Posted: January 28, 2009
10:09 pm Eastern
By Bob
Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
A case is developing in a Tennessee divorce dispute
that one attorney believes could impact custody decisions
nationwide because it calls down the authority of the 14th
Amendment's equal protection clause to help fathers who are
good parents and want to remain involved in their children's
lives.
The attorney, Stanley Charles Thorne, told WND the
issue in the case at hand will be significant, since there are
3,000 divorce or custody cases in courts across the U.S. daily.
And according to the
Children'sJustice.org website, those cases leave nearly 38
percent of the fathers with no access or visitation rights to their
children. In addition, four in 10 mothers report they interfered
with the father's visitation to punish him at least once, half
the mothers see "no value" in the father's continued
contact with his children and 70 percent of the fathers wanted more
time with their kids.
Thorne told WND he is serving as a consultant in
the case of Jeremy Hopkins, a successful lawyer, in his attempts to
be treated the same as his daughter's mother, Elisabeth, also a
successful lawyer, in their custody of Kate.
Since the mother left the family in Tennessee and took Kate to
Pennsylvania about two years ago, Jeremy Hopkins has been allowed
only sporadic days with his daughter.
"All I want for my daughter is for her to have
mom and a dad," Jeremy Hopkins told WDEF-TV in Chattanooga
recently.
Michael McCormick of the Institute for American
Families said the system is set up to pit a mother against a father
in a marital dispute, when it should be working to accommodate the
needs of a child for both a mother and father.
"The courts are going to pick a winner and a
loser and when they do that, the child ultimately loses," he
told the station at a recent rally regarding the case.
"If we look at what's happening to our
society we can trace the social pathologies just as increased rates
of incarceration, early sexual activity for girls, truancy issues
related to the family breaking down and the social fabric of our
society is breaking down in terms of the family breaking down, we
are being weaken as a nation and we need to change that,"
McCormick added.
He estimates 17 million fathers nationwide do not
have fair access to their children, and about 3 million mothers
have the same problem.
Thorne, who has 25 years experience as a lawyer,
most recently has specialized in constitutional issues in family
courts, representing parents and children on various issues.
He said the case now is entering the briefing
stage, and the next court hearings are expected sometime in
April.
The family's life was disrupted by the
mother's decision to leave, Thorne said, but the relationship
of the father and daughter was aggravated by a "family court
system that cares for neither of them while it keeps them mired in
a swamp of never-ending legal hassles just to be
together."
The case began about Christmas 2006 when Kate was
1. Then the mother, Elisabeth, moved to Pennsylvania with Kate, and
since then Jeremy has been away from his daughter 86 percent of the
time - 633 of the previous 733 days.
At least four judges have been involved in the
case, "but none of those … ever ordered the parenting
plan required by the Tennessee Legislature and the Tennessee
Supreme Court," Thorne's statement said.
"Many constitutional issues will be decided by
Kate Hopkins' case," he continued. "Perhaps the most
important is where the Constitution draws the line to protect the
relationship between an innocent child and an innocent parent from
government interference."
The dispute came to a head just before Christmas
2008, following the expiration of the most recent visitation order.
Jeremy Hopkins, on a scheduled visit with his daughter, decided to
have her stay in Tennessee until a court hearing on the required
court-ordered visitation plan.
Instead, he was arrested for interfering with a
custodial plan, "even though there was no court order in
force," and his daughter was returned to Pennsylvania. The
warrant later was quashed by a judge, who essentially determined it
never should have been issud.
Thorne questioned the legal system ordering a child
taken from one parent "when the child is in no danger …
and the child has never been abused, neglected, or harmed" and
given to another parent absent a court order.
The 14th Amendment states: "No state shall
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws."
"The only way to reconcile the parental rights
of each fit parent is to divide the time of the child," Thorne
suggested.
"This case affects not just the people of
Tennessee," he said. "This is huge."
"In this case … this child now aged 3
over the past two years has been rendered fatherless, not because
of anything dad did, but because of the way the system tilts,"
he told WND.
A WND message left with the attorney for the mother
did not generate a response.
But Thorne said the cases of the 17 million people
across the U.S. who are noncustodial parents also involve more than
18 million children. Not only are the parents denied access to
their children, grandparents, uncles and aunts are cut off as
well.
Thorne insisted judges should approach custody
issues from a different perspective. They are not, he said,
dividing property. Instead, they are making rules that impact the
equal and sometimes competing parental relationships and rights of
two individuals.
"They are not dividing one set of parental
rights," he said. "Each parent has their own parental
rights and prerogatives as an outgrowth of that relationship with
the child."
Numerous organizations are working for the rights
of fathers in disputes like the Tennessee case, including FathersCustody.org,LongDistanceParenting.org,Fathers False Charges
Helpline,
Fathers National Lawyers Referral,WinningCustody.com and
FathersRights.org.
The
Children'sJustice.org website noted very few children in
divorced families are satisfied with the time they have with their
fathers and only 11 percent of the mothers value the father's
input regarding issues with their kids, well below the 45 percent
who value input from teachers and doctors.
The site reported another national study found that
more than three-quarters of non-custodial fathers are not able to
visit their children as ordered by court decisions.
The issue of the treatment of fathers in custody
disputes was the
subject of a commentary in WND before the election.
Mike McCormick of the
American Coalition for Fathers and Children and Glenn Sacks, who writes on
men's and fathers' issues, said the Democrats' 2008
campaign platform targeted fathers for fault.
"The platform's 'Fatherhood' plank
puts all blame for father absence squarely on men and promises to
'crack down' on fathers who are behind on their child
support. It also promises to ratchet up draconian domestic violence
laws that often victimize innocent men and separate them from their
children," McCormick and Sacks found.
"It's doubtful that many dads wake up in
the morning and say to themselves, 'My child loves me and needs
me; my wife/girlfriend loves me and needs me - I'm outta
here.' Research shows that the vast majority of divorces, as
well as many break-ups of unmarried couples, are initiated by
women, not by men, and that most of these do not involve serious
male transgressions," they said.
The result? "The father is generally relegated
to visitor status and often can only participate in his
children's lives if the mother allows it. Courts tilt heavily
towards mothers in awarding custody and enforce fathers'
visitation rights indifferently. In most states, mothers are free
to move their children hundreds or thousands of miles away from
their fathers, often permanently destroying the fathers' bonds
with their children."
