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KN2P Kids Need 2 Parents |
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"Because the BEST parent is BOTH parents" |
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JUNE 12 -SHARED PARENTING RALLY IN CHARLOTTE, NC!!! 3-5pm MARSHALL PARK 800 East 3rd Street Charlotte, NC (right between the courthouse and the Education Center) Keynote Speakers: Michael McCormick - Executive Director - American Coalition for Fathers and Children Tim McKyer - 3 Time Superbowl Winner - Father's Rights Advocate Dr. Larry Jones - Physician, Author, Men's Program Facilitator Brian Irwin - Author, Mediator, Family Counselor Geoffrey Hurlburt - Candidate for NC Senate District 14 Gregory Hunt - Attorney at Law, PLLC and more... This is the same weekend as "A Taste of Charlotte", which will be just blocks away, so come in to town and make a day of it!
NEWS: Next Monthly Meeting - Monday, May 3, 2010. KN2P will meet at at 6:00PM at Panera Bread (601 Providence Rd., Charlotte, NC) Main topic will be brainstorming our upcoming rally. Bring your ideas and your enthusiasm! RSVP to Tina Reiriz at tina@kn2p.org See K.I.D.S. featured in 2 newspapers: Article in the Triangle Tribune (January 13, 2010) Article in Charlotte Post (January 21, 2010) You can now find us under Groups on Linkedin.com And yes...we are now also on Twitter!!!
If you or someone you know has been falsely accused of abuse in a divorce situation, you may find this organization to be helpful: RADAR-Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting
1. First...TRY to mediate privately with your spouse or ex-spouse outside of the court system. Family Mediators are trained to cut through the murky waters (negative feelings) of divorce and separation issues. It is their goal to find the COMMON ground, which SHOULD BE the best interest of your children. They will help you work up a Parenting Plan that suits your family best. They can also help you work up a Separation/Divorce Agreement you can submit to an attorney, and cut out the high price of having 2 attorneys squabble back and forth for months or years of your lives, while your bank accounts dwindle. Here is a link to some certified Family Mediators - Mediator Search If that venture proves fruitless, we suggest: 2. You and your ex hire Collaborative Law Attorneys. Collaborative Family Law is a dignified, cooperative approach to negotiating and settling the issues arising from a family separation without going to court. We highly recommend finding a Collaborative Family Law Professional HERE.
A MUST SEE: We think all parents (from both intact families and divorced) should view a very informative video on Shared Parenting by Dr. Warren Farrell. Click HERE to see his wisdom on parenting. Other organizations for Shared Parenting:
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 LAWAlso 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.
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Links to some interesting videos:
"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.
- KIDS 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).
"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
more harm than child molestation."
---Judge Watson L. White
Superior Court Judge
Cobb Country, Georgia
-The Leadership
Council, 2005
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."
---Justice John Bivona, New York State Supreme Court
“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, 2003.
"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, Center
for Children's Justice
- 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, Center
for Children's Justice - Executive Director
"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
The
Best
Parent
is
BOTH
Parents!
" I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection."
--- Sigmund Freud
KN2P is an affiliate of American Coalition for Fathers and Children (ACFC).
