Category Archives: family law

Divorce, family law, Fundamental Rights, morality

How Disgusting Is This ??

October 27, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

by Standerinfamilycourt

You’ve heard of “ambulance chasers” ? Well, how about distressed-marriage vultures ??

Apparently, it’s possible to cross state lines and shop for an easier, sleazier divorce in some states. That’s actually how it used to be before the days of so-called “divorce reform” that wound up redefining marriage altogether. This “reform” sunk all of American society to its lowest (or so we all thought) common denominator.

Some states, as far back as the 1800’s, saw the opportunity for destruction of out-of-state families as a lucrative industry to exploit. This attitude will likely have to be dealt with once again as more states re-assess the toxic impact on our society, re-thinking the social wreckage left by unilateral divorce, and looking to return to more family-friendly policies.

(Texas ad: “It’s a whole ‘nother rodeo out here.” )

The feared cross-state impact of repealing unilateral divorce is probably also one of the most formidable legislative and judicial obstacles to restoring basic 1st and 14th Amendment Constitutional guarantees that were stripped from the politically disfavored and disenfranchised class of Americans called “Respondents”.

“Family Law” firms should not be allowed to reach across states lines to increase social malaise and instability for crass commercial purposes! (It seems that such a practice qualifies as interstate commerce – and should be regulated as such at the Federal level. )

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, morality

Why No One Is Married

October 27, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: Mr. Truncellito is the Texas attorney written about in the book “Stolen Vows” by Judy Parejko. Mr. Truncellito’s research into the Texas statute after unilateral divorce was enacted exposed a fraud, but to no avail. The original enactment of the Texas “no-fault” law was to be by mutual consent only. However, the legal community conspired to implement it as unilateral divorce. Mr. Truncellito appealed his case up through the Texas Supreme Court based on his investigation, but failed to win relief for the people of Texas, with the final determination entered in November, 2000.

Ed Truncellito, J.D., September 2000

Marriage today is no more than “registered cohabitation” because no-fault divorce was misinterpreted as “no cause and no proof” divorce. If you can divorce without true cause–then you were not truly married in the first place. You were merely cohabiting, as in ages past, regardless what name it’s called.

You could always walk away from a disagreeable cohabitation, but marriage was defined in its protection by law. You couldn’t get out of a marriage just because you wanted out. You had to have true cause: abuse, adultery, abandonment, or the like. And not only cause, but genuine proof of it.

When the well-meaning no-faulters tried to take adversarialism out of the divorce process, to make it friendly, it failed. The door swung wide open to “no cause and no proof” divorce. Meanwhile, adversarialism went right back into the property and custody battles.

The old “fault” laws needed overhaul to bring spousal equality, and to make the system friendlier, but no-fault’s “no cause and no proof” divorce, administered by warring lawyers, was the wrong implementation. The law should have required that spouses be taught how, and helped, to settle differences as co-equals, to deliberate justly and fairly, with self-control, while honoring their partner and the vows they made for a permanent union.

Beforehand, almost any man could rule his wife and settle disputes by physical force. But spousal equality demands at least a little education, a working knowledge of civilized diplomacy and reasoned compromise — for both genders.

The no-fault laws did not train the partners to solve any problems. The laws simply — and grievously — empowered the courts to settle all their disputes for them, in one grand sweep, by divorce, no matter how whimsical or trivial the disagreement. No-fault did not elevate the status of wives as co-equal family managers. It lowered the status of both spouses, while it elevated the courts as the new, and not-so-charitable, family managers.

The no-fault divorce system, as implemented, funded divorce. It channeled money from troubled families to divorce lawyers, now at hourly rates in three digits, in exchange for dividing children and property. The court’s officers were hired and paid to terminate marriages, not to save them.

The no-fault legal system, as envisioned, was to be a family hospital, to comfort the hurting spouses and bandage the wounded marriages. Instead, it became a family morgue. It promised to give relief from the former hostilities of the “fault” legal system, but it became more hostile than ever.

Reconciliation dollars, facilities, and assistance were promised, but they never materialized. A generation and a half later, we know that the experiment did not work as planned.

In truth, our no-fault laws, as implemented, abolished true marriage. After many years of no-fault, we no longer even respect the solemn covenants that partners make between themselves and God. Instead, we respect the solemn covenants that lawyers make between themselves and a judge.

Although cohabitation is handicapped in many ways, it unfortunately has one important advantage: ordinary cohabitation keeps government out of the home. In contrast, the registered cohabitation that we still call marriage invokes the jurisdiction of government officers. They receive authority to manage the lives of both spouses and their children with legal force.

No wonder people cohabit. No wonder we have so many broken homes. Partners can walk away from the slightest inconvenience, at any time, with court assistance. They don’t ever have to conciliate, or swallow their pride and say they are sorry, or try to please anyone but themselves.

When divorce was made into a guaranteed certainty, it became an easy way out of hard times. Partners knew they would no longer be pressed by embarrassing questions about covenants and faithfulness, as they moved on to their next cohabitation. Nor could they be stopped.

The fundamental attribute, the unique defining characteristic, the earmark, that always distinguished true marriage from cohabitation, is legal security — protection by law — protection by divorce law.

Today, that protection is gone. Genuine proof of true cause was always required for divorce, and anything else — but that — should have changed in an overhaul of divorce law.

It is one thing to let spouses decide, without intrusion, for their own private reasons, whether to live together, or to live apart indefinitely. But it is another thing altogether, for government not to question the cause, when government has already intervened, when government is asked to destroy a marriage, totally and permanently.

The legal security of true marriage cannot be a chain. But neither can it be a thread. It must be a sturdy fabric, a flexible but tough canvas, to weather the gales of life.

That’s why true marriage is so secure and stable for mates. When spouses cannot easily shake off their yoke, they soften it by mutual accommodation. In other words: spouses don’t stay together because they get along; they get along because they stay together.

And that’s why true marriage is so secure and stable for children. True marriage is underwritten by law. Children can rest assured that no passing storm will carry either of their parents away. They know that the whole force of government stands as a benevolent guard to protect their homes and both of their providers.

We are not in the midst of a divorce crisis. It is a marriage crisis.

No one is married, and no one can marry. The right to marry was taken away.

The happy voices of the bride and the bridegroom are gone from our land.

Attorney Ed Truncellito spent over 1,500 hours researching the legislation that created “no-fault” divorce in Texas in 1969. He found that the law was meant only to apply to uncontested divorces. He has filed suit against the State Bar of Texas, alleging that they, like the tobacco industry, covered up what they knew to be a destructive product, and that the State Bar knew all along that the no-fault law was being misapplied but covered it up for financial gain. See Mr. Truncellito’s website at www.no-one-is-married.com. His email address is no_one_is_married@juno.com (use underscores).

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Spiritual Warfare

Our Story (7 Times Around the Jericho Wall) – Part 3

October 21, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

by Standerinfamilycourt.com

“For though we walk (live) in the flesh, we are not carrying on our warfare according to the flesh and using mere human weapons.

For the weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood], but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds,

[Inasmuch as we] refute arguments and theories and reasonings and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God; and we lead every thought and purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)”

– 2 Corinthians 10: 3-5 (Amplified)

Part 3: PREPARATION FOR APPEAL CONTINUES….

Blogger’s Note: the discussion that follows reflects only my own research and independent thought, and does not necessarily reflect the advice of my attorneys.

Only God could bring down the fortified wall of Jericho that had stood for 3,000 years, and was the most formidable wall in the history of the world at that time. In the same way, this appeal won’t be what pulls the tyrannical unilateral divorce law down, but the prayers and the honor of God’s glory behind this appeal (and hopefully more appeals to come in more states) that will pull the law down. The principle of Federalism in our American tradition requires that this be a state-by-state process, as we’ve seen with those who wish to complete the destruction of marriage by further redefinition. Only a mighty act of God (and uncharacteristic acts of human courage and leadership) could ever result in the U.S. Supreme Court agreeing to take up the unilateral divorce issue, even if there’s constitutional victory for us at the state level. I’m still praying for this, for nothing will be too hard for El Elyon, God Most High.

I mentioned in my first post that our constitutional law attorneys advised us that we will have to lose all of the technical points in our appeal before any constitutional arguments will be ruled on. Now that’s discouraging- like peering up a fortified wall!

From my simple-minded layperson perspective, it’s pretty hard to separate the technical from the constitutional on several of the key points, and it hasn’t gotten any easier with all the research I’ve done since that summer day in downtown Chicago. It seems that “abuse of discretion” and denial of equal protection or violation of my right of free religious exercise intertwine symbiotically – are cross-motivated, if you will. I know I’ve had at least one wrestling conversation with my attorney debating whether we argue that the law itself is unconstitutional, or the law as applied to the facts of my case is unconstitutional…”arguments and theories and reasonings and and lofty things that set themselves up against the knowledge of God” (Hopefully I’ll get a chance to understand a lot more than I do now about that distinction.)

The religious freedom case will, unfortunately, be too narrow to help anyone besides me, but if we are successful, I’m told it will set a precedent that will be binding in the future and hopefully reform boorish behavior on the bench. That is, if angry leftists don’t take legislative steps in response to any court victory of ours to change the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act, perhaps to gut it, or to once again single out marriage law as an exclusion. The Hobby Lobby decision this past summer thrilled us, but really riled up the liberal forces because they realize what upholding strong conscience protections will do to curb both the pro-abortion and the LGBT political agendas. Just wait til they get their wake-up call that the City of No-Fault is also under serious RFRA attack! A couple of my previous posts discuss RFRA and its implications for our cause of restoring balanced constitutional protections to marriage law.

For these reasons (narrowness of impact and the political vulnerability of RFRA in our liberal-dominated state), my strong preference is to “swing for the fences”, to supplement the religious freedom portion of our case with a simultaneous effort to persuade the court to look at Respondents as a “suspect class”, disfavored and treated with animus by the entrenched powerful interests against whom we are politically weak and are therefore stripped of a host of fundamental rights when we’ve done nothing to harm our marriages. I believe this would greatly bolster our 14th Amendment equal protection and due process arguments, and make any motivation to gut Illinois RFRA moot, with regard to our particular cause, at least.

Why does all this matter? In the case of religious freedom, New Mexico also had a RFRA, but unfortunately because their law excludes “laws of general applicability” from RFRA protections, it was self-defeating (not exactly sure what it actually purported to accomplish other than window-dressing). As a result, Elane Photography was told by a pompous, arrogant judge that checking her Christian convictions at the door was the price she had to pay as a citizen for the “privilege of being in business”. Hence, she would apply her unique artistic talent to the dignification of homosexual marriage ceremonies to which she is morally opposed, a form of forced speech which in other circumstances has been found to violate the 1st Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court, unfortunately, concurred with New Mexico by declining to review, since a 1993 prior ruling set a precedent that made it much harder to apply the bare 1st Amendment religious freedom protections without an effective RFRA. It probably didn’t take liberal interests too long to figure out that a RFRA which excludes “laws of general applicability” works a heck of a lot better for them than one that is verbatim the Federal version, since this New Mexico decision came in approximately the same time frame as the Hobby Lobby decision.

With regard to equal protection and due process under the 14th Amendment, all of the prior constitutional challenges to the unilateral divorce law in various states failed because there was not yet sufficient case precedents to empower the courts to apply any higher standard than “rational basis” to the cases. Under this easy (sleazy) standard of review, all a state had to do is demonstrate that the law served a “legitimate” purpose, such as easing the cost of divorce on battered spouses, or ensuring that homemakers received a fair share of their employed spouse’s retirement if divorce was necessary. They didn’t have to prove that the law actually accomplished any particular objective, so bad laws could live on even if some disfavored group was negatively and unfairly impacted or if profound unintended consequences resulted for society as a whole.

Precedents and criteria for “heightened” review started to slowly build in 1976, but really started to escalate just in the last two years with the HHS mandate cases (such as Hobby Lobby), and with the homosexual marriage cases. Many of the latter have come over the summer of 2014 alone. I remember sitting in that downtown Chicago law office in early July and relating how I had been repeatedly denied due process in both of our trials. Both attorneys looked at me and said something to the effect of “Well, they gave you a day in court and let you present evidence, right?”

(To which I replied, “By that standard, Jesus received due process!” ) That’s what “rational basis” does to the due process rights of disfavored parties – it makes them evaporate.

Under intermediate or heightened scrutiny, it becomes possible to make the case that the law has not accomplished its purpose and that there were better options available that either were not considered or were rejected. Under heightened or strict scrutiny, we can start to argue that the state didn’t have a good enough reason to elevate the rights of one spouse over the fundamental rights of the other by excluding marital misconduct from the equation. Or that if they truly wanted, as they claimed, to stop “perjury collusion” in the case of two people who both wanted out of their marriage, it was neither rational nor necessary to impose unilateral divorce on everyone else, including contesting spouses who were morally opposed to divorce and had done absolutely nothing to harm their marriage or spouse.

It was well and good that I stood a pretty fair chance of prevailing on a religious discrimination argument. RFRA explicitly compels the application of strict scrutiny if I can prove that the law was compelling me to violate my deeply-held religious convictions. Since to preserve my dissipation claim, I was under pressure to agree that my marriage was “irretrievably broken”, was expected to have taken action to threaten divorce or actually file a divorce petition which would disobey God who only created marriage, not divorce. I was further expected to separate our finances, another violation of God’s prescribed order for the family roles. I think we can make that case of showing that the law significantly burdens my biblical convictions. That forces opposing counsel or the state of Illinois to prove that the state has a compelling interest in dismissing my dissipation claim for my failure to meet those expectations, which I doubt they can do. Whatever that compelling interest might purport to be, they then have to prove there wasn’t a less burdensome route to achieving that interest.

In the Hobby Lobby case, the U.S. Supreme Court skipped discussion of “compelling interest” and jumped straight to the obvious circumstance that there were many less restrictive means of achieving their aim of providing no-cost contraceptives and abortifacients to Hobby Lobby employees. So, I had to dig out another HHS case on a local pair of firms that had worked their way through the 7th Circuit to see a good definition of “compelling interest”. State appellate judges are influenced by but not bound by Federal court definitions, as I understand. In Korte v Sebelius, November, 2013, that Federal court described a compelling government interest as follows:

“only those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion….only the gravest abuses endangering paramount interests give occasion for permissible limitation. The regulated conduct must pose some substantial threat to public safety, peace or order… Finally, a law cannot be regarded as protecting an interest of the highest order when it leaves appreciable damage to that supposedly vital interest unprohibited. “

It’s hard to imagine what could be said to convince the court that my conscience-based refusal to declare my marriage irretrievably broken or file for divorce or separate our finances was a “grave” abuse or that it threatened a state interest of the “paramount, highest order”, or posed a public threat of any sort. It did consume higher than average court resources, I suppose – but just whose fault is that? I neither asked to be in court, nor harmed my marriage or husband. Is it not more true that the exclusion of marital misconduct provision in the the law itself creates the appreciable damage to the state’s interest in conserving court resources?

As I said before, all of that was well and good, but as Kingdom-builder and as a taxpayer, I am still not satisfied! I believe the law discriminates just as badly against a disfavored and powerless class of people who may not hold any religious convictions at all, but hold moral convictions around the wholeness and integrity of their families. The contribution of unilateral divorce to the poverty rates is well enough documented that the National Organization of Women stood in formal opposition to the 2010 New York legislation that enacted unilateral divorce in the 50th U.S. state because of the proven harsh economic impacts on women and children. In other words, NOW recognized that UMDA (Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act) was not meeting its stated objectives after more than a 40 year run.

While many of the cases I’d been studying on equal protection and due process can be googled for free, as I became more serious about studying this myself, I learned that I could use a nearby university law library for free, much the way pioneer Judith Brumbaugh did 30 years ago in her fight against Florida’s unilateral divorce law. Attorney funds are low after spending almost $100,000 in trials, and I could get by well for myself by narrowly focusing the attorneys on my religious freedom relief valve, but as more Federal courts weighed in over the summer on fundamental rights, “suspect” classes, and levels of scrutiny, I was determined to learn more and try to do as much damage to this immoral law as one woman, who has been given a providential opportunity, can do. I realized I have the opportunity right now to inspire and empower people in other states, and expand the benefit of my efforts in my own state. As the power and move of God would have it, the summer drew to a close while some Federal judges were chastising folks I truly admire at various religious freedom legal ministries because their state government clients seem fine with unilateral divorce despite its proven toxicity to society and its corrosiveness to marriage as an institution. Amen!

I’m looking forward excitedly to working with as many religious freedom ministries as I can, though this particular cause is not politically popular with them. Not realizing they prefer to be contacted through attorneys, I contacted five of them on my own initiative several months ago when it looked apparent that the court was going to brutalize me over my strong religious objections to divorce, and an appeal, one that I might not have enough money to see through, was going to be unavoidable. I had a sense back then where God was taking this and why. Yet they all told me pretty much the same thing, that they “didn’t do family law” (- unless, of course, there happened to be homosexuality involved.) Never mind that I explained I already had a family law attorney and was merely looking for a constitutional specialist. They didn’t think my case was a true religious freedom case at its core. Any burden on my free exercise of religion was “only incidental”. I was so relieved that I was able to engage a constitutional religious freedom attorney with my own resources, and one whom these ministries regularly work with. Because this battle is the Lord’s, and the true weapons of our warfare must be spiritual weapons, I was so pleased to see the following clauses in their representation agreement:

Priority of Building the Kingdom: This representation is undertaken by Client and the Firm to build the Kingdom of God according to the teachings of Jesus and the Bible. Consequently, it shall be interpreted and performed with that objective.

(This blogger believes it’s not worth doing for any other goal or in any other spirit!)

Prayer: The parties shall pray for each other frequently. The Firm as a whole shall pray for Client monthly.

(Blogger is grateful beyond words.)

The next few weeks will have us going over trial transcripts and agreeing an approach to the appeal while meeting the various submission deadlines set by the appeals court. I related earlier how the Lord providentially supplied the funds I needed years in advance of the need, but actually as the attack on our marriage was starting. I’m now down to the “loaves and fishes”, but confident that God will continue to provide all our needs. That may include people as importantly as funds if my efforts are to benefit others. What if the Lord moves my prodigal husband to repentance before the appeal runs its course? Our case if not pursued with others as a class would become immediately moot, yet my highest priority would have to be my husband’s restoration to that Kingdom. His soul is on the line here! I covet the prayers of the saints that the Lord will have His way in everything.

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

– Isaiah 30: 18

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall – Part 1

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall- Part 2

No Day in Court for (Stander) “Jane Doe”, Our Story – Part 4

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce

www. standerinfamilycourt.com

Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Marriage Restoration, Religious freedom

Our Story (7 Times Around the Jericho Wall) – Part 2

October 19, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

by Standerinfamilycourt.com

“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding,excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Ephesians 4:17-24

“But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:3

Part 2: FROM DECREE TO PREPARATION FOR APPEAL

Blogger’s Note: the discussion that follows reflects only my own research and independent thought, and does not necessarily reflect the advice of my attorneys.

In my earlier post I described what it’s like to be an unwilling “Respondent”, a conscientious objector, as some 80% of us are, in state government’s 45-year war on the traditional family.

My husband was seeking to be awarded over $200,000 of my retirement assets after spending some $500,000 or more on a 9-year adulterous overseas relationship, using his corporate position, foreign bank accounts, expense accounts and credit cards that I did not gain visibility of until property division discovery began, in the aftermath of our bifurcated grounds trial. (Bifurcation is where the judge rules that there will be a separate trial for grounds and for issues with the division of property. The trials can occur many months apart in a financially complex case such as ours. )

A very dirty secret of the government divorce regime is that the combination of case law and enacted law applies a double-standard to the marriage contract in a very unique way compared with any other legal contract. For purposes of dividing property, the body of binding case law, and the legislative history behind the statute, holds that marital misconduct cannot be applied because the marriage must be treated as an equal “economic partnership”. However, this is a spurious false analogy because most non-marital financial partnerships have far greater protections from partner malfeasance. Unlike the marriage contact, they are legally binding without due cause, and cannot be interfered with by subsequent legislation that would impair them (per Article 1 Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution) – and they cannot be broken without mutual consent and just compensation. By contrast, case law going all the way back to the late 1800’s and the U.S. Supreme Court holds that Article 1 Section 10 (and corresponding state constitution counterparts) uniquely cannot be applied to protect the marriage contract from ex post facto laws that would impair it. At the time that the husband of my youth and I repeated our marriage vows, “irreconcilable differences” was not a ground for divorce, either in our original state or the state to which we would move 26 years later. The Illinois law that would impair our marriage contract wasn’t enacted until 3 years after our wedding day, and wasn’t enacted in the state in which we actually said those vows until after our 35th wedding anniversary had passed.

How utterly shameful that as a result of applying this double standard, the essential covenant building block of our society that shapes the citizen character necessary to sustain our constitutional democracy into the next generation is afforded far less legal protection than the contractual “economic partnership” it is illegitimately compared to by the “no-fault” machinery!

Two hallmarks of corrosive, morally-repugnant legislation that undermines the wellbeing of society as a whole by creating special entitlements for a politically favored group: (1) pernicious use of a popular false analogy, and (2) contortions in the implementation details that result in having it both ways when it comes to a given set of facts and circumstances. Case law around dissipation claims presents a classic example when joined with the political effort to prevent marital misconduct from having a material case outcome.

Not every state has found it necessary to bar marital misconduct from consideration in the division of marital property, which by law includes retirement assets. About a dozen states expressly allow marital misconduct to be considered for this purpose. This alone calls into serious question the necessity of this heinous exclusion which heavily favors the offending spouse who brings the petition, and whether it is the least restrictive means of accomplishing a desirable, or even necessary, government aim. This is an enormously important question because, while recent statistics show that cohabitation has caused the marriage rate to decline-hence the divorce rate appears to have levelled off for couples under the age of 50, the widely-reported claim that the overall divorce rate is declining is false. By contrast, the divorce rate has been very rapidly increasing for couples past the age of 50. This government policy seems to do very serious harm to non-offending spouses who are nearing retirement age, particularly if they contest the divorce action on a moral, family-based objection and they have been the more responsible party financially (reflecting the high correlation between financial stewardship and staying out of adultery).

The legal community in our state wrings its hands over the prevalence of dissipation claims and has passed several recent measures to curb them, even though the inherent flaw in the philosophy of the law itself makes them the only available avenue to economic justice for many innocent Respondents on whom divorce was unwillingly imposed. Our judge displayed a particular contempt toward our well-founded and carefully documented dissipation claim, which consumed some 8 trial days to fully present, due to the extent of the financial abuse. As we shall see with the further details of our case, certain aspects of the “no-fault” law are only enforceable against a contesting, non-offending spouse by the liberal application of double-standards and by having a certain set of facts interpreted “both ways”, depending on the phase of the bifurcated trial (grounds versus property).

In order to avoid a grounds trial once a petition for dissolution of marriage is filed, a non-offending “Respondent” must affirm or at least not dispute any of the (effective) civil charges that have been levelled against them and against the marriage. They must, in effect, “plead guilty” in their filed response to the petition, affirming each of the following allegations which constitute the legal basis for a finding of “irreconcilable differences” (in many other states, Respondents are not actually afforded this opportunity) :

– that husband and wife have lived separately and apart continuously for at least 2 years (unless a cohabiting “reconciliation attempt” has occupied a portion of that time)

– that dissolving the marriage is in the family’s best interest

– that all attempts to reconcile have failed

– that further attempts to reconcile would be impracticable

– that the marriage has undergone an “irretrievable breakdown”

No bible-believing follower of Christ could ever conscionably sign off on the majority of these allegations without dishonoring God who is an active Party in the marriage covenant, unless theirs was a non-covenant remarriage of the kind that Jesus would call adultery per Luke 16:18 and Matthew 5:32. Moreover, once forced to civil trial, my Christian attorney and I attempted to bring significant evidence to individually refute each of these points because they simply were not true.

My husband, on the other hand, defended against what limited evidence of ours the judge would allow with outright perjury, both in his deposition and on the witness stand. Due to court rules of evidence, it was far from a level playing field to begin with, Plaintiff vs. Defendant, “Petitioner” vs. “Respondent”. My husband was openly permitted by the judge to reach far back into our decades-long marriage and drag out his version of isolated incidents some 20 years prior to buttress his allegations, but I and my attorney were restricted to bringing evidence of events that occurred only in the two years prior to the petition filing. Procedural Due Process and Equal Protection violation #1.

The judge deemed my husband “the more credible witness” for purposes of ruling on the truthfulness of the grounds, although there was never a shred of evidence brought in the case to support the judge’s bias against my personal credibility. After all, we couldn’t both be telling the truth. On the other hand, the judge had every opportunity to observe that my husband’s testimony conflicted not only with mine but with the testimony of both of our adult children in sworn depositions which the judge specifically asked to read before he ruled. At times my husband’s testimony on the witness stand conflicted with testimony in his sworn deposition. Perjury is very hard to keep track of, but someone who is telling the truth has no such conflicts – all of this escaped the judge’s notice (or regard). Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there’s adultery, there’s inevitably perjury, yet it was I, the “Respondent” who was presumed not a credible witness. In his official ruling of “irreconcilable differences”, the judge is on record as stating he believed I was “punishing” my husband’s good behavior in coming home (from his overseas job) for virtually every holiday, and for sleeping with me every time during the two years of “separation”; I was punishing my husband with my decision to contest the grounds for divorce, and because I sought to bring evidence to refute the civil allegations against me and against our decades-long marriage. Love for my husband and reverence for the clear instructions of God could not, in the judge’s biased eyes, have plausibly motivated my behavior. Substantive Due Process violation #1, based on my exercise of moral conscience and religious expression.

In two of the recent marriage redefinition cases, Robichaux v Caldwell (Louisiana), and Bishop v Smith (Oklahoma), Federal judges discuss the role of animus against a “suspect” class of people in denying them their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law. According to these Federal precedents, animus can be shown to exist if “some structural aberration in the law is at issue, like the imposition of wide-ranging and novel deprivations upon the disfavored group or deviation from the historical territory of the sovereign simply to eliminate privileges that the disfavored group might otherwise enjoy.” Is it possible that the ruling cohort of the legal community, in enforcing a blanket legislative preference for Petitioners, has developed just such an animus against contesting Respondents as a class such that boorish courtroom treatment of Respondents is a clear and consistent symptom? What would it take to prove this? Certainly the trend in recent legislation in our state has become progressively harsher to the rights of Respondents, who lack sufficient numbers, organization or economic clout to defend themselves as a class from unjust legislation, and from oppressive court rules designed to systematically suppress evidence that might be unfavorable to the Petitioner.

Since my attorney and I made the Christ-honoring choice not to start financial discovery during the grounds phase of the trial, we were not aware of the massive financial abuse at the time the judge made his finding of “irreconcilable differences”. Learning through family members that the circumstances which triggered my husband to suddenly file his petition after 7 years of status quo were of a superficial nature (his girlfriend was barred from his work country earlier that year for violating immigration laws under my husband’s management accountability), we wanted to emphasize counseling and reconciliation, which in reality is what remains to be in the true best interest of our children and grandchildren. However, the system is grossly biased against any genuine reconciliation attempts, and actually throws up perverse incentives against reconciliation.

Under our state’s statute and relevant case law, dissipation is defined as the misuse of marital funds and assets for a purpose not supportive of the marriage after the marriage has begun an “irretrievable breakdown” (crossing a specific threshold). My husband had used his senior position in the consulting firm where he worked to install his girlfriend as an employee and she also became the approver of his travel expense reports. There was significant global travel involved with his work. It was therefore necessary to include my husband’s company expense reports in the discovery requests, and to hire forensic accountants to adequately document our complex case, given the time constraints in my own fulltime employment. My husband’s attorney brought several expensive but successful motions aimed at barring both the work and the expert testimony of the accountants, also at limiting the time frame allowed for the dissipation claim, and barring the claim itself.

Even after many adverse rulings, our evidence still represented air-tight documentation that my husband and his girlfriend had established a pattern of taking lavish pleasure trips at least monthly that were not reimbursed as business travel. Despite substantial precedent in case law that should have precluded the judge from limiting the time frame of our claim, or rejecting the graphic category summaries of our evidence, or dismissing our expert witness accountants in the face of a very complex and employment-entangled international case, the judge ruled against us on all of these, changing his mind twice in ruling on the length of the dissipation period over which he would allow discovery and entertain evidence. He also disregarded our evidence that my husband continued to spend abusively in contempt of court after a protective stay was issued in October, 2013. He additionally allowed my husband’s substantial, willful noncompliance with discovery deadlines on multiple occasions and refused motions for continuance in relief of this. Procedural Due Process and Equal Protection violations #2, 3, 4 and 5.

Then outrageously, and despite the admitted continuous presence of my rival, my husband’s attorney filed a motion in the closing days of the property trial asserting that marriage reconciliation “could have occurred at any point up to the date the petition was filed“, asking that the judge deem the petition filing date as the date of “irretrievable breakdown of the marriage” and further asking that the many years of dissipation occurring prior to late 2012 be dismissed. Despite the aforementioned case law that should have precluded this, the judge was only too happy to comply, saying it was justified because I contested the grounds and because, the judge said, I still do not believe as a matter of conscience or on a biblical basis that our marriage is irretrievable (true enough, not that the law cares what my opinion or the opinion of our adult children is).

The judge had thereby found a way to punish me financially for my convictions, believing those convictions had unduly “punished” my husband. Clearly, he was making a political example of me. What should have been a provable $500,000 to $600,000 claim was thereby reduced to only $35,000. The result was that he ordered a 50/50 split of our assets instead of the 60/40 split that would have preserved my retirement assets intact, and he arbitrarily ordered both our main residence and nearby vacation home sold, disregarding our reasonable recommendations to award the higher value property to my husband for (his) sale, and award the lower-value property to me for an ongoing residence that I could afford to maintain into my approaching retirement. Substantive Due Process violation #2, based on my exercise of moral conscience and religious expression.

That judicial move, however, transformed our technical appeal into a constitutional appeal, one that caught the empathy of an experienced religious freedom law firm who agreed to take our appeals case.

At least one of the recent marriage redefinition case rulings, Bostic v Shaefer (Virginia) goes into an interesting discussion of the precedents defining a fundamental right. Citing a 1943 Supreme Court case, West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, fundamental rights are those which are “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if [they were] sacrificed.” I believe there are numerous fundamental rights stripped from Respondents by the enforcement of the unilateral divorce system, all of which rights had been deeply rooted in the nation’s tradition and history until the enactment of state-by-state unilateral divorce laws commenced 45 years ago. One does not have to read very far into a piece by Fathers’ Rights advocate Stephen Baskerville to see how basic liberty is routinely stripped without cause from some Respondents. My own liberty to live in a home I currently own and could well afford with my future finances has been punitively stripped from me by this judge. My fundamental right to reasonably defend my retirement was arbitrarily stripped from me simply for the crime of showing up in court to defend the sanctity of my marriage, as is my basic constitutional right. If homosexuals as a class sharing a chosen, non-immutable shared emotional characteristic may claim a fundamental right to get married to the person of their choice (as has been recently ruled in numerous states across the land and allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to stand due to lack of review), then contesting Respondents as a morally-defined and politically disfavored class have a fundamental right to stay married to the person of their choice, absent some just cause proven against them. This is before even touching my 1st Amendment right to freedom of conscience and religious exercise toward my God-given marriage.

Once handed down, appellate rulings in divorce cases are readily retrievable online these days from a simple Google or Bing search without a legal subscription service. Because by 2013, several innocent family members now worked for my husband’s firm, which was likely to be explicitly named in the eventual published case, we filed a motion to proceed with our appeal under a fictitious name, “Jane and John Doe” and “XYZ Company.” I love my husband and want to do everything I can to leave the door open for his return to fellowship with the Lord and to reconciliation with our family. I feel a moral responsibility to pursue this important appeal for the good of society if that’s the Lord’s assignment for me, but I also don’t want to deliberately make myself the direct instrument of retribution.
I believe my role is to stay out of the way of correcting natural consequences God brings to my husband as a result of his own actions, but not to step into that role myself if it can be avoided.
The court made its bias plain that I should have spared my husband of any consequences altogether by readily consenting to what God’s word forbids. To accomplish this, I should have modeled the principle of disposable covenants for the edification of my watching children and their spouses, grandchildren and their future spouses.

Whether we win or lose on appeal, public details of my husband’s breach of fiduciary responsibility to his firm is likely to harm his firm’s existing and potential client relationships, given the nature of that business. Incredibly, my husband’s attorney filed a response actively opposing our motion, even though it was in my husband’s very obvious best interest for the judge to grant the anonymity.

Proverbs 12: 4 – A capable wife is her husband’s crown, but a wife who causes shame is rottenness in his bones.

Proverbs 31: 12 – The heart of her husband trusts in her. She brings him good and not harm all the days of her life.

I should say here that my attorney did not feel it was prudent to base our filed anonymity motion on these true family concerns, so he instead filed the motion based on potential damage to my own safety and well-being should there be additional political opponents to our constitutional appeal. As a consequence, the trial judge erroneously treated our motion as though we had requested that the case be wholly impounded, and therefore denied our motion based on “the public’s right to know”, which we now have to appeal.

We have also filed several stay motions that the trial court judge denied, which are now going to the appeals court. My husband and I have each spent about $100,000 so far in legal fees, about 80% of which were incurred in the property / dissipation phase of our two trials where the main issue was my pension and his failure to provide for his own retirement due to dissipation of marital assets. Tens of thousands of dollars alone were spent on respectively combatting and defending my right as a Respondent to the sort of due process that everyone else takes for granted under the system of justice outside of Family Law Court.

In the meantime, I have taken up a bit of legal research myself in order to be a better-informed consumer of constitutional law services than I was of family law services. I have sought to record my learnings over this long journey in the hopes of being helpful to others in the future. I drew inspiration here from reading Judith Brumbaugh’s excellent book, “Judge, Please Don’t Strike that Gavel on My Marriage.” Judith is an amazing saint who has gone before, back in the 1980’s when she brought what was probably one of the nation’s first religious freedom constitutional challenges to Florida’s unilateral divorce law, which is actually harsher than Illinois’ (unless HB1452 passes in the Illinois Senate this fall). Judith was cut off early from funds to pay attorney fees, and incredibly she taught herself at the local library to represent herself after she became the victim of a judge who also was determined to make a political example of anyone who would dare contest a “no-fault” divorce based on a biblical stand for her covenant marriage.

(SIFC Update: to the praise and glory of God, the prayers of the saints in Illinois were heard and the 2013-2014 Illinois legislative session ended without passing HB1452 despite its earlier lopsided margin of victory in the state house of representatives.) This mercy defeats accelerated family destruction and increased poverty that would have otherwise devastated thousands of additional families across the state.

There are some legal environment factors today that I believe are changing by the month concerning marriage rights, equal protection and due process, and are very different now than in those earlier days of unsuccessful constitutional challenge of “no-fault” divorce, which I will cover (attorney advice permitting) in my next post.

Malachi 3:5 –

“I will come to put you on trial [state family law courts ,who trample My Covenant]. I will be quick to testify against … adulterers, lying witnesses, and those who cheat workers out of their wages and oppress widows and orphans. I will also testify against those who deprive foreigners of their rights. None of them fear me,” says Yahweh Tsebaoth [ the God of Angel Armies].”

I close this post by wryly pointing out that the above promise from God started to be fulfilled in 2014 when Judge Steven Reinhardt of the 9th Federal Circuit called out state unilateral divorce laws in his ruling in Latta v Otter striking down the constitutional vote of the people of the states of Idaho and Nevada to define marriage as one man and one woman. Standerinfamilycourt is in the process of reviewing all of the 2014 marriage redefinition cases, a time-consuming undertaking!

Jesus warned that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”. God will not be mocked!

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall – Part 1

Our Story: 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall- Part3

No Day in Court for (Stander) “Jane Doe”, Our Story – Part 4

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

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citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Equal Protection, family law, Religious freedom

Alliance Defending Freedom: Two Ways We Should NOT Respond to the “Redefinition” of Marriage

October 18, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: This tireless public interest and religious freedom law ministry is revered by this Christian blogger. Nevertheless, like several of their peer ministries, ADF has the same political blind spot which was recently described by impartial observers such as Eric Metaxas and Rev. Al Mohler: for patronage reasons, they won’t publicly acknowledge the 900-lb. gorilla in the room – namely, the impact of “no-fault” divorce, on our mutual traditional marriage cause. As more marriage redefinition rulings are handed down across the country, that’s begun to cost religious freedom legal ministries like ADF! Federal 9th Circuit Judge Steven Reinhardt, in fact, called these attorneys out on it just this past week in his ruling on Idaho / Nevada case Latta v. Otter (page 36), as ADF was attempting to represent the State of Idaho’s effort to defend their constitutional definition of marriage which, except for the endorsement of unilateral divorce, mirrored God’s definition.

Matthew 19:4-6 – And [Jesus] answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore GOD has joined together, let no man separate.” ]

October 17, 2014 Blog By Alliance Defending Freedom

Same-sex marriage is now legal in Arizona. A ruling today by U.S. District Judge John Sedwick will keep state officials from enforcing a law passed in 1996 and a 2008 constitutional amendment approved by voters that protected marriage as between one man and one woman. Arizona now joins nearly half of the states in the country which have had same-sex marriage imposed upon them by the judiciary and not through the will of the people.

While this news is troubling, there are at least two ways we should NOT respond, because both wrong responses reject three important truths about marriage.

1. Woe is Us!

Don’t mistake me. This is a terrible decision – throwing out 2,000 years of history recognizing marriage as between a man and a woman, disregarding the purpose and role of marriage in society, and prioritizing the sexual desires of adults over giving children the opportunity to grow up with both mom and a dad. “Redefining” marriage will hurt society…..

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: first of all, it should never be necessary to put quote marks around the word Redefining in the same sense as one would put quote marks around Marriage when applied to the faux versions attributed to homosexuals or polygamists. Marriage redefinition (along with “prioritizing the sexual desires of adults over giving children the opportunity to grow up with both mom and dad“) has been with us for a long time: a national heterosexual tradition of some 45 years’ standing!]

….But hand-wringing, an all-is-lost attitude, pointing fingers, blame shifting, getting angry and verbally attacking those who oppose us – these responses do nothing to build up marriage.

2. Just Throw in the Towel.

Now, more than ever, the pressure is on to give up and accept the new sexual morality. Christian organizations, churches, business people, all of us face a choice – to give up or keep standing for what we know is right, even when it’s unpopular.

There are at least three reasons that both of these responses are wrong:

1. Marriage is marriage. True marriage is between a man and a woman because the two genders coming together sexually in a lifelong commitment separates it from every other relationship.

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: sadly, there hasn’t been enough legal separation between lifelong commitment coupling and “serial monogamy” coupling in our culture, due to the first wave of marriage redefinition. Treating the two forms of marriage as equivalently moral is precisely what’s opening up the door to treating other forms of sexual immorality as equal to true marriage. ]

…..Only male-female relationships can produce children, and having parents committed to each other is best for children. A woman can be a great mom, but she can never be a dad, and a great dad can never be a mom.

Dr. Russell Moore wrote recently: “We have no authority to revise what Jesus has handed down to us ….

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: Indeed! What Jesus handed down to us was LIFELONG. Too bad there was not an ADF around in the 1970’s to argue this point when UMDA – the “Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act” was undermining religious freedom and deconstructing God’s definition of marriage, on a state-by-state basis.]

…..Our vision of marriage is not the equivalent of a church constitution and by-laws, adaptable by a majority vote. Marriage is not simply a cultural or legal practice, but is instead an icon of the union between Christ and his church, embedded in the creation (Eph. 5:22-31). Without a Christian vision of marriage, we have no Christian vision of the gospel.”

2. Marriage is creative, diverse, and beautiful. Marriage is a lifelong union between husband and wife. Humanity has always been, and will always be, composed of men and women. That can’t change, and that’s why the timeless institution of marriage can’t be changed by a court. Marriage celebrates humanity’s diversity, not only because of the complementary of the sexes in marriage, but because throughout history and across cultures, different races and ethnicities have always married.

Yes, the divorce rate is high. Now, more than ever, we must commit to strengthening our own marriages, affirming the value of marriage publicly, and championing the beauty of marriage in our culture.

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: My hope is that ADF and peer legal ministries will step up to assist non-offending spouses (who “walk the talk”) to fight religious discrimination in family law court — at least at the appellate level – -and sign up to combat the unconstitutional stripping of property and parental rights from anyone who dares resist the divorce mill regime in various states….while honoring marriage as “creative, diverse and beautiful.” ]

3. This is not just about marriage.

Redefining marriage policy is about more than just creating same-sex marriage – it is about deconstructing the role and nature of marriage in our society.

It’s about marginalizing the Christian sexual ethic and enforcing a new sexual morality. Those who disagree with this new morality are first marginalized, then punished. We’re already seeing this happen with the city of Houston issuing subpoenas for pastors’ communications, the ousting of Mozilla CEO Brandon Eich, and attacks on Christian business people, like Rob and Cynthia Gifford of Liberty Ridge Farm, Jim and Mary O’Reilly of Wildflower Inn, Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cake Shop, Barronelle Stutzman of Arlene’s Flowers, Blaine Adamson of Hands on Originals, Elaine and Jon Huguenin of Elane Photography, and Melissa and Aaron Klein, owners of a bakery called Sweet Cakes by Melissa.

For these people, and the many more who will risk everything for their right to live by their faith, we will continue to stand for marriage. And because we understand what marriage is, we will continue to promote the truth, value, and beauty of marriage in our culture.

[Standerinfamilycourt Blog Commentary: But, ADF, you must realize that the same marginalization has been happening for decades to those who attempted to stand up against court-sanctioned adultery (as opposed to homosexuality). Will you consider standing for those who dare to risk everything to honor their indissoluble wedding vows even when an intrusive government official issues a death certificate on a 30 or 40-yr. marriage and forcibly cleaves an extended multi-generation family for no proven cause? Will you stand for covenant spouses who are systematically being stripped of their 1st and 14th Amendment rights to freedom of conscience, equal protection, and parental / property rights for contesting an unjust government intrusion into the life of their family and future generations? ]

Credit: Alliance Defending Freedom, Scotsdale, AZ

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

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citizenship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, morality

Suffer the Little Children: Cohabitation and the Abuse of America’s Children

October 13, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

by W. Bradford Wilcox, April 22nd, 2011 – The Witherspoon Institute / Public Discourse

Blogger’s Commentary: The direct connection between rising rates of unmarried cohabitation and the entrenched stronghold of unilateral divorce has been repeatedly chronicled in recent years. The much trumpeted “declining / levelling divorce rate” attributed by both proponents and justified critics of the “no-fault” laws to easy, unilateral divorce is unmistakable. But what is a bit more mistakable is the fact that the divorce rate decline has ALSO been shown to be directly linked to the rise in unmarried cohabitation. This is important context for the excellent, informed piece that follows about impacts of both evils on innocent, defenseless children, courtesy of the national family law system.

Jesus’ Commentary: (Amplified Bible) “Temptations (snares, traps set to entice to sin) are sure to come, but woe to him by or through whom they come!

It would be more profitable for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were hurled into the sea than that he should cause to sin or be a snare to one of these little ones [lowly in rank or influence]. Luke 17:1-3

Cohabitation does not serve the “best interest” of children, regardless of what the courts say.

In just one month last year, Tyari Smith Sr. of suburban New Orleans shot and killed his 2-year-old son, Tyari Smith Jr., and his girlfriend, Marie Chavez, because she was considering leaving him and heading back home to California. A week later, 4-month-old Aiden Caro was thrown into a couch by his mother’s boyfriend, Samuel Harris, when Harris could not get him to stop crying. Shortly thereafter, the Louisville baby stopped crying forever. The next week, in Gaston, South Carolina, 5-month-old Joshua Dial was shaken by his mother’s boyfriend “in a manner so violent that the baby immediately lost consciousness and suffered severe brain trauma,” according to local police reports. Joshua died soon thereafter.

Are these tragic cases of fatal child abuse around the nation in one month just random expressions of the dark side of the human condition? Not according to a recent federal study of child abuse and neglect, the Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect.

This new federal study indicates that these cases are simply the tip of the abuse iceberg in American life. According to the report, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are about 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents. Likewise, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are six times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. In other words, one of the most dangerous places for a child in America to find himself in is a home that includes an unrelated male boyfriend—especially when that boyfriend is left to care for a child by himself.

But children living with their own father and mother do not fare much better if their parents are only cohabiting. The federal study of child abuse found that children living with their cohabiting parents are more than four times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than their peers living in a home headed by their married parents. And they are three times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. In other words, a child is not much safer when she is living in a home with her parents if her parents’ relationship does not enjoy the legal, social, and moral status and guidance that marriage confers on relationships.

This latest study confirms what a mounting body of social science has been telling us for some time now. The science tells us that children are not only more likely to thrive but are also more likely to simply survive when they are raised in an intact home headed by their married parents, rather than in a home headed by a cohabiting couple. For instance, a 2005 study of fatal child abuse in Missouri found that children living with their mother’s boyfriends were more than 45 times more likely to be killed than were children living with their married mother and father.

Cohabitation is also associated with other non-fatal pathologies among children. A 2002 study from the Urban Institute found that 15.7 percent of 6- to 11-year-olds in cohabiting families experienced serious emotional problems (e.g., depression, feelings of inferiority, etc.), compared to just 3.5 percent of children in families headed by married biological or adoptive parents. A 2008 study of more than 12,000 adolescents from across the United States found that teenagers living in a cohabiting household were 116 percent more likely to smoke marijuana, compared to teens living in an intact, married family. And so it goes.

One reason that children do not tend to thrive in cohabiting households, besides the abuse factor, is that these homes are much more unstable than are married households. One recent University of Michigan study found that children born to cohabiting parents were 119 percent more likely to see their parents break up than children born to married parents. And, as anyone who has children can attest, children do not do well when they are exposed to changing routines, homes, and, especially, caretakers.

This growing body of new research has been deliberately ignored by the ACLU, which has been engaged in a longstanding legal campaign to gut state laws designed to support and strengthen marriage as the preferred relationship for the bearing, rearing, and adoption of children. This month in Arkansas, for instance, the ACLU convinced the Arkansas Supreme Court, in Cole v. Arkansas, to strike down a state law that prohibits cohabiting couples from adopting or fostering children. The ACLU argued that the Arkansas law violated federal and state constitutional rights to privacy and served “no child welfare purpose at all.” The Arkansas Supreme Court bought this argument, ruling that the Arkansas law, Act 1, violated cohabitors’ “fundamental right to privacy… to engage in private, consensual, noncommercial intimacy in the privacy of their homes.”

But what about the rights of the children in Arkansas to be raised in a safe and stable home? The state of Arkansas argued, rightly, that cohabiting homes are no place for children in need of safe and stable homes. Infants, toddlers, and older children who have been given up by their parents, or who have been removed by the state from the custody of their parents, need safe and stable homes above all else. And the latest federal study provides yet more evidence that households headed by cohabiting couples are not likely to supply good homes for such children. Apparently, none of this mattered to an Arkansas Supreme Court keen to put adults’ desires ahead of children’s needs.

Thankfully, the family news from the states has not been all bad this month. On Monday, Arizona governor Jan Brewer approved a law that gives married parents preference in the adoption process in her state. Arizona thereby joins a number of other states—such as Mississippi, Utah, and Virginia—that privilege married couples in the adoption process.

Let’s just hope that the courts in Arizona and these other states do not fall prey to the ACLU’s ongoing campaign to disconnect parenthood from marriage. Because—as study after study tells us—children are more likely to thrive and to simply survive when they are raised in an intact, married home. This is no small social fact, given that the primary purpose of family law is not to serve the desires of adults but rather the “best interests” of children.

W. Bradford Wilcox is Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. He is also an adoptive father.

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Lets Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

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Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Spiritual Warfare

Breaking the Silence: Redefining Marriage Hurts Women Like Me – and Our Children

October 7, 2014 standerinfamilycourt 4 Comments

by Janna Darnelle on September 22nd, 2014, Witherspoon Institute / The Public Discourse

The push to present a positive image of same-sex families has hidden the devastation on which many are built. We must stand for marriage—and for the precious lives that marriage creates.

Every time a new state redefines marriage, the news is full of happy stories of gay and lesbian couples and their new families. But behind those big smiles and sunny photographs are other, more painful stories. These are left to secret, dark places. They are suppressed, and those who would tell them are silenced in the name of “marriage equality.”

But I refuse to be silent.

I represent one of those real life stories that are kept in the shadows. I have personally felt the pain and devastation wrought by the propaganda that destroys natural families.

The Divorce

In the fall of 2007, my husband of almost ten years told me that he was gay and that he wanted a divorce. In an instant, the world that I had known and loved—the life we had built together—was shattered.

I tried to convince him to stay, to stick it out and fight to save our marriage. But my voice, my desires, my needs—and those of our two young children—no longer mattered to him. We had become disposable, because he had embraced one tiny word that had become his entire identity. Being gay trumped commitment, vows, responsibility, faith, fatherhood, marriage, friendships, and community. All of this was thrown away for the sake of his new identity.

Try as I might to save our marriage, there was no stopping my husband. Our divorce was not settled in mediation or with lawyers. No, it went all the way to trial. My husband wanted primary custody of our children. His entire case can be summed up in one sentence: “I am gay, and I deserve my rights.” It worked: the judge gave him practically everything he wanted. At one point, he even told my husband, “If you had asked for more, I would have given it to you.”

I truly believe that judge was legislating from the bench, disregarding the facts of our particular case and simply using us—using our children— to help influence future cases. In our society, LGBT citizens are seen as marginalized victims who must be protected at all costs, even if it means stripping rights from others. By ignoring the injustice committed against me and my children, the judge seemed to think that he was correcting a larger injustice.

My husband had left us for his gay lover. They make more money than I do. There are two of them and only one of me. Even so, the judge believed that they were the victims. No matter what I said or did, I didn’t have a chance of saving our children from being bounced around like so many pieces of luggage.

A New Same-Sex Family—Built On the Ruins of Mine

My ex-husband and his partner went on to marry. Their first ceremony took place before our state redefined marriage. After it created same-sex marriage, they chose to have a repeat performance. In both cases, my children were forced—against my will and theirs—to participate. At the second ceremony, which included more than twenty couples, local news stations and papers were there to document the first gay weddings officiated in our state. USA Today did a photo journal shoot on my ex and his partner, my children, and even the grandparents. I was not notified that this was taking place, nor was I given a voice to object to our children being used as props to promote same-sex marriage in the media.

At the time of the first ceremony, the marriage was not recognized by our state, our nation, or our church. And my ex-husband’s new marriage, like the majority of male-male relationships, is an “open,” non-exclusive relationship. This sends a clear message to our children: what you feel trumps all laws, promises, and higher authorities. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want—and it doesn’t matter who you hurt along the way.

After our children’s pictures were publicized, a flood of comments and posts appeared. Commenters exclaimed at how beautiful this gay family was and congratulated my ex-husband and his new partner on the family that they “created.” But there is a significant person missing from those pictures: the mother and abandoned wife. That “gay family” could not exist without me.

There is not one gay family that exists in this world that was created naturally.

Every same-sex family can only exist by manipulating nature. Behind the happy façade of many families headed by same-sex couples, we see relationships that are built from brokenness. They represent covenants broken, love abandoned, and responsibilities crushed. They are built on betrayal, lies, and deep wounds.

This is also true of same-sex couples who use assisted reproductive technologies such as surrogacy or sperm donation to have children. Such processes exploit men and women for their reproductive potential, treat children as products to be bought and sold, and purposely deny children a relationship with one or both of their biological parents. Wholeness and balance cannot be found in such families, because something is always missing. I am missing. But I am real, and I represent hundreds upon thousands of spouses who have been betrayed and rejected.

If my husband had chosen to stay, I know that things wouldn’t have been easy. But that is what marriage is about: making a vow and choosing to live it out, day after day. In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, spouses must choose to put the other person first, loving them even when it’s hard.

A good marriage doesn’t only depend on sexual desire, which can come and go and is often out of our control. It depends on choosing to love, honor, and be faithful to one person, forsaking all others. It is common for spouses to be attracted to other people—usually of the opposite sex, but sometimes of the same sex. Spouses who value their marriage do not act on those impulses. For those who find themselves attracted to people of the same sex, staying faithful to their opposite-sex spouse isn’t a betrayal of their true identity. Rather, it’s a decision not to let themselves be ruled by their passions. It shows depth and strength of character when such people remain true to their vows, consciously striving to remember, honor, and revive the love they had for their spouses when they first married.

My Children Deserve Better

Our two young children were willfully and intentionally thrust into a world of strife and combative beliefs, lifestyles, and values, all in the name of “gay rights.” Their father moved into his new partner’s condo, which is in a complex inhabited by sixteen gay men. One of the men has a 19-year-old male prostitute who comes to service him. Another man, who functions as the father figure of this community, is in his late sixties and has a boyfriend in his twenties. My children are brought to gay parties where they are the only children and where only alcoholic beverages are served. They are taken to transgender baseball games, gay rights fundraisers, and LGBT film festivals.

Both of my children face identity issues, just like other children. Yet there are certain deep and unique problems that they will face as a direct result of my former husband’s actions. My son is now a maturing teen, and he is very interested in girls. But how will he learn how to deal with that interest when he is surrounded by men who seek sexual gratification from other men? How will he learn to treat girls with care and respect when his father has rejected them and devalues them? How will he embrace his developing masculinity without seeing his father live out authentic manhood by treating his wife and family with love, honoring his marriage vows even when it’s hard?

My daughter suffers too. She needs a dad who will encourage her to embrace her femininity and beauty, but these qualities are parodied and distorted in her father’s world. Her dad wears make-up and sex bondage straps for Halloween. She is often exposed to men dressing as women. The walls in his condo are adorned with large framed pictures of women in provocative positions. What is my little girl to believe about her own femininity and beauty? Her father should be protecting her sexuality. Instead, he is warping it.

Without the guidance of both their mother and their father, how can my children navigate their developing identities and sexuality? I ache to see my children struggle, desperately trying to make sense of their world.

My children and I have suffered great losses because of my former husband’s decision to identify as a gay man and throw away his life with us. Time is revealing the depth of those wounds, but I will not allow them to destroy me and my children. I refuse to lose my faith and hope. I believe so much more passionately in the power of the marriage covenant between one man and one woman today than when I was married. There is another way for those with same-sex attractions. Destruction is not the only option—it cannot be. Our children deserve far better from us.

This type of devastation should never happen to another spouse or child. Please, I plead with you: defend marriage as being between one man and one woman. We must stand for marriage—and for the precious lives that marriage creates.

Janna Darnelle is a mother, writer, and an advocate for upholding marriage between one man and one woman. She mentors others whose families have been impacted by homosexuality

Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights

Hounding the Divorce Industry

October 1, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

Stephen Baskerville’s Site about the Divorce Regime, Family Court Corruption and the Criminalization of Fathers and Parents.

http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/default/index.cfm/abou-stephen-baskerville/

The divorce regime is the most totalitarian institution ever to arisein the United States, Britain, and the other English-speaking democracies. Its operatives in the family courts and the social service agencies recognize no private sphere of life. “The power of family court judges is almost unlimited,” according to Judge Robert Page of the New Jersey family court. “Social workers are perceived to have nearly unlimited power,” a San Diego Grand Jury concludes. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Total immunity [enjoyed by social workers] is absolute power.”

The divorce regime is responsible for much more than “ugly divorces,” “nasty custody battles,” and other clichés. It is the most serious perpetrator of human and constitutional rights violations in the Western world today. Because it strikes the most basic institution of any civilization – the family – the divorce regime is a threat not only to social order but to civil freedom. It is also almost completely unopposed. No political party and no politicians question it. No journalists investigate it in any depth. A few attorneys have spoken out, but they are eventually suspended or disbarred. Some academics have written about it, but they soon stop. No human rights or civil liberties groups challenge it, and some positively support it. Very few “pro-family” lobbies question it. This is because the divorce regime operates through money, political power, and fear.

The divorce regime is much more serious than simply “unfairness” or “gender bias” against fathers in custody proceedings. It is the government’s machine for destroying the principal check on its power – the family – and criminalizing its main rival: fathers. The most basic human and constitutional rights are routinely violated in America’s family courts. The lives of children and parents are in serious danger once they are, as the phrase goes, taken into “custody.” Systemic conflicts-of-interest among government and private officials charged with child custody, child support, child protection, and connected matters have created a witch hunt against plainly innocent citizens.

The terror of the divorce regime is not a future possibility; it is a present reality. The following methods are currently employed by family courts and other government agents. These practices are now widespread in America:

mass incarcerations without trial or charge
forced confessions
children forcibly separated from parents who are under no suspicion of legal wrongdoing and parents stripped of the care, custody, and companionship of their children without explanation
government agents entering the homes, demanding and examining private papers and personal effects, and seizing the property of citizens who are under no suspicion of legal wrongdoing
official court records, including hearing tapes and transcripts, doctored and falsified with the knowledge of court officials and evidence fabricated against the innocent
defendants denied the constitutional right to face their accusers
bureaucratic police authorized to issue subpoenas and arrest warrants against parents, with no hearing and contrary to due process of law
special courts created specifically to process parents for political offenses
forced labor facilities created specifically for parents
children instructed to hate their parents with the backing of government officials
children forced by government officials to act as informers against their parents
children abused and killed with the backing of government officials
knowingly false allegations, for which no evidence is presented, accepted as fact without proof, overturning the presumption of innocence, and not punished when demonstrated to be untrue
parents ordered by government officials to separate from their spouses, on pain of losing their children
parents forced to pay the private fees of court officials they have not hired and whose services they have not sought or used, on pain of incarceration
parents suspected of no legal wrongdoing punitively stripped of their property and income, sometimes at gunpoint, and reduced to penury
government officials using the mass media to vilify private American citizens, and political leaders using their offices as platforms to verbally attack private American citizens, who have no right of reply or opportunity to defend themselves
parents jailed without trial reportedly beaten, in at least one case fatally, and denied medical attention while in police custody.

I have made these charges in some of the most reputable publications in the English language. They have never been refuted. Yet neither have they been corrected or even addressed by public officials, the media, or academics.

This site will tell you the truth about the divorce regime. It contains virtually all my published works – some 100 articles, several studies, and a book – on the fatherhood crisis and the corruption of the divorce industry (except book reviews and radio commentaries). For better or worse, these are the most strongly worded writings to appear on this subject in mainstream publications.

I am heavily indebted for the many letters, stories, documents, clippings, studies, citations, books, e-mail communications, and telephone calls – collected and sent to me by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. It is not possible to name all these people, and many prefer not to be named.

Stephen Baskerville
2012

citizenship, family law, marriage

“Shout-Out” to Family-Friendly Legislators – Thanks!

September 29, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

by standerinfamilycourt 9/29/2014

Last week I posted about HB1452, which would considerably harshen Illinois’ unilateral (“No-Fault”) divorce law, going against the recent trend of some states to start reigning in unilateral divorce due to the generally poor outcome for families. (Much touted, quite the opposite delivered).

Shamefully, HB1452 passed 90-17 in the Illinois House of Representatives on April 10, 2014, and will be taken up in the Senate during the veto session which commences tomorrow. I previously detailed the harmful aspects of this bill. Today, I’d like to extend gratitude to the brave minority of representatives who put families first and voted NO. Although belated, I am also mailing each of them a personal note of thanks along with a copy of the letter I’m currently writing to my state senator.

A hearty round of applause, and muchas gracias to:

John E. Bradley (D), Marion, IL

Adam Brown (R), Champaign, IL

John M. Cabello (R), Loves Park, IL

John D. Cavaletto (R), Salem, IL

Katherine Cloonen (D), Kankakee, IL

Jerry F. Costello (D), Red Bud, IL

C. D. Davidsmeyer (R), Jacksonville, IL

Brad E. Hallbrook (R), Charleston, IL

Josh Harms (R), Watseka, IL

Jeanne M. Ives (R), Wheaton, IL

Dwight Kay (R), Edwardsville, IL

David R. Leitch (R), Peoria, IL

Frank J. Mautino (D), Spring Valley, IL

Bill Mitchell (R), Decatur, IL

Thomas Morrison (R), Palatine, IL

David Reis (R), Olney, IL

Keith Sommer (R), Morton, IL

The results clearly show that standing in the gap for families is a bi-partisan issue. (With marriage redefinition occurring in 2013 in Illinois and taking effect six weeks after this family law vote, it’s also fascinating to note that two of the three openly homosexual legislators in the Illinois House chose to vote “Present” instead of “Yes”. Since a significant portion of the bill is about child welfare arrangements, and so much is said about the challenges of gay parenting, this is even more interesting.)

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall

– by standerinfamilycourt.com

family law, marriage, Religious freedom

Dr. Helen Alvare: Uphold Conscience Protection: Religious Freedom’s Contribution to the American Experience and Threats to its Survival

September 27, 2014 standerinfamilycourt

Freedom of Religion According to the Illinois Constitution

SECTION 3. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession
and worship, without discrimination, shall forever be
guaranteed, and no person shall be denied any civil or
political right, privilege or capacity, on account of his
religious opinions; but the liberty of conscience hereby
secured shall not be construed to dispense with oaths or
affirmations, excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify
practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of the State.

In addition to the above, Illinois has enacted a Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which provides that a law, even if it applies equally to all citizens, cannot strip away or punish the right to act on one’s religious conscience or refuse to act because of conscience, unless there is a compelling government interest at stake, and unless the government has selected the least restrictive means to achieve that interest. Recent Federal cases have defined a compelling government interest well beyond just a legitimate purpose – for example, Korte v Sebelius stated that the interest must be of the highest order or urgency and be of surpassing importance, and there must be a close fit between the government interest and the means chosen to implement it.

Can we really say that the state’s interest in assuring individual sexual autonomy surpasses the rights and interests of one’s established family? Is it really such that the government has a compelling interest in guaranteeing individual autonomy to the extent that there is to be no economic penalty in renouncing family commitments? If so, there is indeed a close fit in punishing all religious and moral objectors who stand in the way. But if some of the other lofty ideals piously stated in the “no-fault” law are truly the government aim, then the fit between ends and means has been proven by a 37 year track record to be sorely lacking! Further, several 2013-2014 rulings in Federal court have suggested that state enablement of sexual autonomy falls short of being a compelling government interest. (Korte v Sebelius; Robichaux v Caldwell; Borman v Pyles-Borman)

Without conscience protections, the free exercise of religion is not possible. Discrimination by family courts against religious objectors to unilateral divorce via bias in matters of procedural due process, child welfare outcomes and property division is against the letter of Illinois law and must not be tolerated.

On the other hand, entrenched unilateral divorce proponents within the judicial and legal community seem to be in the very business of protecting the acts of licentiousness of offender spouses who file divorce petitions, and of rewarding practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of the state. This is turning Section 3 of the Illinois Constitution on its head in utter tyranny.

It is against this backdrop that I offer the commentary of Dr. Helen Alvare of George Mason University, Washington D.C.

“….It appears that lawmakers are responding more to cultural and media elites who express overt hostility to religion, or they are simply confused about the true meaning and purpose of marriage and the family…..

…the expansion of state power, combined with a “creeping” notion of human or civil “rights,” also jeopardizes religious freedom today. Government regulation has spread to nearly every sphere of life and thus imposes more constraints upon a wide variety of religious ministries. At the same time, “rights” language is increasingly applied to human “wants” rather than “needs.” It is used to promote individualism and particular ideologies, rather than universally recognized attributes of human life or dignity. This increase in regulation, combined with “rights creep,” leads directly to refusals to grant religious exemptions, on the ground that people have human “rights” to consensual sexual expression with any other person, or to kill an unborn child, and that “rights” do not permit exemptions for the sake of conscience.’

Read the full article: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/08/3800/

Helen Alvaré is an associate professor at George Mason University School of Law and a senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute.

1. Woe is Us!

2. Just Throw in the Towel.

Stephen Baskerville’s Site about the Divorce Regime, Family Court Corruption and the Criminalization of Fathers and Parents.

Let's Repeal No-Fault Divorce!