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.
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.
