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Virginia's Shared Parenting Organization  

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We, the members of Fathers for Virginia an affiliate of "American Coalition for Fathers and Children", hereby dedicate ourselves and our efforts to the creation of a family law system, legislative system, and public awareness which promotes the child's right to the love and care of both parents after breakup of a family or establishment of paternity. with equal rights and responsibilities for fathers and mothers. We believe the Best Parent is BOTH Parents.

Through our involvement and dedication, we can have a positive effect on the emotional and psychological well-being of children. Fathers For Virginia believes that unless one parent can be proven to be unfit and dangerous to the child(ren), anything less than equal parenting is child abuse. We argue that children's fundamental rights are protected only when both parents are treated as equals, starting with equal time with the children.

The family court system, operating under the current "best interest of the child standard", has become a forum for tug-o-war, where the children are the financial and emotional trophy to be "won".

The evidence reveals, the true "best interest of the child" in family court, is to take children out of their current position as financial and emotional trophies, and to presume that both parents, providing they are fit, should have maximum/equal opportunity to parent them. The courts need to STOP declaring a "winner" and a "loser" with regard to child placement decisions.

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW  

Also our argument for equality and equal parental rights is based upon the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This position was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Troxel et vir. v. Granville, 530 US 57, 67 (2000). The Court stated that parenting is a fundamental right protected by the US Constitution. In Troxel, the court wrote: The liberty interest at issue in this case -- the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children -- is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.

FATHERLESS HOMES

An astonishing 40% of Virginia's children will go to bed tonight without their father at home.[US News and World Report, February 27, 1995] It's not that he is at work, It's because he doesn't live there anymore. Divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth are occurring at record rates.

 Virginia's divorce rate currently ranks nearly third worst in the nation. With nearly half of all marriages ending in divorce, it affects all of us. The Children's Rights Council ranks Virginia among the worst states to raise children.

What is it like growing up in a home without a dad? Children who used to spend daily time with their daddy are typically only allowed to see him four days a month. It is easy to see why children of divorce lose dad as an influence.
 

The hard truth is that fatherless homes produce the vast majority of troubled children. A father's influence, just like a mother's, is essential and irreplaceable.
 

Here is the chilling truth about our children who come from fatherless homes:

"I oversee 65 different social programs at a cost of nearly $47 billion dollars each year.
Go down the list of these programs - child welfare, child support enforcement, programs for runaway youth, anti-poverty programs - the need for each of these programs is either created or exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages." Assistant Secretary Dr. Wade Horn - Department of Health and Human Services

• TEENAGE PREGNANCY
  • "Daughters of single parents are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages. All these intergenerational consequences of single motherhood increase the likelihood of chronic welfare dependency." Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Atlantic Monthly (April 1993).
  • Daughters of single parents are 2.1 times more likely to have children during their teenage years than are daughters from intact families. The Good Family Man, David Blankenhorn.
  • 71% of teenage pregnancies are to children of single parents. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

   CHILD ABUSE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

  • The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that there were more than 1,000,000 documented child abuse cases in 1990. In 1983, it found that 60% of perpetrators were women with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress associated with sole custody, and reduce the isolation of children in abusive situations by allowing both parents' to monitor the children's health and welfare and to protect them.

    Fathers for Virginia abhors domestic violence, and believes that children who witness domestic violence in many cases are harmed by the experience. We are eager to become part of the solution of the domestic violence problem.

    POVERTY

    • "The National Fatherhood Institute reports that 18 million children live in single-parent homes. Nearly 75% of American children living in single-parent families will experience poverty before they turn 11. Only 20% in two-parent families will experience poverty." Melinda Sacks, "Fatherhood in the 90's: Kids of absent fathers more "at risk"," San Jose Mercury News (10/29/95).
    • "The feminization of poverty is linked to the feminization of custody, as well as linked to lower earnings for women. Greater opportunity for education and jobs through shared parenting can help break the cycle." David Levy, Ed., The Best Parent is Both Parents (1993).

    KIDNAPPING

    • Family abductions were 163,200 compared to non-family abductions of 200-300. The parental abductions were attributed to the parents' disenchantment with the legal system. David Levy, Ed., The Best Parent is Both Parents (1993), citing a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice (May 1990).

These statistics translate to mean that children from a fatherless home are:

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"There is no system ever devised by mankind that is guaranteed to rip
husband and wife or father, mother and child apart so bitterly than our
           present Family Court System." 

Judge Brian Lindsay
Retired Supreme Court Judge
New York, New York

"There is something bad happening to our children in family courts today
that is causing them more harm than drugs, more harm than crime and even
more harm than child molestation." Judge Watson L. White
Superior Court Judge
Cobb Country, Georgia

“We have permitted the courts to sever the relationship between his or her biological father. This is something that no court should have an opportunity to do.”
-----   Dr. Margaret Mead

As Strange as it may seem, It is not uncommon for attorneys like these (referring particularly to two unethical attorneys) to manipulate families and children into a litigation. The London School of Economics professor puts it very succinctly at his website. (http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/) There are several Judges who do play along with attorneys much to the dismay of the rest of us. A Judicial reform is most certainly needed in Family Law. The Question is- "Who will bell the cat". -------Fairfax County, Virginia Retired Judge - name withheld.

 "The entire divorce and custody profession ... has become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest, that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers of conflict ... Trial by adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood ... Our system has become too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for truly civilized people." -- Former Chief Justice Warren Burger

Though lowest in the hierarchy, they are "the most powerful branch of the judiciary". "The power of family court judges is almost unlimited". Secret family courts have long been recognized as an invitation to chicanery. "Where there is no publicity, there is no justice. --- Judge Robert Page of the New Jersey Family Court.

Fatherhood is rapidly becoming the number one social policy issue in America.   "The single biggest social problem in our society may be the growing absence of fathers from their children's homes, because it contributes to so many other social problems."  -- Former President William Jefferson Clinton - October 15, 1995

'Over the past four decades, Fatherlessness has emerged as one of our greatest social problems. We know that children who grow up with absent fathers can suffer lasting damage.'                                                  ----- President George W. Bush - June 7, 2001

"The entrenched divorce industry has a vested interest in making sure the expensive destruction of families continues. Shared Parenting goes towards eliminating the perception that one parent is preferred over another due to her gender. ------- Health and Human Service Commissioner John Stephen supporting a shared parenting bill through an aide John Williams in New Hampshire.

"Visitation with a parent is not the privilege of the parent but the
right of the child. Both [the father and the boy] must have this right
preserved by maximizing defendant's opportunity to maintain a positive
and nurturing father-son relationship." - New York State Supreme Court
Justice John Bivona

“We need to do more to make sure both parents are fully involved in the raising of their children, particularly fathers”
- Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson October 22nd, 1999

"I believe this presumption (in favor of shared parenting) will help settle at least 25 to 30 percent of all child custody cases. The attorneys will begin to concentrate on how these two parents will parent their children in two separate homes instead of trying to prove who is the better parent. I rarely had a contested custody case in which both parents weren't good parents and that is why they were contesting custody. I have been involved in over 1,200 divorces. This bill is a step in the right direction." --A.M. Keith, former chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court - who, during his years in
private practice, was a divorce lawyer.

"Although the dispute is symbolized by a 'versus' which signifies two adverse parties at opposite poles of a line, there is in fact a third party whose interest and rights make the line a triangle. That person, the child who is not an official party to the lawsuit but whose well-being is in the eye of the controversy, has a right to shared parenting when both are equally suited to provide it. Inherent in the expressed public policy is a recognition of the child's right to equal access and opportunity with both parents, the right to have major decisions made by the application of both parents' wisdom, judgment and experience. The child does not forfeit these rights when the parents divorce."                  ---   Presiding Judge Dorthy T. Beasley, Georgia Court of Appeals, In the interest of A.R.B., of a child , "July 2, 1993

Systemic oppression With regards to the family law system in America, " The targeted parent is oppressed. His children are taken away, he is vilified by our government, his money taken, his dignity stripped. His life's purpose thwarted. He is abused. He feels like a slave. His legislative and civil efforts denied. Oppression covers all of this."        --Wayne Stillman, Member, CCJ Board of Directors

A Reign of Terror: Family Court Fascism

The Words "prejudice" and "corruption" do not really convey what family courts are about. They are the linchpin of a massive political machine that thrives and grows by systematically destroying families. Within this machine, individual judges are "no more than blind executors of the system's own internal laws," as Vaclav Havel has written of another kind of apparat, laws which are "far more powerful than the will of any individual." What we have, in other words, is a system of bureaucratic terror, the kind of terror that has never before been seen in the United States.          --- Professor Stephen Baskerville, Howard University

Make no mistake -- This is War

When a society can tear into the most precious of human bonds -- more precious even than marriage, since you cannot divorce your children -- when a society will destroy human love and emotion in the name of a superimposed statutory "scheme," that society has GONE TOO FAR. It is nothing less than a declaration of war by government upon its citizens. And when attacked by their own government -- established to PROTECT their rights, not eviscerate them -- citizens have the right to fight back, with whatever weapons are necessary to get the job done.
                    -- Robert Muchnick, CCJ executive director

The Best Parent is BOTH Parents!

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"That is the thankless position of the father in the family - the provider for all.... and the enemy of all...."-- -- J. August Strindberg, Swedish writer

" I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- -- Sigmund Freud

  The only thing crueler than tearing children from their parents is falsely leading children to believe that they are unloved by their fathers.  - Stephen Baskerville

Fathers FOR Virginia is an affiliate of American Coalition for Fathers and Children (ACFC).