I think not!

Kelly Rutherford was on CBS last night because she claims she lost a custody battle in the family law trial courts to the father who now lives in France.[i] Might I remind you that she has 50/50 custody and as Robert Franklin, esq. (writer for Nationalparents.org) so aptly put it, “…50% custody – would cause any father to fall on his knees and thank divine providence for his good fortune. Only in a culture that presumes sole maternal custody could 50% parenting time be called “losing” custody.”[1] Kelly and Daniel’s children were born here and the father was living here until his Visa was revoked. There is suspicion that Kelly had her hand in this revocation.

I had a friend whose Visa had been revoked because his wife who brought him here decided to divorce him. If he didn’t return to his country willingly and got caught with an expired Visa then he might never be allowed to return to this country.

If Kelly threatened to report the father, Daniel Giersch, to immigration for not agreeing to give her custody, and there was any problem with his Visa at the time, he might have been facing something similar.

Kelly says that she is going to fight this “unconstitutional” decision. Our question is was it unconstitutional to authorize the father to move the children in this case? We are not attorneys but we do have an opinion as constitutional scholars and parental rights educators in this area. In general, we say that a parent wanting to move can move but cannot take the children if it is going to interfere with the other parent’s ability to exercise their time equally.

But what if you have a parent that is bullying and trying to extort the other parent in order to gain a custody advantage over them and take their children from them? Then we say that it is the judge’s job to protect the other parent to be able to continue to exercise their time with their children too. Does that mean that people like Kelly shouldn’t have equal time, probably not. Does that mean that she shouldn’t have equal time if she cannot exercise her time, probably not. (And, in fact, the judge did not take equal time away from Kelly or the father.) This article really is not about Kelly and the father specifically thought. This is about constitutional parental rights and how protecting them also protects children from parental alienation and other emotional health issues, and it is about not being gender biased or missing when we have blinders on ourselves.

If the mother has interfered and prevented the father from being able to exercise his time with his children, then the mother can be punished by having their time reduced and even supervised and restricted in order to protect the other parent and the children from violating their constitutional rights to be together. The courts must be able to sanction parents when they interfere with other people’s rights. This is permissible under the constitution if done properly by the court.

Kelly Rutherford’s fight for custody of her children also opens eyes to the public bias and prejudice.

Have you ever asked yourself or heard someone ask, “Why are we still having to fight the abuses in the family courts?” Have you ever wondered why you are still having to fight bigotry and abuse of power in family law?

It struck me as I was reading the comments on the CBS post that the public is empowering the courts to continue their abuse of power over parents and children. And I wondered if the persons making the comments like, Kelly “must be unfit” or must have “done something wrong”, and, that it was “wrong” for a judge “to take the children from a mother”, had any idea of the role that they play in encouraging abuse of power in the courts. Do these people realize how biased and prejudiced their statements really are? Keeping equal custody but the court approving a move of the children is not necessarily unconstitutional as long as they can show that they had the authority to make that decision. And from what we can tell from what is buzzing throughout the media, Kelly had her hand in getting the father’s Visa removed and was refusing to include the father in the children’s lives. So the judge was forced to make a decision that would be more likely to protect all of the individual rights, parents and children.

Individuals accusing Kelly of being unfit or doing something wrong because she lost in the decision of whether her children would live here demonstrates a huge need to educate the public not only in constitutional parental rights but also in parental alienation. Remember when we set out to educate third-world countries about AIDS so that we could reduce the spread of AIDS overall? Education works and ignorance perpetuates harm to everyone in society. It is clear that there are many people still who could use a good education in parental rights and children’s rights.

The problem in family courts is that they have benefited from so many people acting on their own natural bias and prejudices and acting on what they have been taught through the court examples over the generations of custody battles. And even when it happens to them they don’t realize that maybe their own bias prevented them from making the choices that could have protected them, their friend, their child, or someone else’s child.

Do you suffer from this bias or prejudice? Is your thinking about divorce biased from false outdated beliefs? Ask yourself these questions to see if you are prejudiced in your thinking:

  1. In divorce, does the better parent get the children?
  2. Should only one parent get the children?
  3. Do parental rights depend on marriage such that a divorce is grounds to take parental rights away from an otherwise good parent?
  4. Do parents who divorce have to live forever under the decisions they made when married?
  5. Do parents who get divorced deserve to have the government take over their children simply because the divorced?

What if one parent didn’t want to get divorced but was forced into it.

I am writing this post because the comments on the post demonstrate why the parents fighting for equal shared parenting and protection of their constitutional fundamental parental rights are having trouble. Public opinion is still driven by prejudice and bias!

Fit and loving parents have their children taken from them every day by judges who abuse their power in family courts through the continued bias and prejudice and lies that get perpetuated by the family courts. Some of these lies such as the idea that the court should pick one parent over the other, or presuming that one parent is bad or has done something wrong because the court has picked one parent over the other parent, presuming that you have to be a deadbeat or a drug addict to lose your children in family courts, or making gender-based assumptions like assuming that the mother is a superior parent to the father because she carried the child in her womb and nursed the baby or stayed at home caring for the child. Picking on one of the parents or judging one over the other is not the way to solve this problem. If either parent is interfering with the other’s ability to be with the children then that is grounds for the courts taking action to protect the rights of both parents and the children.

Remember, when state law says that the court must pick one and only one parent, it doesn’t matter how good the losing parent is. Two wonderful parents can enter into a divorce and one of them will lose custody according to many sates’ laws. This is how family court operates and it is completely unconstitutional. Don’t believe me, check out the movie, Divorce Corp.

It’s not just a parent who loses a child but also a child who loses a parent. And when a child loses a parent they are at high risk of suffering from a multitude of emotional health issues. This includes children who have one parent as a visitor according to a former judge in Connecticut and a study done by Massachusetts General Hospital. Regardless of whether you have cut a mother or a father out of a child’s life, this can be devastating to that child’s development and permanent.

The following are the statistical results from Massachusett’s General Hospital.

“MGH’s project on the Impact of High Conflict Divorce on Children:[ii]

  • 65% had anxiety severe enough to require therapy
  • 56% Developed Attachment disorder;
  • 48% had abnormal fears and phobias;
  • 44% of both boys and girls became physically aggressive;
  • 31% had sleep disorders
  • 29% withdrew from activities including ones that they loved to do
  • 24% developed opposition defiant behavior, including temper tantrums and uncontrolled outbursts
  • 21% prematurely became involved in sexual activity
  • 13% began bed wetting
  • 10% developed dissociative personality disorders (once known as multiple personality disorders)

Violence is also increased when a child loses a parent.

The statistics are over whelming:[iii]

1)      85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)

2)      70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept 1988)

3)      80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978.)

4)      63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census

5)      71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source: National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)

6)      90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes

*We are not gender biased here at Fix Family Courts. This list is from other sources providing more reasons why the courts and the public should not lean towards one parent or the other.

Can we really afford as a society to create so many single parent households based on nothing more than historical bigotry continued through ignorance?

In a nutshell, regardless of how we individually feel about any individual parent, each of them has the right to be who they choose to be, the right to not lose their children because we do not agree with their choices, and the right to continue to parent without interference from a judge (or the public or third parties) until one of those parents violates the law or is doing something that prevents the other parent from exercising their individual and equal rights and time with their child.

If you are being victimized by the family courts or know someone that is and you want to help you can read more about what we write here, in our book, and on Facebook, and watch our videos on our YouTube page. (See the links below.)

You can become the solution and help fit parents and children not lose each other in family court battles. Feel free to contact us at Fix Family Courts if you are dealing with the bias and prejudice practices of the family courts and aren’t getting anywhere. We have powerful arguments waiting for you to use to empower yourself and help you help that friend that you didn’t know how to help before.

[i] “Actress Kelly Rutherford In Custody Fight As Kids Live In France” https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/09/02/actress-kelly-rutherford-in-custody-fight-as-kids-live-in-france/ accessed 2014 September 2

[ii] Massachusetts General Hospital study on the effect of children in high conflict divorce. March 2009

[iii] Defend the Natural Family Blog https://www.defendthenaturalfamily.com/home/category/fatherhood Accessed 2014 September 4