction and to exercise it properly. Sounds difficult but really its not that hard.

Often these corrupt judges will trick you by telling you that the state statute defines the due process you are to receive. You can challenge this simply by responding to the judge, “Objection Your Honor, it is well-established that state legislatures have no authority whatsoever over the minimum requirements of federal due process and no authority to authorize this court to violate those federal rights.”

Our Beginner’s Guide to Family Law book is full of plain language objections that you can easily remember and repeat at the right times. Yes, it will help you know what the right time is. If you want to stop being intimidated by your judge, this book is your absolute best choice. As an added bonus, you can use this book to challenge your attorney and to ensure that your attorney is both prepared to fight for your parentla rights and more importantly is willing to fight for your parental rights. 

* Always check with an attorney whether you retain one or not, ask for any legal technical information regarding updating pleadings. Sometimes changing dates on things can create other consequences so look into that and any other reasons the attorney gives you for or against making changes and amendments to your current pleadings and filings. Make sure you use an attorney who is more concerned with protecting constitutional rights than earning blood money from your misery under corrupt state laws.

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