Category: Blog

October 11, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This continues the case of In re Adoption of C.L.

Biological parents have parental rights that are supposedly protected by the Constitution.  That is far from a mere legal technicality.  It is also of the most vital interest to parents and children alike.  That is not true just because the science on children’s wellbeing demands it, although that would be reason enough.

If the “best interests of children” were all important (i.e. there were no parental rights or they were inferior to the BIC standard), then children could become nothing more than property subject to ownership and possessory rights.

Consider: Jane gives birth; while she’s still in the hospital, one of the maternity ward nurses takes a liking to her little Andy and takes him home with her; an investigation ensues and, six months later, Andy is found in the nurse’s care.  Andy is thriving.  He’s alert, responsive, cheerful, well-nourished and well cared for.  Moreover, he’s clearly attached to the nurse whom he considers his mother.

If the best interests of the child were the only legal standard, then Andy would plainly belong to the nurse and not to his biological mother.  Or at least he would until she took him to the supermarket in his stroller where a stranger shanghaied him away and gave him another good home.

In short, parental rights exist in part to prevent the above from happening.  The Kansas Supreme Court acknowledged as much.

But the best interests of the child may not be the sole basis for termination because “to hold otherwise would invite courts to seek ‘better’ families for any number of children whose family circumstances are challenging or financially difficult.”

Adoption agencies don’t like it.  They’re in the business of making money by transferring children from one set of parents to another or from the state to adoptive parents.  In most cases, that is all to the good.  Parents may have proven themselves unable to care for a child, died or been incarcerated, so someone must care for their children.  Those are cases in which adoption agencies do a world of good.

Unfortunately, the financial incentive often leads them into vice.  Here’s what appellate court judge Malloy wrote about the adoption agency in the linked-to case:

[I]nstead of rushing to the courthouse to file an adoption petition, all parties involved in the case should have at least temporarily put the adoption plans on hold. In the meantime, KCSL or some other appropriate agency could have conducted an investigation of [Father]’s home and background to see if he would have been a suitable placement option for C.L. Assuming that [Father] passed the initial investigation and background check, C.L. could have been temporarily placed with [Father] for a trial period to be monitored by the appropriate agency or the courts. Then, if any evidence developed that [Father] was not properly caring for C.L., a petition for termination of parental rights could have been filed with the court. Giving [Father] more of a chance to prove his fitness as a father would have been a better approach than rushing into an adoption proceeding and finding out later if there was any evidence to support it.”

Indeed.  That would have been the preferred procedure.  It would have been fair to Father and to his child who, having now lived with his adoptive parents for over two years must take up residence in a new home with relative strangers.  And it would have revealed whether Father was fit to care for his son or not.  It’s the sensible way to have proceeded, but all too often, adoption agencies sacrifice the sensible and what’s best for kids to their own financial interests.  That is precisely what happened in the linked-to case and, years later, all it’s produced is trauma for a child, heartache for the adoptive parents and financial devastation for the father.

Next time, I’ll compare the Kansas statute with putative father registries.

October 10, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

I’ve criticized states many times for their reliance on putative father registries to facilitate adoptions.  Amazingly, those laws place the onus on unmarried men to, in some way, figure out if they’ve fathered a child and, if so, and if Mom places it for adoption, to take the necessary steps to assert their parental rights to stop the adoption and gain custody of the child.  No requirement is placed on the mother to inform the father about his child, even though she’s the one who knows about it.

Plus, he’s required to file a form with the state’s PFR even though, few states make any effort to let men know (a) that it is, (b) what it is or (c) its potential impact on their parental rights.  More amazingly still, PFR states have the gall to claim that those statutes exist to “allow unmarried fathers to assert their rights,” when in fact the registries exist for one reason and one reason only – to remove fathers from the adoption process.

So this case is an excellent counterpoint to PFRs.  In re Adoption of C.L. graphically demonstrates the justice served by states without them.  In a later post, I’ll compare the Kansas Supreme Court’s analysis of the case with similar ones in PFR states and the differences are clear. 

But even in Kansas, it was a near thing.  The state’s highest court refers repeatedly to all the hurdles placed in the way of the father’s efforts to establish paternity and get custody of his child.

Mom and Dad (neither is named) had an off-again-on-again sexual relationship, but weren’t married.  She became pregnant, but never informed him of it.  (She claims she didn’t know she was pregnant until she gave birth at a hospital.)  Mom contacted KCSL adoption agency and two days later signed a relinquishment of her parental rights.  The agency handed the child to an unnamed adoptive couple who lived in the Kansas City area.

Melinda Kline, of KCSL, telephoned Father to tell him there was a child who may be his and to encourage him to sign a relinquishment of his parental rights.  He declined to do so, which triggered KCSL to file a suit for adoption in Wyandotte County.  Three days later, Father’s attorney filed his paternity action in Shawnee County requesting a DNA test and, if Father had in fact sired the child, custody.

The adoption agency objected to the paternity action and, since its case had been filed first, the paternity action was stayed and all proceedings went forward in Wyandotte County.  DNA testing found that there was a 99.99% probability that Father had sired the child.  All along, the adoptive parents, Mother and KCSL had done everything in their power to obstruct Father’s access to his son.

Here’s just a sampling of their tactics:

By chance, Father had contacted mother while she was in the hospital giving birth, but she failed to tell him about his child and instead suggested she’d had surgery for some unspecified condition.  In order to be the first to file, the adoption agency made a series of false statements under oath to the effect that Father had known about the child all along and failed to support Mother during her pregnancy and had abandoned her and the child.  Astonishingly, the date of first hearing in the case was established 32 days ahead of time, but Father wasn’t told about it until three days before and his attorney was never told.  KCSL refused to tell Father who the mother of his child was, where she was, who the adoptive parents were, where they were or where his child was.  They then proceeded to criticize him in court for failing to ascertain those things and visit the child and develop a relationship with him.  They also criticized him for failing to pay support to the adoptive parents.  Into the bargain, when Father asked Kline if he could visit his son, she told him that was “usually dependent on trust with the adoptive family.”  That of course wasn’t true.

Despite all that (or because of it), the trial court terminated Father’s rights finding that he had failed to “make reasonable efforts to support or communicate with his child.”  The appellate court agreed, but the Supreme Court rightly reversed both of them.  The trial court managed to reach that conclusion by frankly ignoring all the evidence that contradicted its preferred outcome.

The Court summed up this behavior thus:

In short, throughout the brief period Father knew about his son, a series of calculated obstructions were placed between him and his child in what was already a difficult circumstance. And each barrier consistently put him in an inferior position that required him to strategically or creatively react to avoid forfeiting his parental rights without any demonstrated willingness from the prospective adoptive parents or KCSL to actually include Father in C.L.’s life. Indeed, the record would reasonably suggest given their experience in these matters that KCSL and the attorney representing the prospective adoptive parents well understood any facilitation of Father’s involvement would stymie the adoption outcome they sought.

Crucially, the Kansas Supreme Court recognized the reality of what happened, who had the power to affect the outcome and which side rightly has the burden of proof.

Simply put, these were “the actions of a father who is attempting to maintain a relationship with his child, not the actions of a father who is neglecting his child.” (Emphasis added.) Baby Girl P., 291 Kan. at 434. To hold otherwise would encourage those with another interest to place a “series of hurdles” between a putative father and his child to increase the likelihood of a successful adoption. 291 Kan. at 433. The record in this appeal certainly suggests that possibility. Termination of parental rights should not be determined by which side schemes to be shrewder or more strategic.

That “series of hurdles” is what we see in all too many cases in which a profit-driven adoption agency and a self-interested mother seek to remove a fit and willing father from a child’s life.  And of course the biggest and most effective of those hurdles is a putative father registry that turns fathers’ parental rights on their head for the purpose of enriching the adoption industry at the expense of children.

October 8, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

How many times have I complained that state child protective agencies operate in all but complete secrecy? In many states, a child has to die before the press or the people are entitled to get a look at what CPS did or didn’t do in the case.

The excuse for that secrecy is that, if a child has been abused or neglected, the trauma would only be made worse with publicity. That of course is putting out a match with a fire hose. If we’re truly concerned about the child’s welfare, why not just forbid the press from reporting the child’s name, its parents’ identities and any other information that could identify the child. That would provide information about the case and CPS’s actions without jeopardizing the child.

All that is obvious enough. After all, the press manages to keep secret the identities of women who make rape allegations, so why couldn’t it keep a secret in CPS cases?

The answer of course is that the press could easily do that, but isn’t permitted to. And the conclusion that follows is that the secrecy that cloaks CPS agencies isn’t for the children, but for state employees. Child protective agencies are among the worst at doing the jobs they’re tasked with. There are many reasons for that, but the veil of secrecy behind which they act is one of the most important. The simple fact is that people who know they’re being watched tend to behave better than those who know they’re not.

Now we learn that the State of Arizona has been trying to even further reduce the accountability of its child welfare agency even more than has long been the case.

Because state child-welfare services are funded in part by federal taxpayer dollars, each state is required to form Citizen Review Panels—made up of community volunteers—that exercise some oversight of DCS. The panels are “federally mandated mechanisms for citizen participation in child protection,” according to the Child Abuse and Neglect Technical Assistance and Strategic Dissemination Center, or CANTASD, website.

So what did Department of Child Safety Director Greg McKay do?

Since Citizen Review Panels were one of the few ways the public could influence the state’s child-welfare system, Ford’s group was keenly interested in McKay’s announcement that the panels would be replaced with an in-house system.

Yes, the panels are required by federal law with the plain intent of ensuring public oversight of CPS’s activities. But, as night follows day, Arizona moved to remove the public’s only access to the agency by making the panels “in-house,” i.e. staffed by CPS insiders. Citizen Lori Ford and many others balked.

Would the new panels maintain oversight of DCS actions and cases? How would the public inform the panels of their concerns? And if transparency in public outreach was required, why did the agency appear to be closed off to citizen accountability?

Those are all good questions, but the answers are, shall we say, murky.

To accomplish that, DCS made the Community Advisory Committee, formed by the legislature in 2015, one of those Citizen Review Panels. Weirdly enough, the CAC at first allowed no public comment. That’s a mighty strange stance for an entity one of whose functions is to,

Collaborate among state, local, community, tribal, public and private stakeholders in child welfare programs and services that are administered by the department.

As one of Ford’s group remarked,

They were public meetings but the public had to sit there silently,” she said.

Eventually, Ford’s group got permission to actually speak to the Committee. But as usual, there was less there than met the eye.

Each person was allowed to speak for two minutes. While there is no regulation mandating time allotted for public comment, many cities provide three minutes for residents to address elected officials and public meetings can continue until the wee hours of the night until everyone has had their chance to speak.

The group was also told that once they had brought up an issue they should not raise it again to the committee.

So, apparently, if a person complains, in the two minutes allotted, that, for example, DCS ignored a report that its caseworkers were running roughshod over parents’ constitutional rights, the committee would listen politely and that would be the end of it. No follow-up questions would be tolerated. The public can raise an issue, but, if the committee or DCS decides to ignore it, no one has the right to inquire, much less complain. Amazing, but true.

And that, more or less is where we stand. Once again, the agency that has never wanted public oversight is managing to avoid same, despite the clear intent of federal law.

Meanwhile, the attitude of DCS is captured nicely by Lori Ford:

“They say we’re intimidating and threatening, but we’re just a bunch of old people, really,” she said.

Yes, Ms. Ford, to DCS, that’s exactly what We the People are – intimidating and threatening. Your group threatens DCS’s preferred secrecy. They’re terrified that the people whose taxes pay their salaries might actually know what they’re up to.

And that, Ms. Ford, is a clarion call to keep up what you’re doing.

October 7, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This would be a pretty run-of-the-mill case except for one thing (Daily Mail, 10/4/18).

We’ve seen countless like it before: a man is contacted by his state’s child support agency telling him he owes some enormous sum of back child support, but he knows for a fact that (a) he has no children or (b) the child in question isn’t his because he never had sex with its mother. The trials and tribulations suffered by those men are legion and fairly well publicized. Gabriel Cornejo of Houston is one example. The State of Texas ordered him to pay $65,000 in child support for a child who isn’t his.

Now, in many of those cases, the state sent a letter to the man claimed to be the father, telling him to show up in court, but the man ignored the letter reasoning that, since the child isn’t his, the state can’t possibly tag him with support. Bad move, very bad move.

Once he fails to appear, the state takes a default judgment against him and he’s forever obligated to pay support because, according to the law, he had his chance to contest the matter and didn’t take it.

Of course that legal procedure is perfectly sound and also perfectly nutty when it comes to child support. One of the main points of child support isn’t to quickly move the judge’s docket, but to ensure that parents support their children. In the process, it (in theory) establishes those rights. None of those sensible goals is furthered by obligating a non-father to pay.

Still that’s how we do it.

So what’s different about the Ohio case reported in the Daily Mail? The difference is that the non-parent being tagged with support by the state is a woman. Yes, somehow Ohio decided that Nekia Jones is the mother of a child. The only problem being that she’s never been pregnant.

A young woman has had her license suspended for the past three months for not paying child support – but she doesn’t have any children. 

Nekia Jones, from Columbus, Ohio, got a harmless traffic ticket for a seat belt violation In July.

But when she went to court to pay the fine she was instead charged with failure to pay child support and had her license suspended.  

Now, the woman who’s never had children or been pregnant says a case of mistaken identity has left her still without a license and relying on car-sharing apps and family members for rides to work.

Yes, those are problems alright, but nothing compared to the fact that (a) she has a child support judgment against her, (b) the child isn’t hers and (c) she apparently did what some fathers do – ignore a summons to court to contest parentage. Indeed, the court document imaged by in the article clearly says “Failure to Appear – Child Support.”

Of course notice could have been sent to the wrong address, but, until we find out otherwise, I’ll say that she received notice of the claim against her. If she did, and if she’s treated by the state the way it treats men similarly situated, Nekia Jones can look forward to paying to support a child who unquestionably isn’t hers.

Stay tuned.

October 5, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

This is a good article on joint custody and child support (Fatherly, 10/1/18). It’s good not least because it relies on the highly knowledgeable Molly Olson for much of its content. That’s always a good thing. Needless to say, Olson has at least one very good suggestion regarding child support for divorcing parents.

The article first has Olson explain the basics – legal custody, physical custody and parenting time.

Most states have a presumption of joint legal custody, but some don’t. “Every dad would want and need to get joint legal custody because it guarantees the basic right to be involved in medical healthcare, and religious decisions with your child,” Molly Olson says. “If you don’t get joint legal custody and you’re at the park and your child falls of the swing and they break their arm you won’t be able to bring them to the ER. You won’t be able to get a report card, and you won’t be able to attend a parent teacher conference.”

Right. As to physical custody,

“The tradition for the past 40 years of mothers having children 26 days per month and dad seeing his children every other weekend is a completely outdated model not backed by research,” Olson says. “It was put into action in the ‘60s based on assumptions that women didn’t work outside the home and were full time homemakers. But women work just as much as men and research clearly says that equal shared parenting is what’s best for children.”

Well, actually women don’t “work just as much as men” outside the home, but Olson’s point remains – the current system is out of whack and out of time.

Her bottom line: Dads need to know that they are needed at least 50 percent of the time.

Besides it being what’s best for children, it’s also more beneficial to moms (so they don’t have an excessive burden put on them), and it’s more beneficial to dads (because the more time you spend with your child, the less child support you pay).

Well, that last isn’t true in many states. In most, there’s no direct connection between parenting time and the amount of child support paid. And the main reasons equal parenting time benefits fathers is that they’re happier, more fulfilled and feel more valued when they’re not shunted to the side by some court doing the bidding of a vindictive ex.

That brings us to child support when there’s substantially equal parenting time.

“Since [the 60s], the child support system has ballooned out of control and it’s now hidden alimony and lifestyle support,” Olson says. “It’s was supposed to be based on the cost of raising a child — which the USDA says that the current cost of raising a child is $233,000 for 18 years. That’s about $12,900 a year, which breaks down to $1,000 a month, divided by two parents is $500 a month.”

That of course was openly and frankly done. Armed with Lenore Weitzman’s cooked statistics that purported to show that mothers on average saw a 74% drop in living standards following divorce (the real figure was 26%) and the equally false notion that fathers don’t care about their kids and only want to avoid supporting them, states went hard about the task of transferring as much of Dad’s income to Mom as possible. They therefore produced child support guidelines that often bear little resemblance to how much it costs to raise a child.

Olson is spot on in her description of child support as “hidden alimony and lifestyle support.” (Don’t believe me? Here’s just one example of cases that flit across my screen every single day.)

So what about her $500 figure? It looks about right to me, but I approach the matter a bit differently. If states figure a child costs X to support, shouldn’t those states pay X for children in their care? That is, shouldn’t state payments to foster parents roughly approximate the cost to those parents of raising the child?

So how much do states pay to foster parents? Here in Texas, it comes to $22.15 per day per child. That comes to about $670 per month. Now, the State of Texas would never pay foster parents less than the cost to care for a child, right? That would be unconscionable and the state would be hard pressed to recruit foster parents. Of course there are certain extras the state also reimburses such as for clothing purchased and a few other items. So let’s say the state, on average, pays foster parents $700 per child per month.

Shouldn’t that be what the state demands of parents to raise a single child? If so, and if Dad has no right to see the child, shouldn’t his child support obligation be $350 per month? And if he sees the child 50% of the time, shouldn’t his support obligation be zero?

That’s all rational enough, which of course is why it bears no resemblance to what states actually do. The reason is that, as Olson said, much of child support is ex-wife support in (thinly-veiled) disguise.

“Every state has their own way of calculating child support,” Olson says. “The Department of Human Services creates the guidelines based on percent of income — not fulfilling monthly costs for children — and the rates that the state says should be paid or by fathers is far beyond the amount required to meet the USDA’s projected cost to raise a child.”

That brings us to Olson’s good idea:

Because let’s be honest, every family’s spending and earning needs are different — so a number slapped on you by the state probably isn’t going to be the best fit. That’s why many divorced families are turning to a “Children’s Checkbook.” A Children’s Checkbook allows you and your co-parent to agree on the budget for the child. Then, each parent puts money into the checkbook every month, so when there is a cost related to the child in any way the money is simply taken the checkbook.

“It’s important — and healthiest — to put in the work to keep the lawyers, out keep the state out, and meet your child’s needs in a unique way,” Olson says. 

Right and right again.

Judges are happiest when parents agree, when they draw up their own plan, plop it down on the court’s desk and ask him/her to sign. Judges love cases that move along quickly and easily and with the least court involvement possible. So agreements between spouses are welcomed by the, ahem, Men in Black.

And of course keeping lawyers out of the process is almost always a good idea. Lawyers thrive on conflict and many of them exacerbate it for their own financial ends. So, to save money and reduce stress, parents should avoid lawyers. Of course if one’s ex is bent on conflict, the other parent may have to take a deep breath, hold his/her nose and pay for representation. But if it’s not necessary, parents shouldn’t waste their money.

October 4, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.

Back in August, NPO’s Don Hubin, with the assistance of two other researchers, issued NPO’s Ohio Parenting Time Report. The Report analyzed and compared the standard parenting time guidelines of each of Ohio’s 88 counties. Its stark findings include the fact that those guidelines are radically different from county to county. In one county, a child can rely on the guidelines to help him/her to maintain meaningful relationships with both parents, while a child in county four miles away is faced with a standard order for 4 – 5 days per month with one parent and the rest with the other.

The report rightly calls into question why children in adjoining counties should be treated so differently. It also points out that one county actually makes it explicit that the non-custodial parent is to be the father. Yes, it actually uses sexist language in that way.

Since its release, the Report has had some positive effects that Hubin has detailed in blog posts and in our newsletter. Put simply, it’s had a measurable and positive effect in a short period of time.

So now comes the pushback. We all knew there’d be pushback and I for one am thrilled that NPO has now scared the Ohio Association of Domestic Relations Judges out of the weeds. It comes in the form of what may be a letter, or perhaps a press release. Its author, the president of the OADRJ, Judge Paula Giulitto, doesn’t make it clear, but she titles the piece “OADRJ Response to NPO.” (As of this writing, it’s nowhere on the OADRJ website, but is written on OADRJ letterhead and signed by Giulitto.)

That’s why I say “we’re getting somewhere.” With the attention of that body, can real reform be far behind?

Until that day, I have one suggestion for the august members of the OADRJ – learn to read. Giulitto’s very first reference to the Report is unambiguously wrong.

The National Parents Organization (NPO) issued a report August 30, 2018, which purported to analyze and evaluate the parenting time ordered by Domestic Relations and Family Courts in Ohio.

No, actually we didn’t. Had Giulitto bothered to read the Report, she’d have found these words that were carefully included to make sure anyone reading the Report knew what it is and what it isn’t.

The Ohio Parenting Time Rule Project is not an evaluation of Ohio counties’ domestic relations courts’ actual patterns of awarding parenting time or the actual behavior of parents, which sometimes diverges from court orders. Courts do not compile records of the frequency with which any given parenting time schedule is ordered. Accordingly, NPO has no means of knowing how frequently courts in any county order a default (or any other) parenting time schedule.

Here’s what the Report is: an analysis and comparison of the standard parenting time guidelines of each county in Ohio.

Here’s what the Report is not: an analysis of actual court orders in parenting time cases.

Giulitto stumbles on:

The NPO report erroneously assumes that a Court automatically adopts its standard parenting time order in cases in which both parties participate in a hearing but no agreement is reached in lieu of issuing a customized order after a hearing occurs.

No, wrong again.

NPO believes that the county standard parenting time guidelines play a very significant role in determining the parenting practices of separated parents, perhaps especially when parents come to the court without legal representation.1 While parents can have reasonable confidence that courts will approve most schedules that are mutually agreed to by the parents, the default schedules influence parental choices; furthermore, parental agreements are “made in the shadow” of these default schedules. NPO was motivated to undertake this detailed study because Ohio’s counties’ standard parenting time rules strongly influence the actual schedules parents follow and those parenting arrangements are instrumental in determining the well-being of children of divorced and separated parents.

And here’s the citation referenced at the end of the first sentence above:

Research shows that default options significantly influence individuals’ choices. See, for example, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thayler and Cass R. Sunstein, Penguin Books (2009)

So again, the Report makes clear that, based on cited research, parents’ choices are strongly influenced by the guidelines in place. But in no way does it “assume that a court automatically adopts its standard parenting time order…”

An intrinsic flaw in the NPO report is that there was no review of actual outcomes in any Domestic Relations or Family Court cases in Ohio. In addition, there was no understanding of the efforts within Courts to adopt or tailor an appropriate parenting time schedule for parents when they are unable to reach an agreement.

Wrong again. That would have been a flaw had it been the goal of the project to conduct a “review of actual outcomes,” but, as clearly stated, that’s not what the Report was about. It was about standard guidelines, not actual practices. It’s not “Moby Dick” either, and shouldn’t be criticized for it.

Having entirely misrepresented what the NPO Report is (and not linked to the report so readers can judge for themselves), Giulitto moves on to misrepresenting what NPO is.

The underlying goal of the NPO is for Courts to automatically issue an order for equal parenting time between parents upon the filing of a complaint.

That of course is utterly untrue as even a casual reading of anything that’s ever appeared on the NPO website would reveal. The idea that NPO does now or has ever argued for courts to automatically issue equal parenting time orders irrespective of everything can only be called an intentional misrepresentation.

As we so often see, opponents of shared parenting go to remarkable extremes to resist what’s been shown by the great weight of science on the issue to be in children’s best interests. This screed by Judge Giulitto is just another in a long line of the same. What’s always telling is that those opponents have to “make stuff up” in order to justify their opposition. Stated another way, if they had a meritorious argument to make against shared parenting or against our analysis of the Ohio guidelines or anything else, don’t you think they’d make it? Instead of making an argument on the merits, Giulitto frankly misrepresents NPO’s Report, what it is and what it explicitly isn’t.

But here’s an offer to the OADRJ: let’s fund a joint analysis of court orders in custody and parenting time cases in Ohio. We can hire a well-respected researcher, much as Nebraska did several years ago. Judge Giulitto waxes indignant that NPO should question Ohio’s judges in parenting time matters. So let’s learn what they actually do. Let’s set aside standard guidelines and get to the real thing. When that’s been done in other states, the results have been humiliating for the judiciary, but perhaps Ohio’s is better.

Whatever the results of such an analysis, the impact can only be good. If Ohio turns out to be like Nebraska and North Dakota, judges can then know that they need to do better at serving the best interests of kids. If it turns out that those judges order shared parenting at a sensible rate, then we’ll all toss our hats in the air and shout “Huzzah!” And I’ll be the one shouting the loudest.

But for now, let’s stop misrepresenting to the public a sensible and sound Report. If the members of the OADRJ issue parenting time orders that are as bad as their critique of NPO’s Report, they’ve got a lot of work to do and a lot of questions to answer.

October 1, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Here’s an informative piece for the men of Tennessee. It’s a blog post by Tennessee attorney Kent T. Jones about how unmarried fathers are treated by the state’s family laws and how unmarried mothers are. It’s not a pretty picture.

The Tennessee child custody statutes support the mother in cases where the parents of a child are not married. An unmarried mother’s name on a child’s birth certificate is sufficient proof of her custodial rights; however, it is not the same for an unmarried father. Even if he’s named on the birth certificate, this only proves his relationship to the child; it does not assign any custody rights. A mother’s right to custody is automatic under Tennessee law, whereas the unmarried father must initiate juvenile court proceedings in order to gain custody rights.

Stated another way, being named on the birth certificate gets an unmarried man parental obligations, but not parental rights. Anyone who thought the two went hand-in-hand is now disabused of such a notion. This of course is one way in which unmarried mothers can choose which man they wish to be tagged with parental duties. If Mom neglects to mention her pregnancy to Dad, she’ll be at the hospital by herself and the nurses or Bureau of Vital Statistics personnel will take her word for it as to Dad’s identity. We see this in Title IV cases with some frequency.

Should Dad get wind of Mom’s claim that he has a child, he’s required to spend his hard-earned money to hire a lawyer, pay a filing fee, go to court and claim his rights. Mom has no such obligations. If he wishes to contest paternity, that’s his time to do so and his nickel.

Under Tennessee Code Section 36-2-303, an unwed mother automatically gains custody of her child upon birth. No legal action is necessary to assert her custodial rights. She is solely responsible for providing for the child’s needs and making decisions regarding the child’s residence, medical care and education. Unless a court-ordered custody agreement states otherwise, it is her decision whether or not the father can see the child and what part he plays in the child’s life.

As a practical matter, this means that no unmarried mother need inform the father of her child that he’s a dad. If she refused to disclose her pregnancy and broke up with him before he could figure it out for himself, as a practical matter, he has no way to assert his rights. Of course if she, at any time during the child’s life desires his support, she can get it. Never mind that she denied him a relationship with the child and the child a relationship with its father. And of course the child support he’ll be required to pay isn’t just prospective.   There’ll be a hefty lump sum of past support due and owing as well.

In that event, do Dad’s parental rights come magically into being? They do, but asserting them is another matter entirely. Since he’s never had a relationship with the child, he may be denied any access to it or, failing that, such minimal time with little Andy or Jenny as to obviate any chance at a real father-child relationship.

As I’ve said many, many times, fathers have rights, but mothers can decide whether they get to exercise them.

Tennessee’s laws on the subject of unmarried parents and their rights and duties to their children are very 19^th century. They assume that Dad is a cad who heartlessly seduced and abandoned Little Nell. The reality is that women have all the inexpensive and effective reproductive choices. Moreover, those choices are, for the most part secret; a man can’t know whether his partner is actually taking the pill or not but she can tell whether he’s using a condom.

And of course, should contraception fail, women have the morning after pill, abortion and adoption to fall back on. In short, women can generally decide if and when to have a child. For men, it’s much more difficult.

Given all that, it’s remarkable that over 40% of births are to unmarried women. In the overwhelming majority of those cases, the woman didn’t have to give birth if she didn’t want to. Therefore, it’s safe to conclude that, the great majority of those births were wanted by the mother. Again, we can draw no such conclusion about the father.

Similarly, we know all too well that being born to a single mother is, for the most part, the very definition of a bad start in life. Between 33% and 40% of single mothers live below the poverty line. That means their kids do too. Children of single parents are at far greater risk of abuse and neglect than are other kids. And poverty is a major harbinger of bad outcomes for kids. Needless to say, when we add fatherlessness to poverty, a child is in real danger for a wide variety of social and personal deficits.

So we might think that sensible public policy would encourage fathers’ active participation in their children’s lives. Lower poverty rates and healthier, happier, safer children argue persuasively for exactly that. But public policy does the opposite. Laws like Tennessee’s make active paternity by unmarried fathers as difficult as possible. Why? Say, that’s a good question and one for which I have no answer.

Unlike in the 19^th century, we now have a handy technique for figuring out paternity to an absolute certainty. It’s called DNA testing. If Tennessee required all babies to be tested at birth (along with the man/men identified by the mother as the father) then we’d know who every child’s father is. We could then inform Dad and, without any court involvement, automatically accord him his parental rights.

Doing so would erase the anti-male sexism currently existing in the law, it would pair vastly more babies with their true fathers, wipe out most paternity fraud and radically reduce the number of children and mothers living in poverty.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, fatherlessness is the policy of the United States and many other countries. Tennessee’s is but one example of many. That fatherlessness is so actively promoted in so many ways at a time when we know so much about its deleterious effects on fathers, mothers, children and society generally, makes it my candidate for proof positive of a dysfunctional society.

September 30, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

To no one’s surprise, the Nebraska Supreme Court has done it. It’s produced a rule under which materials used to train judges who rule in divorce, child custody and parenting time cases may be withheld from the public. From now on, Nebraskans aren’t permitted to know how their judges are trained.

How does that square with the ruling by the Nebraska Supreme Court in Veskrna vs. Steele that those very records are public under the Nebraska Public Records Act? The state’s highest court sided with Dr. Les Veskrna who wanted to know what education family court judges are receiving. Well, I’m not sure.

After all, the Nebraska Legislature long ago enacted the Public Records Act that unambiguously supports the public’s right to know regarding a very wide range of governmental behavior. The law plainly promotes openness and discourages secrecy. The public’s right to know is, generally speaking, the policy of the state and has been for a long time.

So how does a non-legislative body appoint itself to contradict the legislature? Moreover, how does it do that when doing so involves an apparent conflict of interest? By its new rule, judges are shielding themselves from public scrutiny when law and public policy argue for openness.

My guess is that the Court seeks to accomplish its nefarious goal this way:

(4) Records showing the content of education or training programs or presentations given by outside or private presenters, including all handouts, presentations, and recordings, except such portions of any recordings governed by subsection (C)(7) below, and as long as express written consent is granted by the author for the release of the materials.

That’s No. 4 in a laundry list of items that are public. So the content of training programs for judges are public IF the author of same gives express written consent to their publication. In other words, Bob Emery can refuse that consent and no one anywhere can know what he told Nebraska’s judges.

I suspect the Court wants to warm the winter of potential legislative discontent by that particular dodge. The idea being that the only ones they’re protecting are the ones who produce the content of the training sessions.

Will that work? I have no idea. Certainly, it is well within the power of the legislature to overturn this rule. Members can simply pass a law specifically stating that materials used to train judges are open to the public. Period. And that would put an end to this sorry saga.

Conspicuously absent from the Supreme Court’s recent message on the new rule is any justification for it. Why should the people’s right to know be trumped by a single social science researcher who may not even live in Nebraska? The Court is mum on that subject. And well it might be.

I for one can’t think of a single argument in favor of keeping secret judicial training materials. It’s interesting to say the least that the Court failed to advance one. Interesting too is the fact that, in Veskrna vs. Steele, it batted down every argument Steele (the Administrator of Courts) made in favor of secrecy. It is, therefore, a fair conclusion that the Court has no justification for the rule it so recently promulgated.

At least the Court’s depressing message is leavened by a sense of humor.

It is essential to the public… to ensure the delivery of quality judicial services to the people of the State of Nebraska.

That certainly brought a guffaw from me. This is the crowd that routinely turns fit fathers out of the lives of their children. As the analysis of family courts in the state conducted by Michael Saini showed, despite barely 5% of cases even alleging one parent to be unfit – and certainly vastly fewer actually being so – Nebraska judges granted shared parenting in only …% of cases. And of course a child’s chance of maintaining real relationships with both parents varies radically from one county to another.

If that’s “delivering quality judicial services to the people of the State of Nebraska,” I’ll eat my hat.

The Nebraska Legislature should put a stop to this. The people of Nebraska deserve to know how the judges who determine a child’s relationship with its parents are trained in deciding that all-important issue. It’s past time judges stopped hiding their training from the public. Their disdain for the legislature, their disdain for the people of the state is shameful

September 28, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Will wonders never cease? As part of the recent short-term spending plan recently passed by Congress, the Family First Prevention Services Act appears to make progress in combatting states’ tendency to take children from parents, place them in foster care and then have them adopted.

That of course came about as a result of the 1998 passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act that allowed Washington to pay states for every child taken into foster care or adopted out of it. As former South Dakota state senator Bill Napoli told NPR back in 2011, “When that money came down the pike, it was huge. That’s when we saw a real influx of kids being taken out of families.”

States all of a sudden discovered a zeal for taking children from their parents. One key aspect of the program was that children denominated by states as having “special needs” produced a payments from Washington over twice what the were for other kids. The result? South Dakota simply called every Native American child a “special needs” child, the better to enhance the state’s cash flow.

Now we have the Secretary of West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources, Bill Crouch, echoing Napoli (Parental Rights Foundation, 9/25/18).

“The federal government has always paid us only if we pull children from their homes,” Crouch said according to a report in the (Beckley, WV) Register-Herald, “so this is a huge change in how we’re able to deal with our child welfare problem.”

The huge change he’s referring to is the aforementioned FFPSA. What is it? The Act, that becomes effective in October, 2019, authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services to “make a payment to a state” if the state provides the parents certain services. Those services include “mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment services provided by a clinician for not more than a 12-month period…”

They also include

In-home parent skill-based programs for not more than a 12-month period that begins on any date described in paragraph (3) with respect to the child and that include parenting skills training, parent education, and individual and family counseling.

The children who are the subject of the bill are as follows:

(A) A child who is a candidate for foster care (as defined in section 475(13)) but can remain safely at home or in a kinship placement with receipt of services or programs specified in paragraph (1).

(B) A child in foster care who is a pregnant or parenting foster youth.

So briefly, the FFPSA channels federal dollars to states to keep kids out of foster care and to help parents of kids who are in danger of being placed in foster care get off drugs and/or learn to be better parents. States can now be less willing to take kids into foster care and still keep the federal largess flowing. They’re also encouraged to do what one veteran child welfare official urged long ago, i.e. put the “services” into Child Protective Services.” What a concept.

Now, I’d be remiss if I failed to point out one obvious thing – the FFPSA directly contradicts the Adoption and Safe Families Act. The one pays states to keep kids out of foster care while the other pays them to place kids in foster care. I can see state officials now, checking to see under which law their state gets paid more.

Or, I can see it another way. Why wouldn’t a state cash in on the FFPSA by providing, say, parenting lessons to parents, declare that the services hadn’t helped the parent and then cashing in again by taking the child into foster care? I’m such a cynic. No state would do such a thing, would it? Would it?

And of course there’s the point raised by the friend of NPO who alerted me to the FFPSA. It’s quite remarkable that, a year from now, we’ll be paying to treat drug addicts so they can keep custody of their kids, but not lifting a finger to encourage state courts to keep both parents in their children’s lives, even when the parents are entirely fit and upright members of society.

Does it get any crazier than that?

That said, the FFPSA is a step in the right direction of discouraging foster care and encouraging parental care. So the law itself isn’t crazy, just the rest of federal policy on kids and parents.