Category Archives: marriage
Where ARE You, U.S. Family Policy Councils and Christian Legal Defense Funds???
by Standerinfamilycourt
Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames. – Sir Thomas More
Given his 1535 martyrdom for refusing to recognize Henry VIII’s divorce and adulterous remarriage to Ann Boleyn, does it seem at least a little reasonable to believe that Sir Thomas More might have been deeply troubled about the Marxist social engineering a successor Lord Chancellor named Gauke is currently cramming down the throats of over 80% of the UK citizens, a sample of whom resoundingly told Parliament recently they don’t want 6-month forced family-shredding (no-defense divorce) to become the immoral law in their country?
When Ireland was about legalize abortion a couple of years ago, every one of these groups, whose logos appear above, tracked and wrote about it on an almost weekly basis. When gay marriage was in the process of being legalized in numerous countries abroad (not the least of which was the UK), it was the top daily headline for every one of them. The push to radically expand unilateral “no-fault” divorce has been all over the UK papers for more than a year now, ever since a British high court did the right thing by the nation’s families last year in denying a 67-year old woman who had no legitimate grounds to seek a divorce against her 80-year old husband of 40 years. It wasn’t that this woman would never be divorced from her God-joined one-flesh mate under the UK civil law, however (unless the Lord brought her to repentance). It was only that it had been just 4 years since she moved out of their main house, and this decision made her await the final year under existing law to fully go her own selfish way with a chunk of the sizable marital estate.
You guys decided to sit this one out for some reason. One can only imagine if instead of an elderly heterosexual couple, this had been Elton John and his lovely “husband” David Furness being denied a quickie divorce under existing law. Would any of you have been able to resist sparring back at the outraged tabloids? Yet, in over a year’s time, not one of you has even shown awareness that traditional marriage in the UK literally is on its last lonely stand.
Believers who care about this issue were scratching our heads, but still willing to forgive and support you when two U.S. states in the last four years took the tremendously courageous step of very seriously attempting the repeal of forced family-shredding-on-demand by requiring that “no-fault” grounds only be allowed upon a joint petition or other form of documented mutual consent, but for public purposes, you chose to sit that one out as well.
“standerinfamilycourt” means no disrespect, but 90% of the infringement of religious liberty in the name of the Sexual Revolution can be traced directly back to that grossly irresponsible bill Gov. Ronald Reagan signed on September 5, 1969. In fact, innocent “Respondents” on the receiving end of a unilateral “no-fault” petition, having been charged with the made-up crime of “irreconcilable differences”, have suffered the earliest, worst and most numerous of religious freedom violations, including loss of God-assigned parental rights to influence and discipline, loss of ability to choose and direct their childrens’ parochial education, severe financial reprisals in court for not acquiescing to the petition, restraining orders where there was no lawful cause, jail time, loss of licenses, and on and on. And don’t forget, scripture tells us that if a Christian (or anyone else, for that matter) is “divorced” by their spouse, it is immoral to “remarry” for as long as that spouse remains alive, an act which Christ repeatedly called ongoing adultery. That item alone makes unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws the most severe of all religious freedom violations, other than religious acts deemed to be capital violations.
If your mission statements are sincere, how can you possibly be silently sitting these events out? How can you be so embarrassed to be seen with your brothers and sisters in Christ who care as much about this issue as all of the Apostles and early church fathers did?
At least Mr. Reagan eventually admitted that his signature on the death warrant for the institution of binding holy matrimony was his worst act in all of his years of public service.
The people of the UK have a tiny window of time before this destructive law is imposed upon them against their majority will. We’re going to be nice in this post and not say anything about how inexcusably the industry special interest group that is backing this is violating the Article 73 separation-of-powers provisions in the British constitution, but we would like to introduce you to your embattled counterparts in the UK who actively fight for the sanctity of heterosexual marriage in its own right. “Standerinfamilycourt” is pleading with you to come to their aid in any way you possibly can while this time window remains briefly open due to Brexit preoccupation (the hand of the Lord, perhaps?) And we all know you can give these family warriors at least the moral support they need right now!
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mr. Thomas Pascoe and Mr. Colin Hart, of the Coalition for Marriage (C4M). Please consider giving these gentlemen a hand in not allowing the liberal press and ruling elites to control the debate with the sort of narrative that the past 50 years’ track record in this country has overwhelmingly disproven.
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. – Hebrews 13:4
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
The Marriage Moral Space Between The Bible and The Constitution – Conscionable for Christ-followers?
by Standerinfamilycourt
For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:32-33
Video credit: Jeff Morgan. Matthew Johnston interviewing Dr. Stephen Baskerville, February, 2019
Our blog spends most of its time and words mapping out the moral space between scripture and unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, all the while being well aware that this is “taboo” space which is alleged to be at odds with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Actually, this moral space consists of three moral sub-spaces:
(1) the moral space between scripture and the allowance of fault-based divorce which does not violate the Constitution, but severely violates scripture (Matt.19:6,8 ) – Space “A”
(2) the moral space between fault-based unilateral divorce (Romans 13:4) and mutual-consent “no-fault” divorce – Space “B”,
and, finally
(3) the moral space between mutual-consent “no-fault” divorce and forced, unilateral “no-fault” divorce (Isaiah 5:20) – Space “C”.
(please click to enlarge picture)
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
“standerinfamilycourt” began pondering this due to the repeated persistence, in a small strategy discussion group, of a Catholic man who refuses to budge from Space “A” on both moral and constitutional grounds. He therefore stands opposed to the apparent consensus of the majority in that group: that our divorce law reform objective, particularly insofar as it encompasses the legislatures, should be Space “A” + Space “B”. It’s not at all that this gentleman believes per the bible that death is the only thing which severs and dissolves holy matrimony. On the contrary, as a “good Catholic”, he also believes that an “annulment” decree from the bishop does this, but in that case he would argue that some extrabiblical “defect” somehow made it “not a marriage”.
At the same time, a brilliant young legal scholar in the group also believes in reform encompassing only Space “A” – on technical constitutional grounds related to Articles 3 and 10 of the Constitution, but for pragmatic reasons, can settle for Space “A” + Space “B”, so long as this result doesn’t get overturned in court on those same constitutional grounds. (“Get ‘er done”!) The difference between the two gentlemen is in their motives and reasoning in arriving at the same end point. Our Catholic friend believes there are some instances other than physical death which lead God to assent to “dissolution” if church leadership does, and absent leadership corruption (a huge presumption), this would normally track with fault-based jurisprudence which would be better for the children of the marriage than their parents having an option to decide together to end their marriage. (Church tradition elevated above God’s commandment, by perceived “delegation”). Meanwhile, our millennial believes that God has delegated so much authority to the state that the Establishment Clause must override God’s law in order to prevent a “theocracy”. (State over God, because the alternative in a pluralistic society might be worse.) SIFC cannot agree with either view, because of Who God says He is, and the outright blasphemy involved with corrupting in any measure one of the key symbols of His holiness and His relationship with His people.
That said, SIFC can also “live with” a pragmatic reform result of Space “A” + Space “B”….but upon deep reflection, believes that if Jesus Christ were in this discussion group, He’d say that even Space “A” is too much “daylight” between the instructions He left us with and what we as Christian citizens will settle for in our family laws. Space “A” actually reflects the Pharisaical school of Shammai which He rebuked in Matthew 19, while Spaces “A” + “B” + “C” reflect the Pharisaical school of Hillel which He also rebuked in Matthew 19.
Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you will not enter heaven. Matthew 5:20
He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.” Matthew 19:8
Christ’s position would be: only God, and not civil government has authority over holy matrimony, and nothing short of holy matrimony is actually moral:
Space “A” + Space “B” + Space “C” – Space “A” minus Space “B” minus Space “C” = zero human authority to create holy matrimony or grant a divorce from it.
Christ would grant civil government the authority to track marriage and death records to support the union, but would say that all divorce is man-made and of no effect in the kingdom of God, unless the “marriage” it purports to “dissolve” was invalid and kingdom-unlawful to begin with. He would say that all authentic marriage is only God-made, and anything outside of that is adultery, which sends people to hell if they don’t repent of it, and for which He will eventually judge our unrepentant nation, especially if the shepherds of His church remain complicit. By contrast, one recent state is attempting to keep the usurped authority for the state to continue granting unilateral “no-fault” dissolutions, but prospectively only record God-joined unions (and all manner of other man-fabricated cohabitation arrangements) upon affidavit, and doing so in order that the state’s judges may escape perceived persecution and actual liability at the hand of the homosexualist community from conscience-based refusal to officiate sodomous weddings.
“Standerinfamilycourt” is sincerely wrestling with this….
So…just how acceptable in God’s sight is it to advocate for change in a law that is presently sending people to hell by the millions, in favor of a reformed law that maybe only sends people to hell by the thousands (on the prevention side), and increases the legal avenues for repentance which avoids hell (on the rectification side)?
How much more or less acceptable in God’s sight is it to advocate for a law that prohibits divorce altogether (that is, strikes the dissolution statute in its entirety — whether or not there exist what men might consider to be “fault-based grounds”), thereby sending few or no one to hell because they divorced their true spouse, but sending some to hell because they can no longer civilly-divorce a faux spouse, and which also closes off all avenues of biblical repentance via man’s law? After all, it can’t be emphasized often enough: the law is a teacher, (especially with regard to the unregenerated who have no way of being counseled from within by the Holy Spirit), for better or for worse.
“standerinfamilycourt” may never have the answer to this dilemma until actually standing before the throne of God, when all of a believer’s life works will be judged to see what survives the fire:
For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.
If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.
1 Cor. 3:10-17
“standerinfamilycourt” is right to be concerned that all of the very costly and difficult activism, in terms of changing man’s divorce law, is only “wood, hay and stubble”. But if legal reform could also change hearts, reduce the massive number of people dying in a state of adultery, and increase the harvest of godly offspring who ultimately become citizens of heaven, that becomes a precious metal which will withstand the fire.
In Mathew 6, Jesus told us to seek His righteousness (presumably for ourselves, but perhaps also for others) while we’re first seeking the kingdom of God. In Matthew 5:6, He declared, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Both verses clearly promise a fulfillment from Him if our heart motives are what they should be, and we’re doing our part to obey the seeking, hungering and thirsting part.
Many earnest believers will argue either (1) “No one serving as a soldier entangles himself in the affairs of this life, that he might please the one having enlisted him” (2 Timothy 2:4), and therefore eschews all political involvement by Christians, or (2) God’s law of marriage only applies to the redeemed. Although the first idea has some merit, the second is completely contrary to Christ’s instructions, so “standerinfamilycourt” respectfully rejects both notions, in times like these.
It seems, therefore, the moral focus needs to be on the net effect on souls arriving in the kingdom of God, in clean wedding garments. That is all that will survive the fiery test of our life works. Obviously, if the “dissolution” statutes were all repealed from the lawbooks of all 50 states and not replaced, the expected result would be a wave of both righteous and unrighteous marital abandonments, the former resulting in repentance from adultery , and the latter resulting in a massive, if not unprecedented, increase in adultery because of the cultural intolerance of being told by government what to do. As predominantly immoral as our society has grown in the past five decades (encouraged by the enactment of increasingly immoral civil laws), perhaps the effects would initially “wash”, then who knows what would follow after that?
Situational ethics and moral relativism are never healthy things, and are downright nauseating to SIFC. This is the mistake Moses appears to have made, in endeavoring to “manage” sin in a pretty identical situation (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) instead of strongly rebuking it, and Christ showed that He was less than impressed with this. After all, it was not Moses whom Christ commended as the “greatest among all men born of woman”. It was instead His cousin, John, who sacrificed his very head to try and warn two adulterers to repent to escape hell. The kingdom of God suffers violence, not appeasement and accommodation! In accepting moral Space “A” or moral Space “A” + “B” for pragmatic reasons, there is both situational ethics and moral relativism involved, because human compromise is being aimed at seeking to prevent a perceived greater evil anticipated from a stricter law, due to inherently evil human nature.
Talk like this can be very unsettling to those who have never had the constitutionally-false notion of a thick wall of separation between church and state meaningfully, intellectually challenged. Certainly, among millennials, there is a long-fed fear (much of it, historical-revisionism-driven and propaganda-driven) causing this generation to struggle in particular with the Establishment Clause, and almost elevating it over the Free Exercise, clause out of concern, (perhaps) that Christianity will lose its moral authority and representation if Allah, Buddha, Krishna and Marx are not given equal place with the Most High God of the bible in our society. A lot of it has to do with the time period in which boomers vs. millennials and generation X-ers lived and grew up. And that has a lot to do with (believe it or not) the downstream effects of enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce. Those of us whose hair is now graying grew up for at least a couple of decades during a time when Christian values indeed dominated, and families under all religions actually thrived, even if they were prevented from dominating or having equal representation. That’s because we still HAD our families, directly due to Judeo-Christian domination of power structures and government.
In another February interview, Dr. Baskerville told World Magazine ,
“The churches withdrew from private life? And the state moved in. What had been the role of pastors and priests became the role of lawyers, judges, and social workers. The church has never tried to reclaim its turf, and has been a major contributor of secularization, of people feeling the church is not part of their life when it’s not enforcing the marriage contract.
“What can be done now? The church has got to step in. Much of the history of the Christian church has been brave churchmen speaking out when the state overreaches its authority. This whole area of sexual morality is, frankly, our turf and God’s turf. The state has a role but is overstepping.”
Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no? But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar’s. And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s. And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace.
– Luke 20: 22-26
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse posted another excellent question from that interview on the Ruth Institute facebook page: Q: Were churches sleeping when no-fault divorce emerged?
A: Some churches did raise their voices, but much of their attention was diverted at the time by Vietnam and civil rights. There was very little debate, very little discussion. No-fault divorce, the welfare state, and the cohabitation explosion were all usurpations of the church’s role by the state. Governmental power was inserted into a realm of private life that had been the realm of the churches.”
All of the above is true enough, of course, but does not represent the whole picture, at least with regard to the Protestant churches:
[standerinfamilycourt 3/6/2019 on this Ruth Institute Post ] Martin Luther & co are partly to blame for the church apathy. Forced divorce would be a much bigger issue had he not turned over the authority to the civil state to regulate holy matrimony in order to obtain access to man-made “dissolution” certificates, then established the Reformation church on the outright heresy that original holy matrimony bonds can be severed by anything but death. The real insult to the church is that the civil state is deigning to regulate marriage at all, much less on a “no-fault” basis, but heresy reigns supreme, and revised bibles back it up. For the church to do much to oppose state regulation of marriage, much less any kind of tyrannical divorce law, they would have to acknowledge that all resulting “remarriages” are morally and spiritually invalid adultery in all cases. When they can get away, and indeed grow rich, with not doing so, that’s too big a morsel for most to bite off.
One of Martin Luther’s more outrageous quotes (actually acknowledging that only death dissolves holy matrimony, and providing a very creative solution) goes thusly…
Dr. Morse’s Roman Catholic Church has their own canon law, and has continued to claim its authority over marriage, notwithstanding the state’s competing claim to that authority. Both claims are overstated and distorted from a kingdom of God perspective.
Perhaps it’s best to step back and look at the behavior of our nation’s founders and their choices with regard to allocating authority over marriage, between human government (Caesar) and God’s commandment that marriage was indissoluble except by physical death. It was these men who claimed “certain inalienable rights” directly from God, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is interesting to note that neither the U.S. Constitution nor any of the original state constitutions eventually ratified in the thirteen colonies even attempted to allocate the authority to regulate marriage to civil government at all, even though Federalism and Article 10 left the states this space. Based on this, SIFC believes it is fair to say that our nation’s founders started off on the conservative end of Space “A”, fairly aligned with biblical instruction, and this is one of the reasons God incubated and fostered our nation, making it extraordinary in its greatness. In other words, there wasn’t a lot of moral space between the Bible and the Constitution until case law and legislatures put the moral separation space there later.
A Word About Our Founders, the Framers of the Constitution
Were all of our principal founders followers disciples of Jesus Christ? No. Many were deists and humanist subscribers to natural law, including Thomas Payne, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen and Benjamin Franklin. Others, like John Jay, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Samuel Adams and Alexander Hamilton, Noah Webster were unequivocal about following Christ. Virtually all of them knew and expressed an overt warning that the form of government they had designed and bequeathed to the future citizens of this nation would only continue to function in an environment of national biblical morality.
Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence said: “Without morals a nation cannot subsist for any length of time.”
John Adams said, “Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.”
Though widely assumed to be a deist, Benjamin Franklin said, “God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without his aid?”
( 
SIFC: That can be the rise of a nation for a kingdom purpose, or it can be tolerated rise of a malevolent stronghold into an empire to punish an unrepentant nation that once enjoyed His extreme favor, and in yesteryear faithfully carried out that purpose, but now is leading the world into deeper debauchery and idolatry.)
Also, observed by Ben Franklin: “Only virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
George Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports”, and, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the bible.”
John Adams declared, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
(Tell us 21st century citizens about that, Mr. 2nd U.S. President!)
Finally, Noah Webster said, “…the moral principles and precepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis for all our civil constitutions and laws…All the miseries and evils that men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from the despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the bible.”
It is frequently argued today that we can’t go back to what we first had as a nation (as if the Lord God were indifferent), because our nation’s residents are no longer homogenous enough for it to work, therefore, we have no practical choice but to govern according to the prevailing cultural morality. (Much of this, it can be quite accurately observed, is said with the motive of coddling and appeasing the homosexualists.) “standerinfamilycourt” hereby prophesies that if we continue on as a nation with this ridiculous fallacy, the Muslim caliphate ultimately will not share that opinion with us, and will not hesitate to impose Shariah law on a morally-unruly citizenry. There is plenty of historical precedent for this in the bible and recorded world history. God owes the United States of America nothing, but He allowed first the Assyrians and then the Persians to overtake the nation of Israel. After seven decades of subjection, He required an intense purge of unlawful “marriages” and restored societal morality before He would restore sovereignty to His favored nation whose religious leadership was complicit in the systemic evil.
The following is only a theory on SIFC’s part, but it has been well-tested by the first nearly 200 years of our nation, when Baptists, Anabaptists and Methodists (who were socially disdained back in England) got along just fine with the Anglicans and Presbyterians. Later on, the Jews and Catholics got along just fine with the Protestant leaders and citizens under the civil marriage laws that prevailed until 1970. God’s moral favor gave cover for civil governments to impose that morality on the Mormons and Muslims, a circumstance that today shows signs of beginning to break down. Civil law does not need to prohibit man’s consensual divorce in order to appease God and wisely govern the people, but it must never force family dissolution and fragmentation on innocent family members while morally and financially rewarding the guilty family members. Society begins to break down at the point when obeying God’s biblical family law (whose very core is Gen. 2:21-24 and Matthew 19:4-6,8) becomes either very difficult or impossible under the corrupted civil laws of men.
Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a disgrace to any people.
– Proverbs 14:34
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Decoding a High-Stakes Legislative Study: “No-Fault” Push in the UK
by Standerinfamilycourt
The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him. – Proverbs 18:17
The “senior members of the Judiciary, the Family Mediation Task Force, Resolution (the national organization of family lawyers)” have the perfectly “simple” solution to the Solomonic dilemma posed above: make it henceforth unlawful for another to come and examine him.
(At least, until they’re all back in court afterward, fighting over the level of support and visitation of the children, upon which the next 10 years of fees may be billed, post-decree.)
Thomas Pascoe of the Coalition for Marriage called the House of Commons legislative “impact assessment” supporting enactment of “no-fault” divorce in the UK, on the premise that it will reduce conflict, “very flawed”. We call it, “not very original” – nor experientially true. We couldn’t agree more with Mr. Pascoe. In fact, after studying the study, we find his critique quite tactfully understated with regard to the entire study’s design, purpose and independence. Based on U.S. experience, we have much to say about the validity of the very premise that conflict over the involuntary dissolution of one’s marriage, and abridgment of parental and property rights, while innocent of any objective and provable charge, can or should be “managed” by the state as a primary goal of marriage regulation. The U.S. experience shows the acrimony can only be postponed until after the “dissolution” is imposed, and that this particular state-of-affairs has a long track record of being extremely lucrative for the legal community, while imposing absolute totalitarianism on the citizenry as a whole, outside of the protected special class.
In Part 2 of our coverage of these developments, we do a “deep dive” into the validity of the report, gleaning what we can about sponsorship, financing for the study, design, independence and objectivity. We do so from a U.S. experience-base of almost 50 years concerning the on-the-ground ability of the government to “manage conflict” in an adversarial divorce petition over inalienable property and parental rights, especially one where there’s no defense available to the “Respondent”, as is the appalling case in most U.S. states. We concede that the British constitution differs in various respects with the U.S. Constitution when we use terms like “inalienable”, and we forthrightly concede that these things have eroded over time in the U.S. due primarily to judicial corruption.
Undertaking this task has actually required the reading of several ancillary reports in addition to the House of Commons recommendation (briefing) report, including the public vetting results, and a 171-page commissioned “research” paper financed by a liberal public policy foundation (which states in a foreword that it also funded 1980’s research pushing unilateral divorce-on-demand), and spearheaded by a family law professor. This centerpiece research paper focuses primarily on administrative convenience for the courts, and “public perception” of the law, and not at all on evidence surrounding family integrity or outcomes (which should be paramount).
Pointedly not considered in the design of this “study” was any highly relevant U.S. data resulting from similar policies as here proposed, or whether the unilateral divorce laws enacted in the United States and Canada are sustainable in light of their extensive, progressive damage to the constitutional republics involved, nor even where similar policies (“postcard divorces”) had to be repealed even under communist regimes before those societies uttlerly collapsed. Most tellingly, Professor Tinder ignored Dr. Mark Regnerus’ landmark 2012 New Family Structures Study which was longitudinal over 15,000 subjects and a 30 year time period, and showed (among other things), that children raised in step-parent homes resulting from divorce did as almost poorly in their adult outcomes as children raised in single-parent homes – a clear rebuke on public policy which promotes non-widowed remarriage. Indeed, the study was not concerned at all with family structure outcomes; did not ask that question, therefore did not consider any of the abundant data along those lines. Despite engaging a statistics firm, this study did not even do a competent root cause analysis on the study questions it did ask, to validate the problem statement before defining “alternatives” and jumping to predetermined recommendations.
A properly-validated study would have examined the proposals from persistent reform efforts in other “no-fault” countries such as the United States, at least to have reasonable assurance that all viable reform models were being considered in this study. We further note that if the problem statement and root cause analysis had been properly constructed, the rather trivial complaints which the study said “justified” reform would have been more properly attributed to the lack of availability of a joint petition based on “irretrievable breakdown”, rather than mis-attributed to fault-based grounds — as was the true case in the United States in 1969.
It is quite implausible that Resolution would not have been aware of the steady wave “no-fault” reform bills over the last 15 years or so before legislatures in Michigan, Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma, where the persistent reform consensus has been around providing a combination of consent-only “no fault” grounds by mutual petition, and fault-based grounds that would apply in the event consent cannot be obtained. The best of these reform efforts also seek to apply fault-based property and child custody standards which have the goal of reforming the perverse financial incentives involved in the family law industry’s practice of actively contributing to the promotion of family breakup, to judicial collusion and corruption, and to preemptive control of all related legislative committees. It is also implausible that the lobbying organization “Resolution” would not be aware of the commercial advocacy of their counterparts in the various state bar associations and family law associations in the U.S. Surely, they would be aware of the rapidly-growing Parents’ Rights movement backlash in North America that has resulted from the very policies which this “reform” campaign advocates. Instead, this “study” takes a mere “snapshot” of existing problematic legislation which these intensifying reform efforts are aimed at, and disingenuously complains that the UK is “out of step” with what is occurring abroad.
In “standerinfamilycourt’s” humble opinion, the only portion of these study documents that were not primarily lobbying propaganda was the very interesting public vetting results (which were basically ignored in the final recommendations), along with very valid criticisms in Section 5 of the report.
The official recommendation for the new legislation reads as follows:
“The Government proposes that there will still be only one ground for divorce: that the marriage has broken down irretrievably. However, this would be established in a new way. The Government proposes to move away completely from both the ability to allege “fault” and the ability to contest (defend) the divorce: We propose to move away from an approach that requires justification to the court of the reason for the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage to a process that requires notification to the court of irretrievable breakdown. We also propose to remove the ability of a spouse, as a general rule, to contest the divorce (this is formally called defending in the legal process…). The Government reasons that if one spouse has concluded that the marriage is over, then the legal process should respect that decision and should not place impediments in the way of a spouse who wants to bring the marriage to a legal end. Importantly, this change would also prevent the legal process from being used to exercise coercive control by one spouse over the other spouse who may be a victim of domestic abuse.
“The Government therefore proposes to repeal the requirement for petitioners to give evidence of one or more facts and to replace it with a process of giving notice of irretrievable breakdown. In this process, the person seeking the divorce (or potentially the couple jointly) would give notice to the court of the intention to divorce, stating their belief that the marriage had broken down irretrievably. Irretrievable breakdown would therefore continue to be the sole ground for divorce. In the two-stage decree process that we propose to retain, the court would not be able to grant the first and interim decree (the decree nisi) if it was not satisfied that the marriage had broken down irretrievably.”
( 
SIFC : Notice the clever pretense of a residual “judicial discretion function” in the last sentence, mimicking a pseudo separation-of-powers but no longer with any actual substance, since explicitly all that will be legally required is the Petitioner’s subjective assertion which would then bind the judges to just one possible decision, once appealed. Under the U.S. Constitution this sort of window-dressing would be an imperative due to Articles 3 and 10.)
How did the vetting population feel about this? And who were they?
Overwhelmingly, these UK citizens are opposed to the main legislative recommendation to remove fundamental family protections, but their voice is clearly being ignored. This figure tracks right along with data gathered three decades ago in the U.S. that showed 80% of Respondents to a “no-fault” petition alleging “irretrievable breakdown” opposed the dissolution of the marriage based on religion and conscience, even if they could not afford to formally contest. Clearly, these UK citizens know when their civil rights and the sovereignty of the family are at risk, and when they don’t buy into the problem definition to begin with.
Based on who the vetting population consisted of, it is clear to see who made up the 15% minority in favor of forced, non-consensual divorce.
Independence in the research study?
SIFC found that in digging into the Nuffield study on which the legislative recommendations almost entirely rely, the backward-engineering (n.b. desired solution defines the “problem” which scopes the “research”), and cozy relationships between the legislators, judiciary and the family law industry didn’t take long at all to detect. Clicking over to the webpage of one of the partners in the study, statistician firm Bryson Purdon Social Research, we find their list of current and past projects shows that they are regularly hired by legislators. The acknowledgments page of the study gushes about the extensive contributions of the family law lobbying association in the UK called Resolution, several members of which served as advisors and “recruited interviewees”.
It would have been great to compare the list of officers and trustees of the Nuffield Foundation with those of Resolution, but unfortunately, the latter was unavailable to non-members. We have already mentioned the study director’s extensive ties to family law. As a touching finish, we read this dedication: “This report is dedicated to the memory of Sir Nicholas Wall, a former President of the Family Division (of the Judiciary) and an advocate of divorce law reform.
Rationale for disregarding overwhelmingly negative public input
On page 16 of the study, we read the following (bold emphasis added by SIFC):
“In our national opinion survey, 71% thought that fault should remain part of the law. However, the general public are unlikely to be aware that the current law does not in fact seek to make a definitive allocation of blame or of the very limited scrutiny that the court can undertake in practice.
(
SIFC: In other words, the ignorant peasantry simply “doesn’t understand” that the current statute is meant to preserve an appearance, and isn’t meant to foster the best family outcomes, renovate the system from the ground up so that the judiciary can manage its case load, preserve fundamental rights of innocent family members or promote any meaningful changes in the existing power structures for the good of society as a whole.)
“Drawing on qualitative interviews with the parties, we drew a contrast between two different and mutually exclusive moralities in relation to divorce: a traditional one based on ideas about individual justice for the petitioner, and a responsibility morality based on the ‘good divorce’ where the focus is on harm-minimisation, especially in relation to children. The first emphasises the importance of a strict adherence to and finding of fault; the second would eliminate fault if possible.
“We also traced how adherents of both moralities experienced the divorce process. In general, the experience of both groups was largely negative, but for different reasons. For some embracing a justice morality, the pragmatic orientation of the justice system could be deeply frustrating, whilst for others the experience of fault turned out to be problematic due to the conflict and upset it generated. Those embracing a responsibility morality also found the experience difficult. Some were using fault pragmatically but found the process slow and painful; whilst some who were avoiding fault on principle found the long separation required to avoid fault very difficult in practical terms and also left them feeling they had lost control of private family decisions. A small number of interviewees a dopting the justice morality wanted the role of fault to be strengthened, but for most the removal of fault was strongly preferred. ”
( SIFC : The removal of fault may have been “preferred” for Resolution’s hand-picked interviewees for the study, but this was certainly not born out in Commons’ vetting effort with the general public, which showed an even stronger result at 83% than the still-overwhelming 71% found in the study. We should also note that the last statement directly contradicts the beginning statement in this quote: so, which is it, Resolution?)
Why is increasing the role of fault important to this “small number of interviewees”? Dr. Stephen Baskerville, Professor of Government and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College, and author of two enormously important books, “Taken into Custody” (2007) and “The New Politics of Sex: The Sexual Revolution, Civil Liberties, and the Growth of Governmental Power” (2017) travels all over Europe explaining this very eloquently…
Dr. Baskerville (~ 2 minutes): “Nobody’s claiming we have to force somebody to live in a house with somebody they don’t want to live with. The question is…who bears the consequences? It’s a legal contract, or it should be, and if one walks away from it, what are the consequences? Who gets the house? Who gets the children or property and so forth ? Under what circumstances does the state have the role to come in and start allocating things? So fine, if someone wants to leave a marriage then I think we have no choice but to allow them to do that. But that’s not what we’re talking about here in the divorce machinery is positive state action against the other spouse. Why should that spouse who wants to leave the marriage without legal grounds…
( SIFC : excluding purely subjective legal grounds not based in any provable offense against the marriage or family members)
“… shouldn’t he or she leave with just the clothes on their backs, what they can get in a suitcase, and nothing else? Do they have the right to take the children, take the house, take the property with them when they leave? And this, of course, is where the state has to step in and say…has to allocate fault. They have to say where justice and injustice is.”
We provide this additional brief link to another key segment of the February, 2019 interview with Dr. Baskerville, for important further context. The study respondents in favor of increasing the role of fault know that the true best moral interest of the children and the only avenue to actual, objective justice, upon which a sustainable society depends, absolutely requires the application of fault, at least with respect to the effects of the divorce. The real barrier to this policy alternative, of course, is the hoped-for business model of the family law special interests, including the sponsors and designers of this “research study”.
Quoting the “Equality Statement” within David Gauke’s report,
“The aim of the policy is to reduce conflict between couples involved in divorce, dissolution and legal separation. The policy objectives are in line with wider strategic objectives to deliver a modern courts and justice system, including to provide a fair and effective justice system which supports better outcomes for children and families.
“The objectives are:
• To ensure that the decision to divorce or dissolve a civil partnership continues to be a considered one
• To minimise the adversarial nature of the legal process, to reduce conflict and to support better outcomes by maximising the opportunity for the parties to agree arrangements for the future
• To make the legal process fair, transparent, and easier to navigate
• To reduce the opportunities for an abuser to misuse the legal process to perpetrate further abuse”
These are purely ideological statements, with an undertone of making the law as LGBTQ-friendly as possible (code word: “Equality”). We point out that if a justice system which supports better outcomes for children and families were really the objective, then the research study would have been designed accordingly around family structure outcomes, and Dr. Regnerus’ rigorous 2012 NFSS study would have been invaluable support in reaching that outcome.
Because the April, 2019 position paper by Lord Chancellor David Gauke brings no other independent evidence to bear other than this heavily-biased and less-than-arm’s-length “research” (extensively requoted verbatim in the final recommendations, including the incomplete set of policy alternatives)– and the public citizen input has been patently ignored and discounted, “standerinfamilycourt” rests our case against the validity of “support” for this legislation here, rather than picking apart the legislative conclusions point-by-point (which was nevertheless tempting!)
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Deja-Vu All Over Again: The “No-Fault” Elite Legal and Media Scam Job in the UK
https://cordellcordell.co.uk/news/divorce_in_the_uk_stats_and_facts/
by Standerinfamilycourt
And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”
– Mark 10:11-12
This blog post has been in-progress for the better part of a year now. In a way, there’s both good and bad in that happenstance. On the “good” side, the British “wheels of progress” have ground very slowly – God be praised! On the bad side, we’ve witnessed an adulterous royal “wedding” (to which the U.S. sent its second most godless Anglican clergyman to take part in the nuptials), and….the echo chamber of the UK media has had little pushback as they trot out the same unsupportable arguments that have long been discredited and overwhelmingly disproven by the five decades of ruinous track record for unilateral “no-fault” divorce in the U.S.
A hopelessly flawed official report (“study” result) was published in the House of Commons in October, 2018 with enactment recommendations. Part 2 of this post will break down that “study” for our readers, in detail.
Since last spring, “standerinfamilycourt” has been reading an avalanche of articles that look and sound like they have literally been plucked from a dusty 1969 box, and retyped to add the requisite “u’s” and replace the “z’s” with “s’s”. Those articles were “snake oil” back then, when U.S. church and government leaders were shamefully duped by the latent cultural Marxism taking dead aim at the U.S. Bill of Rights, and they’re still “snake oil” in their recycled state as they’re being dusted off (again) in London.
Where is the voice of British church leadership (Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist) in defending the biblical Matthew 19:4-6 family? (Indeed, it appears that the Queen’s counterpart to the U.S. Attorney General are aggressively pushing this deeply flawed policy legislation which 20 years ago failed its pilot testing in the UK and was scrapped).
Where is the mention of the sad fact that enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws has caused U.S. church doctrine to decay and church morality to utterly disintegrate?
Where is the mention that enactment of forced, “no-blame” divorce has rendered most U.S. states unable to balance their budgets?
Where is the disclosure that many of the states depend on Federal funds derived from taking children away from their fit parents and trafficking them to foster homes to narrow their deficit gaps?
Where’s the mention of the direct impact this regime has had on the willingness of U.S. young people to ever marry at all, rather than cohabit (and thereby keep the reckless totalitarian government out of their homes altogether), and the concupiscent attorneys out of their pockets?
Where is the mention that enactment of these statutes has literally ballooned the size of state and Federal government in the U.S.?
Where is the mention of all the constitutional challenges being renewed by citizens in numerous states to try to overturn the various U.S. state laws and vindicate their violated fundamental rights?
Where is the mention of all the U.S. constitutional attorneys who have testified before state legislatures that they believe the U.S. unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws violate the Respondent’s fundamental constitutional rights in numerous ways?
Indeed, where is the mention of the mounting traffic in repeal and reform measures being filed each year in the various U.S. state legislatures because the system is failing?
The chief argument that seems to be carrying the day in the UK (according to the media and the official Parliamentary report) is the utterly bizarre notion that forcibly shredding someone’s family and destroying their generations, robbing their family’s hard-earned wealth and materially compromising most family members’ futures will somehow “reduce conflict”. Hello?
Another key U.S. reality that goes unmentioned in the UK (one-sided) debate: the bulk of attorney fees in the United States’ $100 billion-a-year “family law” industrial complex come not from the divorce itself, but from years and years of subsequent legal conflict between family members for so long as the children remain minors.
Fifty years of U.S. experience have exposed this spurious “reduced acrimony” argument as completely untrue, so it’s beyond ridiculous that in a day and age of worldwide instant media access, elite special interests are pulling this over on the British public! If only the BBC would dare to air the U.S. documentary DivorceCorp, and give the railroaded British citizens a truthful look at their future under this “reform”.
And, oh, the shrieking, howling headlines from “across the pond” last year when Mrs. Owens (who most likely was recruited by the greedy elite special interests for the rarity and emotional pull of her case) lost her high court challenge by unanimous decision and was forced to wait one more year to immorally abandon her elderly husband while taking spoils.
“The courts can’t make Tini Owens love her husband!” whined Suzanne Moore at The Guardian.
“Nobody’s fault but the law” echoed her Guardian colleague, Owen Bowcott.
“Tini Owens is locked into an unhappy marriage – this is why we need ‘no fault’ divorce” (Guardian, again – Laura Barton).
“Tini Owens forced to stay married…” howled the UK Daily Mail.
“Barbaric!” they all hissed. Several of us would argue that what’s really barbaric is what the U.S. has been saddled with for decades, which was the literal incubator that has since led to a veritable Pandora’s Box of ever-worsening religious freedom and parental rights violations, for both intact and government-shattered families.
Not one of these liberal “rags” showed the least bit of concern or compassion for Tini’s grieving family members – the ones with the clean hands! How outrageous of every one of them to demonize this faithful and gracious husband who has every right and responsibility before God to keep his family whole.
The real fault in the Tini Owens case, contrary to the media hype and thick emotional huckstering, is that existing UK law still allows for an entirely unilateral divorce to be had by the offending party after 5 years of self-imposed non-cohabitation, and probably allows an abandoner to also take half of the family assets, which in the case of the Owenses, was considerable:
“They built up a hugely successful £5million-a-year mushroom growing business and amassed four ‘nice houses’, including a stunning £630,000 Cotswolds farmhouse, where the family lived, and holiday homes in Wales and France.” – Daily Mail, July, 2018
Much hand-wringing ensued the refusal of the appeals courts to hear the case, rather than state the obvious: Ms. Owens had separated from Mr. Owens in 2015, and according to one media source, had been in an adulterous relationship from 2012, so Mr. Owens could have filed a fault-based petition against her in due time much shorter than 5 years, but apparently feared God and had compassion for his wife. The reality is that the UK government did not owe Mrs. Owens a financial reward for selfishly breaking up her 40-year marriage and leaving her blameless husband four years ago. It is against sound public policy, indeed, for them to do so.
Three things tend to be a commonality with elite social engineering, as we’ve painfully learned here in the “colonies”: emotional pitches run absolutely amok in the media, the laser-like focus always locks onto the most extreme outlier case that could possibly be dredged up, as if this rare case was going to bind and ruin the whole nation, and lastly, there is a conspicuous absence of grassroots demand for the “urgent” change outside of commercially-paid and sponsored “surveys”.
As was the case in the U.S., and continues to be, there are a few quality voices speaking out against this poorly-justified piece of legislation, including Thomas Pascoe, campaign director at Coalition for Marriage, who recently said in an interview, “We already have no-fault divorce, but it takes between two years when both parties agree and five when they do not. This standstill period recognises the gravity of divorce. It allows both parties time to try and save the marriage and allows both time to make reasonable adjustments to their lives where no agreement can be found.”
Similarly, Colin Hart of the Christian Institute points out the resoundingly obvious truth that “no-blame” actually constitutes no justice.
Finally, in the House of Commons briefing paper, Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative) was quoted as having pointed to evidence from other countries which, he said, showed the wider consequences such legislation might have. ” Sir Edward then set out other potential impacts of family breakdown, drawing on evidence from a study in the US which argued that 75% of low-income divorced women with children had not been poor when they were married, but Douglas Allen also points out in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy that “the real negative impact of the no-fault divorce regime was on children, and increasing the divorce rate meant increasing numbers of disadvantaged children.” In the UK, Sir Edward continued, a 2009 review by the then Department for Children, Schools, and Families had found that a child not growing up in a two-parent family household was more likely to experience a number of problems which he detailed. He also spoke of other research on the effects of family breakdown. Sir Edward considered that the potential adverse consequences of no-fault divorce should rule out its introduction.” (Sir Edward was on the right track, but still didn’t have the gist or full evidence of what this kind of legislation has done in the U.S. after the divorce, nor that it has been the least bit successful in curbing “conflict” – a function of disingenuous problem definition by the majority.)
Sadly, none of these voices are availing themselves of the abundance of available, documented evidence that these policies have horribly failed in country after country around the world. History is eerily repeating itself fifty years later, with no lessons learned. As was true in the 1960’s, female attorneys have been conspiring this con job, and gaining the blind support of the elites. According to the president of the UK Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, the majority of “solicitors” (practicing attorneys) in the UK are women. She has been advocating for unilateral, forced divorce since the early 1990’s, as had the feminist U.S. womens’ bar groups. Lady Hale asserts in 2016, more than half of all divorce petitions were submitted on the basis of adultery or “unreasonable behavior” (a.k.a. “emotional abuse”, in U.S. legalspeak). We actually need to be honest about the fact that the main driver of divorce is, and always has been adultery (and the desire to legitimize adulterous relationships). Civilized, sustainable societies don’t incentivize adultery. The objective of these feminists has always been to remove the father from the family (forcibly, if necessary) so that he won’t be in a position to obstruct further social engineering.
These special interests allege that the (existing) law forces separating couples to “make more aggressive allegations against one another” in order to secure a divorce, verbatim the overblown 1969 argument in the U.S. , as if sweeping excrement under an “irreconcilable differences” rug, will take away the stench. On our side of the pond, we know that all this philosophy has accomplished is train our society to lie in ever-broader ways and blame others for our own self-indulgences.
This cartoon points out the U.S. situation where the very same lobbying professionals who were falsely asserting that unilateral divorce-on-demand would “reduce acrimony” – rather than merely postpone it, were actually about to start ramping up their profits by egging the acrimony on during the proceedings and long afterward – to the point of having non-custodial parents jailed and worse.
In the UK, it’s objectively true that such “aggressive” allegations must be made to shorten the waiting period from 5 years to 2 years under current law, while in the U.S. prior to 1970, only one state allowed a couple to mutually agree to end their marriage, while the UK does not allow for mutual consent divorces either, according to the government discussion paper(a fact that conveniently escapes the “problem” definition in the House of Commons analysis – for which there is, in fact, a commercial reason that goes undiscussed). Both were unstable situations, however, must the UK repeat the U.S. constitutional travesty of killing a gnat with a sledge hammer and reaping the harsh societal consequences? What would be wrong with instead implementing a mutual consent joint petition, with perhaps a 180 day waiting period? Why not retain fault-based grounds where there’s no consent, but eliminate the waiting period altogether if the charges are proven? As Thomas Pascoe pointed out, no alternative models were adequately considered, which strongly implies that a prescribed “solution” was looking for a “problem”, rather than the other way around.
No-fault divorce was reportedly first introduced by the Family Law Act 1996, but its provisions were later deemed “unworkable” after a pilot attempt and it was repealed. It has been widely supported by prominent members of the judiciary, lawyers and relationship charities (in other words, the elite, and not broad citizenship demands. ) Quoting a 2001 article in the Daily Mail about the repeal,
“The admission came as Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine at last killed off Part Two of the Family Law Act, which would have allowed a husband or wife to ditch their spouse in 12 months without ever having to bear blame or answer for their behaviour.
“Opponents of the law brought in nearly five years ago by John Major’s Tory government, and enthusiastically backed by Labour, insisted no-fault divorce would increase break-ups rather than help families.
“Lord Irvine has now acknowledged that the opponents of the system were right and the law would be repealed.”
So, what has changed, UK?
Between that previous attempt to move toward forced-divorce-on-demand and the current campaign, the Anglican Church liberalized its doctrine in 2002 to promote “remarriages” that Jesus consistently called adulterous, effectively clearing away any temporal reasons for meaningful opposition from the country’s largest and its state church.
Writes a friend of “standerinfamilycourt” who lives in Cornwall,
“It’s been handed over to the Crown prosecution who believe it’s the only way forward now for the Government to pass , So sad
“I spoke to my MP Derek Thomas Conservative MP for St Ives Cornwall, knew him before he was an MP but when I talked to him about divorce and remarriage his face went blank, end of conversation. I will have to write or email him a letter, we are going down the pan quickly here in the UK Brexit abortion now this, yes sad to say the big wigs here follow the States, money to be made let’s go go go.”
One of the Worst Downstream Effects of State-Imposed Divorce
by Standerinfamilycourt
The only silver lining in this sorry episode, where Arizona CPS engaged a SWAT team to kick down a family’s door over a reported disagreement with their child’s doctor, is that mainstream media (ABC, in this stance) chose to cover it, probably not understanding the glaring conservative implications, or that anyone “out there” would connect the dots…many dots. Nobody, however, who’s ever sat unwillingly in a “family court”, and experienced the horror of having a CPS, DCS, DFS (etc.) surgically-appended to their family life as a lasting consequence… can fail to connect those dots. Or grieve, as they watch our society literally disintegrating before their own eyes.
Why WAS the SWAT team utilized against an intact family with several children in the house, anyway? Could it be because societal decay causes such a large swath of our society to believe they must keep guns in the house? Could it be because the legal environment which makes a civil marriage certificate one of the most financially and emotionally dangerous documents a young couple could possibly obtain, means a presumption that the parents are less sovereign over their children because they’ve forgone marriage as the basis for their family structure? Or is it simply the profit motive…augmenting and protecting “state inventory” in order narrow an unbalanceable state fiscal budget by accessing Federal Title IV-D funds from a more central government (where widening national debt and fiscal deficits is more politically viable)?
Back in the better days of our U.S. Supreme Court, parental sovereignty was an immovable staple of our jurisprudence, even in cases where parental merit was questionable at best. Today, with 9,000+ cases submitted annually to SCOTUS, and perhaps one-third to half that number submitted to each of the state supreme courts in the course of a year, parental rights have virtually disintegrated with the practical reality that access to the benefit of those prior court precedents protecting parental sovereignty is no longer meaningfully available to most parents. Only the first appellate level in each state is actually required by law to hear a given case, and the system grants immunities to officials who abuse their posts to persecute or loot families…official (including judicial) immunities that must be overcome in the very courts that have grown increasingly inaccessible to most. Sometimes a gun in the house makes all the sense in the world, at this point in a society’s disintegration over the growing unreliability of the rule of law.
So, the remedy (says the local legislator and the media mouthpiece) is to pass legislation to require a warrant before family doors are kicked down and the gendarmerie goes in blasting. (What? You mean, like, actually enforce the 4th Amendment?) Tell that to the Ohio family whose teenager was confiscated because the state deemed it to be “abusive” that they were denying transgender treatments to their own child. No, the remedy, America, is to take the nearest exit ramp off the socialism interstate, and repeal unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws that have for five decades undermined the social and moral structure of this dying republic.
We must not confuse band-aids with eradicating surgery. Since when have we needed additional laws to deliver a fundamental Bill of Rights protection? The answer is clear: we “need” the additional laws because the rule-of-law has broken down due to deep-seated sustainability issues.
And, oh is the way back going to be slow and painful! Multi-generational painful. Parental ability and judgment has been compromised, on a macro level, by this third-generation family-shredding regime. Enactment of divorce-on-demand and (especially) its accompanying ban on consideration of marital fault in apportioning the consequences of forced family-shredding has literally institutionalized breaches of the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th commandments into our legislative and judicial systems, while the perverse financial incentives to look the other way have spread woefully to our nation’s churches. Nearly every state legislature in the union has various types of weapon-carry bills before it right now, either to preempt the reactionary gun-control symptoms of school and other mass shootings attributable to societal decay, or to combat the reduced security of our homes and venturings-out, in general.
Even under color of (man’s) law….
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” – Exodus 20:17
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Who’s John Gentry, and What’s He Up To? Why?…And Will He Succeed?
by Standerinfamilycourt
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. – Judges 21:25
What happens when a Marine returns to civilian life, becomes a Certified Public Accountant and uses his professional training in an all-out battle to restore the very principles he served overseas to defend? Hopefully, a lot! What follows is a Tennessee tale, that is equally true in virtually all other U.S. states.
John Gentry is a familiar and influential voice at parents’ rights rallies, where justified protests take place over the Federal Title IV-D program which effectively separates parents from their children for the corrupt profit of the state, enabled by widespread judicial corruption and lack of independent oversight. Survivors of the “family court” system almost need no further explanation of what’s going on. They know.
( 
SIFC: John graciously reviewed this article and provided input, which will be inserted below.)
In this 2017 video, Gentry speaks of the mysterious and questionable deaths in 2010 of a former lady state senator from Georgia and her husband. Nancy Schafer had been a leader in the late Phyliss Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, and had been campaigning against the child-trafficking abuses facilitated by Title IV-D funds, which she says in a 2009 radio interview had caused her to lose her seat in the Georgia Senate. The deaths were officially ruled a murder-suicide, but many doubt the truth of that, due to the death threats Mrs. Schafer had been receiving because of her efforts and high profile exposure of corruption.
(For a shorter version of a similar speech, click here. )
Mr. Gentry, however, is not actually himself an aggrieved parent. The public record reflects that he married a business owner in 2009, and that she filed a unilateral “no-fault” divorce petition against him in 2014, which he tells us he supported. Both were middle-aged at the time of the marriage, and they were childless. The court records reflect that he spent considerable time in court fighting the settlement provisions of the divorce and then appealing them, but on only various technical complaints, rather than bringing a constitutional challenge of the statute itself.
So what caused him to become so passionately involved in doing battle with CPS-sponsored child trafficking for Federal funds, and with exposing the judicial corruption that enables it ? That’s not entirely clear from any of the available sources, but “standerinfamilycourt” can relate. Though personally blessed to be able to raise two children to adulthood in an intact marriage that thrived for most of their years growing up, SIFC sat many days in the courtroom and watched judges ride roughshod over many young fathers, denying them their God-assigned responsibility of ensuring the safety of their own children after wayward wives had unilaterally divorced them and moved in with someone else. John is gracious not to speak of his estranged wife at all in speeches and interviews, but it seems clear that in all of his pro-se legal filings (of varying effectiveness, over process in his own divorce case), he joins the rest of us in being appalled that a state law can unilaterally deprive one of the parties of their due process protections. But….when we see someone else’s children suffering or being legally abused and endangered because of it, soon enough our own battle wounds are subordinated and we take up the even worse offense suffered by those unfortunate families. CPA’s comply with a strong professional ethics code, and are subject to reliable censure for acts reflecting poorly on the profession, so to see the legal community flouting their standards of professional ethics and getting away with it, is certainly a strong motive for action (to which SIFC can also directly relate.) These two professions have very significant overlaps.
Yet, John does not appear to be an overt champion of repealing unilateral “no-fault” grounds for divorce, per se. He seems to strictly focus on reforming judicial accountability and oversight processes, the widespread lack of which greatly exacerbates the evil effects from 49 states maintaining a profoundly unconstitutional “family law” statute on the books. His main personal beef with the family court system seems to be mostly property-related, believing (according to the Tennessee lower court description) that he was entitled to a share in the business his wife founded before they married.
( 
SIFC: John’s additional input…
“Although I transformed my ex wife failing business into a successful and internationally recognized brand (subsequently closed due to my ex-wife’s inability to operate a business), my “beef” was intellectual property I created, a patent pending product with international distribution, worth millions, was valued by corrupt court as zero and distributed 100% to my ex wife. That product too failed under her care. Very sad. Even with that, I don’t care about the property. My “beef” is about the criminal conduct of all the judges and attorneys (including my own attorneys). Severe deprivation of due process and equal protection.”
Fair enough, since something has to create “standing” to bring access to the courts of appeal. It is rather typical for family courts to automatically deem the “no-fault” Petitioner to be “more credible” than any Respondent who contests any part of the proceedings, and proceed to extract whatever financial penalty is circumstantially available, to teach others a lesson about challenging judicial authority or this state statute. Gentry says in a recent (2019) interview that he has two certiorari requests before the U.S. Supreme Court. The only such request brief (2018) that “standerinfamilycourt” was able to read does not seem to raise a specific, actionable constitutional challenge, nor ask the Court to consider any specific legal questions.
Mr. Gentry has, however (so far, unsuccessfully) attempted, under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, to sue the trial court judge who granted his wife’s civil dissolution petition, hoping in Federal court to pierce though the immunity shield which insulates state judges from liability for actions that are within their subject matter jurisdiction. The public record does not provide the details of whether he based any of his pleadings on an Article 3 separation-of-powers argument, but the state appeals ruling does not reflect that he made such an argument during the trial, nor acted to reserve his right to appeal on this constitutional basis. These constitutional matters generally need to be raised way back at the petition response phase of the initial grounds trial to be deemed to have any standing for appeal (at least, based on SIFC’s personal experience), based on court operating rules and precedents.
Having apparently lost or been denied a hearing in 2017 in the U.S. Sixth Circuit, he has successfully attempted to get his case docketed at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, but it remains to be seen whether it will ever be heard. In this instance, the briefs Gentry submitted in early 2018 for his request for certiorari are publicly available. He requested all eight (at the time) sitting Justices to “recuse themselves” on his theory that they would each have generalized “probable bias”, which he listed in his brief as the “standard of review”. Presumably, he has argued this at each level of the appeals process. SIFC does not really see an effective, specific pleading with respect to Article 3 in that document, nor for that matter any immediately actionable request for relief from the court for which he would be deemed to have standing. It could be argued quite reasonably that the best (and perhaps only) way for all of the sitting justices to “recuse themselves” is to simply deny certiorari, and move on to the remaining 8,999+ submissions. The other filed document is a brief request to have filing fees for his “cert” petition waived based on Gentry’s veteran status and service to our country. The record reflects that this was denied him.
( SIFC: John’s additional input…
“In the Supreme Court of the United States, the clerk’s office concealed 14 of 17 appendixes that evidenced impeachable conduct of magistrates and judges in the district court and sixth circuit. The impeachable conduct of the federal judges occurred to protect the criminal conduct of the state court judge and attorneys.”
The main point of interest in reading through Gentry’s case and appeal briefs, for those of us hoping to re-route a series of effective constitutional appeals of various state unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws through the Federal courts based on 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, and based on a specific legal question concerning separation-of-powers, is whether what Gentry argued is closely related to what the divorce appeal cases will be arguing. It does not appear that the pleadings will be even remotely similar.
Family law reform activist Jeff Morgan sat down last month and videotaped an interview series with Mr. Gentry in Tennessee concerning his remonstrance efforts before the Tennessee legislature. This particular area of endeavor may hold the more fruitful potential for needed family law reforms vis-à-vis his SCOTUS filings, at least with regard to doing something about the judicial corruption aspect. Those interviews with Jeff are very articulate and credible, with a good grasp on history and original founding documents. The aim of the petition of Gentry’s remonstrance is to goad our legislators to stop shirking their constitutional responsibility to oversee the conduct and ethics (including violation of required separation-of-powers) of the judiciary. It should be pointedly noted, however, that in the case of “adjudicating” unilateral “no-fault” divorce laws, there is no actual provable offense, no lawful cause-of-action, and no constitutionally legitimate judicial role — the bottom line is that the statutes themselves violate the separation of powers in Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution (and the counterpart clauses in all of the state constitutions). In this case, there are both legislative and judicial foxes guarding the chicken coop! Gentry, however, does not seem to be focused on this, because his primary concern is with property and parental rights symptoms of the root problem. There really are too many potent disincentives to better behavior by the judiciary until the root cancer is excised, either by SCOTUS or by legislative repeal of faultless unilateral grounds and repeal of faultless criteria for the property and parental effects of civil “dissolution” .
Gentry’s petition of remonstrance was predictably rebuffed when he brought it in January of this year before the Tennessee legislature. The clerk of the Senate claimed that only sitting legislators could legally bring such a petition, and accused Gentry of misusing the process, according to a January 27 story by Dave Tullis of 92.7 Nooga Radio: “In the missive below, Mr. Stevens calls the Gentry remonstrance illegal, ludicrous. ‘If it were heard, it would set an evil precedent. All manner of other people would stream before the general assembly and take up all of its time with their grievances, he says. No, it is not the purpose of the general assembly to hear grievances. It is the purpose of the general assembly to write laws.’ …That is essentially is his [Sen. Stephens’] argument. His fear of Mr. Gentry’s making personal argument before senate and house is that it will open the gates for an outpouring of public sentiment against the political machinery that he represents.”
Gee, that’s really rough, Sen. Stephens! We can’t have the chickens coming home to roost after decades of legislators and judges taking wholesale advantage of the citizens, for crying out loud!
Senator Stephens’ (who practices estate and geriatric law when the legislature is not in session) official January 25 response:
“While I appreciate the effort you have obviously put forward in this endeavor, you have grossly misunderstood the historical and practical implications of remonstrance. Further, you have misread our rules and constitution. You have no constitutional right to present to the general assembly your remonstrance…
( 
SIFC: Au Contraire: ” Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”– 1st Amendment, U.S. Constitution
“Section 23. That the citizens have a right, in a peaceable manner, to assemble together for their common good, to instruct their representatives, and to apply to those invested with the powers of government for redress of grievances, or other proper purposes, by address of remonstrance. ”
– Article 1, Constitution of the State of Tennessee
Earnestly hoping Mr. Gentry has randomly appeared at the state capital without having bothered to read either founding document, Mr. Stephens continues….. )
” Our rules apply to the members of the general assembly.
James Madison’s famous memorial and remonstrance regarding religious liberty was presented to the Virginia assembly as a MEMBER of the assembly. Although you appear to have read our rules, you have ignored Rule 9 – No one may address the speaker except a member of the senate, and Rule 11, which directs members to only direct their comments to the Speaker.
( SIFC: To carefully preserve the highly-lucrative power stranglehold that members of the bar have carefully nurtured over at least two (arguably, all three) branches of government over the course of the last several decades, their promulgation of “operating rules” haven’t hesitated to trounce on the fundamental rights of ordinary citizens, and do furtive end-runs around these constitutional provisions. This is equally true of court “operating rules” and of legislative chamber rules. Most ordinary citizens aren’t taught about these, even if they’re fortunate enough to have had a good civics class in school, don’t even know that they exist or that many have corrupt purposes, and with the accountability structures also incapacitated by pervasive collusion, this is a very effective means of ensuring that the peasantry may not avail themselves of their fundamental rights unless they are unusually persistent for peasants. Indeed, “standerinfamilycourt”, being very well-educated, otherwise, with a closely-related professional certification, a masters’ degree, considerable business and regulatory law experience, got a first taste of “court rules” as a result of witness stand mode of testimony being repeatedly interrupted and rebuked as “unacceptable” by the family court judge. With all due respect, Senator, legislative rules don’t apply to Mr. Gentry, so your point about “rules” is irrelevant. In fact, your “schooling” of Mr. Gentry conveniently ignores the citizen remonstrances that have occurred in other states, made to the legislature, and not through a representative.)
“To think otherwise is absurd. The citizens of Tennessee, nor any republic, would not stand for the expenditure of their resources by their elected representatives if our legislative attention was diverted from legislative deliberation to, instead, sitting through the presentation of such remonstrances by individual citizens.
“There could be hundreds if not thousands filed. It is absolutely ludicrous to even consider that the drafters of our constitution, let alone the citizens who approved its adoption, would spend the time to create a system of representative government only to completely eviscerate its operation through some supposed right of remonstrance which included the right of a citizen or citizens to commandeer its members of the general assembly for the reading of the entire remonstrance by the chief clerk or to even require said “petitioner” to gain the undivided attention of all 132 members at the same time or of each individual body at the same time.
“The citizens of Tennessee have the right guaranteed in Art. I, Section 23, to express their opposition or support of proposed legislative action, government conduct or policy.
“Like all rights, it is not without limitation. The limitation is the procedure for such an “address of remonstrance.” I am unaware of any procedure in law or in our rules that allow a citizen to file a remonstrance, beyond that in T.C.A. 69-5-922.
“Such procedures have been established through the adoption of the rules of the house and senate, respectively. The rules apply to the members. The rules provide for presentation of resolutions, petitions and memorials by members of the general assembly and do not address in any way remonstrances.
“I do not have a copy of Mason’s with me in my district office so I do not know if they address the filing of remonstrances. In any event, any member of the general assembly can file a resolution, petition or memorial which would then proceed through the normal legislative process. I suggest contacting your representative and senator and have your remonstrance presented in the form of a resolution or petition.” [End of Stevens letter]
So, where has Gentry’s effort gone since January? This, too, is very telling of the long journey involved, even when the petitioner is legally correct, and the objecting solons blowing nothing but smoke. David Tullis followed up with another article on March 9, “Senate clerk mum as blocks bid to impeach crooked judges”…
“Whispers about a remonstrance project swirl this week in Nashville as the senate clerk refuses to answer press questions about his rejection of senate rules and a TV station airs a salacious story about Tennessee judges whoring and toking in the tropics.
“Senate clerk Russell Humphrey ignores repeated efforts to interview him about his refusal to give senators copies of the petition for remonstrance on judicial misfeasance and his ignoring senate rules requiring remonstrances to be read to the entire body…Nanette Mitchell, journal clerk for the senate, in two phone calls says she will take a message requesting an interview about the remonstrance to Mr. Humphrey. She says he is not available. Mr. Humphrey makes no return call to tell his side of the story…
“Nashville TV station WSMV TV4 obtained travel records from the government of Costa Rica showing that legal personalities in Davidson County visited that country at the same time as did a corrupt judge, Casey Moreland of sessions court.
“The vacationing was highlighted by prostitutes and narcotics, the report says. “According to those documents, in 2013, General Sessions Judge Aaron Holt entered and left Costa Rica on the same dates as Moreland.” Lawyers and a Davidson County district attorney, Glenn Funk, also were in the country at the same time as Judge Moreland, who is under a prison sentence….”
Here is a link to a January 29 interview carried on Nooga Radio, where Gentry responded to these events over the air.
Apparently, even if all the members of the state senate were not distributed copies of the remonstrance document, Gentry gained the ear of his own state representative, and nevertheless wound up testifying before a committee at least twice in March and April, bringing his requests for mandatory drug testing of judges, for abolishment of the judicial conduct council (consisting of judges, not of legislators or their agents), and strengthened recusal rules for both legislators and judges. Whether an independent development or in response to Gentry’s complaint, the legislature considered a measure to rename and reorganize the judicial body to oversee judicial conduct, while (naturally) still leaving it unconstitutionally in the hands of judges, rather than bringing it directly back under the legislature (and mandated separation-of-powers), as the Constitution requires. It also appears that the “window-dressing” exercise (HB0782/SB0722) might have been scrapped or slowed as a result of Gentry’s April 2 committee testimony. It remains to be seen whether an authentic reform measure will replace it at some point.
( SIFC: Jeff Morgan’s March, 2019 interviews on youtube with Gentry and (separately) with Tennessee attorney Connie Reguli, linked above, also shed considerable light on these subsequent events.)
All this said, Gentry does a valuable service with his studies, of reminding all of us where legislators are specifically violating their own ethics and conflict-of-interest rules (@ ~23 minutes) in the very process of legislating “family laws”, whereas in many states, family law attorneys with a direct pecuniary interest sit on the “family law” committees, and sometimes even chair them, or they are given (by legislative “rules”) what amounts to unilateral veto power over whether or not a committee-approved reform bill ever makes it to the floor for a vote, via routine scheduling. To borrow a football analogy, Gentry’s efforts constitute offensive blocking, but when it comes to comprehensive family law reform (a truly separate issue in its own right) so that state statutes comport with the Constitution, he must not be mistaken for the ball-carrier.
Gentry’s website provides detailed guidance and materials for this process of remonstrance, and petitioning for arms-length judicial oversight in any and all states, as he is currently in the process of carrying out in Tennessee. Remonstrance might possibly make the legislative process (to reform state family laws so that they no longer violate the Constitution, on numerous points) more fair in the future, by neutralizing the powerful conflicting interests, but the remonstrance process will not directly result in the needed separate reform of these separately unconstitutional statutes, whether in Tennessee this occurs by successful Federal court action on the basis of (U.S.) Article 3 challenges of unilateral “no-fault” judicial actions, or it occurs by a successful legislative effort ahead of such a judgment.
Do not rob the poor because he is poor,
Or crush the afflicted at the gate;
For the Lord will plead their case
And take the life of those who rob them.
– Proverbs 22: 22-23
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Sorry, But 50/50 Shared Parenting Won’t Solve the Constitutional Problem Or Help Raise Better Kids
by Standerinfamilycourt
Then two women who were harlots came to the king and stood before him. The one woman said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. 18 It happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house. This woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on it. So she arose in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your maidservant slept, and laid him in her bosom, and laid her dead son in my bosom. When I rose in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead; but when I looked at him carefully in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne.” Then the other woman said, “No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman said, “No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.” Thus they spoke before the king.
Then the king said, “ The one says, ‘This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’” The king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king. The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” Then the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son and said, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means kill him.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him!” Then the king said, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.” When all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had [o]handed down, they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to [p]administer justice.
– 1 Kings 3:16-27
Back in biblical times, sons were a big deal, even to “ladies of the night”, because sons were a means of longterm survival if there was no husband in the picture. It was on this basis that Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law repaid his treachery toward her by masquerading as a prostitute to get him to impregnate her, and when it was all said and done, he remarked that she was more righteous than he (duh!) Anyone who has been to “family court” knows that not much has changed: sons and daughters often translate into cash flow of varying reliability, courtesy of the court, for some women, and a few men as well, not to even mention some abusive state entities. It’s understandable, then, that the parent who’s ordered to provide the cash flow would so much rather have parenting time instead. Who can blame them? Given that the states also get Federal payola in the form of Title IV-D payments for collecting those child support payments, we now have those babies being divided three ways in “family court”, instead of in half as proposed in Solomon’s court.
There are lots of videos out there describing this ugly underbelly of Big Divorce, a $100 billion per year industry, that additionally costs state and Federal taxpayers another $100+ billion each year in transferred social costs from unilateral “no-fault” forced divorce laws. While we pointedly disagree with some of the spelling, and the conclusion, the facts and statistics are well-presented in this expose‘.
Trust us when we say that our empathies are always with the innocent Respondent who was forced into “family court” against their will and conscience, when they never did anything to harm their children or family. The typical situation:
Connie Covetous marries Billy Beergut, both previously single, but perhaps they were involved premaritally or cohabited first. Connie finishes school, has a couple of kids, and goes to work in a job making around what Billy makes. It’s still not enough to keep up with HGTV and the Travel Channel, and Billy doesn’t feel compelled to climb the economic ladder to make enough for upward mobility. She’s exhausted. He’s enjoying their kids and his hobbies. Connie starts complaining about Billy to a male coworker she admires, who is climbing the ladder and doing all the things to improve himself that she wishes Billy were doing. The male colleague complains back about his wife who “is taking him for granted”. The two become involved and promise each other to divorce their respective spouses. Under our legal system, it doesn’t matter whether or not those now-surplus spouses consent from the curb. The unilateral petitions will be granted 100% of the time, and a reason doesn’t have to be given. Neither discarded spouse does consent, so Billy is dragged into court, and he’s ordered to pay child support and become a part-time father, by an imperious “black-robe” perched above him. Now Connie’s household income is four times his, and he’s evicted from the family home to boot. Close to 70% of unilateral divorce petitions are filed by women in the United States, as even the divorce attorneys tell us. Only two states require mutual consent for “no-fault” divorce grounds, and technically only one state, Mississippi, has laws that don’t eventually enable a forced divorce against the consent of an innocent partner.
Is mandated 50-50 shared parenting really in the best interest of the child? That depends. Is it right for even 1% of the children’s time to be spent under Connie’s adulterous roof? Arguably, not! The trauma of remarriage has been shown in studies to be even worse for child outcomes than just the divorce, if the children are exposed to the legalized adultery partner. If Billy B. becomes a “stander”, and does not remarry or take on a girlfriend, the childrens’ outcomes will be better than if both parents remarry and are materially well off, no matter how little he’s allowed to see the kids. The kids will see the day-in, day-out moral example their father sets in honoring his marriage vows in the most difficult of circumstances, i.e., immoral civil paper ordering him not to honor those vows to protect and cherish. If, on the other hand, both parents are living in some form of state-licensed or unlicensed adultery, and that’s the forward plan, neither home is any better than the other for the kids, and they will be raised to believe adultery is an unavoidable cultural norm, that nothing in life is that reliable, and they will probably even avoid marriage as adults, having the next generation of kids out of wedlock.
If we go back to 1968 and earlier, we didn’t have these societal issues to any meaningful degree because we had fault-based custody decisions. That system worked well, and the reason it did has already been explained. That system was also much cheaper for the taxpayers of the day (some grandparents will actually remember when we used to balance our state and Federal budgets), and it helped our constitutional republic to thrive because we always raised a majority of solid, moral citizens in sufficient numbers to sustain it. Today that’s rapidly breaking down into cries for socialism among the children of this regime – as if unilateral, forced divorce isn’t already socialism, but clearly, blanket 50/50 shared parenting isn’t the answer from the sociological perspective. It’s only one more layer of socialism, transferring resources from the virtuous to the less virtuous on both a micro and macro level. (“standerinfamilycourt” is only coincidentally in agreement with the legal vultures of the “family court” regime on this one issue. Hopefully that won’t happen again.)
Let’s now look at it from the fundamental rights perspective, and the longstanding legal precedents that have come down under the Bill of Rights. The growing number of shared parenting activists out there are correct that there are due process and equal protection issues involved here, under the 14th amendment. But it’s not necessarily because they aren’t given the same amount of parenting time as the custodial parent, unless both parents are guilty of some equally grievous infraction against the marriage, the safety of the home, or the moral development of the children. In fact, the guy in the video is technically arguing against his own core argument, in a sort of laughable double-speak. For example, at ~5:30 minutes he says,
“creation of the ‘best interest of the children’ state statutes was unconstitutional! And a lie. They are vague value judgements (sic) and cannot be used until after harm to a child has been proven.”
On the contrary, SIFC would humbly propose that the mere filing of a unilateral divorce petition on “no-fault” grounds is prima facie evidence of harm to the child, as well as to grandchildren, both born and unborn. Under those circumstances, it should be a rebuttable presumption that the Petitioner(s) should not get more than supervised visitation, and no overnights, or whatever differing arrangement they mutually agree with the other spouse. That’s equal protection under the law, and the “best interest of the child”, friends. (Sword held at a respectful and safe distance from the baby.) SIFC does agree that the principle of Parens Patriae ~7:10 is definitionally incompatible with “no-fault” because an asserted fault must be established for this power of the state to apply, and that it has been rampantly abused by state courts, which are acting ministerially for legislatures who enacted the entire gamut of “no-fault” laws (not just grounds statutes) unconstitutionally.
The looting of the system evolved over time, escalating dramatically in the 1980’s. The violation of civil rights and constitutional precedent occurring at the first hearing, which this gentleman refers to ~8:10 actually consists of reducing the parental authority of the non-filing spouse below 100% unless there’s some fault basis! And the burden should be on the Petitioning side to prove this under the normal standards of evidence. On the other hand, even if it’s 50/50, the innocent spouse’s civil rights are already being violated by 50% – half the maimed, spiritually dead baby, so to speak. The constitutional issue this gentleman speaks of still remains under his split-the-baby approach, whether he’s being deprived of 50% of this parental sovereignty or 90% of it. Admittedly, 50% is financially less burdensome than 90% in terms of child support, but that’s really a separate property-taking issue, which is also better-adjudicated under a fault-basis. Under a proper repeal of non-consensual divorce on “no-fault” grounds, the divorce simply would not be granted unless the parents came to binding terms on all such matters so that nobody is forfeiting, nor being deprived of, their fundamental 14th amendment protections.
To be sure, most of the proposed legislation before legislatures in many states call for a “rebuttable presumption” that this is in the child’s best interest, something that is likely to prove to be utterly meaningless “window dressing” in practice, given the rampant judicial corruption throughout the family court system, and the high hurdles to court access that most of us experience, should the need arise to rebut the presumption. This will be a mere band-aid on a pustulent boil that needs full lancing and draining. It appears that the industrial family law machine and its lobbyists are somewhat split on the issue, looking as they always do through their primary lens: impact on longterm fee revenue. A few firms embrace it, realizing that nothing is ever really final. Most stand vehemently opposed, proving that pushing through forced divorces quickly, then litigating over children and support collections for years thereafter is the optimal business model. We should keep an eye on the trend in state enactment threat, those of us who hope to abolish non-consensual “no-fault” decrees altogether. Strategically, in the face of enactment of a law that has pretty strong public sympathy, as 50/50 shared parenting has, and seems inevitable — as a matter not of if but when, might there come a day when under those changed circumstances, we could start to persuade the “family law” lobby that forced faultless divorces are no longer in their business interest? Are they aware from their own market research that 80% of unilateral “no-fault” divorces in the U.S. aren’t really mutual, nor over “irreconcilable differences” other than adultery or the desire to pursue adultery legally?
“standerinfamilycourt” is aware that this post is not going to sit well with those who are already-divorced and not looking back, possibly “remarried”, strapped with child support payments and either alienated from their children, or allowed too little time with them. That sucks. Unfortunately, it boils down to the same choice you would have made for their sake if you were civilly still in that marriage. There would be no one on the side, for their sake, with or without the subsequent civil paper condoning it. You’d be on your knees taking your complaint to the Lord about any and all barriers to your being the parent He appointed you to be. You’d be sacrificing and laying down your life in order to raise them right, since you only get one shot at it. The Lord would see this and, in His time, move mountains in your behalf.
Here’s what the Righteous Judge says about the best interest of the child:
And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!
“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.”
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal “No-Fault” Divorce!
Of Antinomians and Panderers Thereto
by Standerinfamilycourt
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. – Jude 4
Not for the first time have we blogged about this, but it seems so-called “blended families” are all the rage with anyone who wants to sell lots of “Christian” books these days. We’re told that these “families” are “blessed” (and just for good measure, the author will “bless” them), which is a bit strange since they are snapping up all of these books as a growing demographic: “– and their numbers were added to daily by the “family courts” of the land.”
It’s kind of predictable that the targeted market won’t learn much from these books, however, so they’ll buy more to see if the advice works out any better. But what if….God doesn’t want these books to work any magic in these unbiblical living arrangements and immoral relationships? What if…the cost of “blended families”, who come together for reasons other than widowhood, is too eternally high to bear? What if… a truly loving God splits these “families” up out of eternal mercy for every member of that kind of household?
Very recently, both Ryan and Selena Frederick of Fierce Marriage.com and Kris Vallotton have posted blogs with sure-fire marriage advice for those who purportedly “didn’t plan” to wind up in an adulterous remarriage by Christ’s standards, but now need to find a way to “thrive” (rather than repent). Ministry people who publicly spread soul-endangering heretical material to make a person feel better about remaining in their state of sin require somebody to make an attempt at an equally public, respectful response, supplying the biblical truth. Both of these ministries produce especially effective memes that are highly encouraging to those standing celibate until the Lord restores their God-joined, covenant union and removes their prodigal spouse, in true grace and mercy, from the legalized adulterous relationship they’ve fallen into, which they pray everyday their prodigal will live long enough to repent of — from the heart. As with RepentanceCry.com, whose divorced pastor/founder is currently “betrothed” to a younger woman who will (unless God intervenes) sinfully supplant his true estranged wife who is still living, SIFC is left with a dilemma over the rightness of continuing to use their materials on our pages. Unlike the case with RepentenceCry, neither of these other two ministries seem to be blocking dissenters at this point, so members of the marriage permanence movement are still able to exchange with them.
So….exchange several of us attempted to do!
The tennis involved with commenters, who can’t abide anyone so confronting the ministry owners who have tickled their ears and validated their sinful choices, typically goes like this for anyone determined enough to sustain the online engagement:
Lob 1 : (aimed at page / ministry owners) straightforward Matthew 19:6 / Luke 16:18 appeal that God-joined holy matrimony is not dissoluble by anything but death, and that all non-widowed remarriage was consistently called adultery by Jesus.
Return 1: MIsuse of some combination of Matt.5:32, 1 Cor. 7:15 and Matthew 19:9 to “prove” otherwise, and point out the “error” of the lob. (They don’t know what to do with the actual scriptures in Lob 1, but they’re certain that theirs must override.)
Lob 2: Patient, hermeneutical explanation why the Returner’s interpretation of those scriptures to justify marrying again, while having an estranged spouse still living, is not hermeneutically correct, and suggesting that they study it further for a period of time.
Return 2: Projectile vomiting of everything the discarded spouse did, and / or what the true-spouse-of-the-new-spouse did, that God would surely not expect anyone to stay in the marriage and tolerate… these outrages against their happiness. (Optional insistence that Lob 2 is an untrustworthy “private interpretation” with denial that the Lob 1 scriptures say what they say and mean what they mean.)
Lob 3: Reminder from Matthew 19:6, 8 that Christ didn’t leave us with a choice whether to “remain in” such a marriage, but that He said we simply are in such a marriage until one of the original partners physically dies.
Return 3: Indignant playing of (you guessed it) – the Pharisee card, accompanied by various Pauline scriptures cited to purport that nobody is capable of living by the ten commandments, and any effort to do so is “salvation by works” and deceitful, self-righteous “boasting”.
The truncated form of Romans 8:1, quoted to omit “who walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh…” is especially popular at this juncture, accompanied with “by grace we are saved through faith, not of our own works lest any man should boast.” This, of course, is presumed to override anything Jesus ever said directly to the contrary of their sexual ethics, and asserted only to apply to those who are not “saved” yet, because those people don’t have their ticket punched by belief that their ticket is punched.
Lob 4: A friendly reminder about the sermon on the mount, concerning obedience to Christ out of a grateful heart, and that the 613 old rabbinic regulations to which Paul was actually referring as “the law” are only suspended upon our surrender to Christ’s lordship, perhaps quoting Luke 14:26 or Hebrews 10:26-29 or Matthew 7:21-23. (The 10 Commandments remain in full effect, notwithstanding Luther’s objections thereto.)
Return 4: (now growing demonstrably more heated, can go two different ways – path 1, revert to Return 1 and mechanically parrot this point again and again for the rest of the conversation, alternating this with vicious ad hominem slurs….or… shift into sorrowful-pious-humility mode with an offer to “pray” that the lobber will “get saved for real some day” – path 2, depending on the personality of the remarriage adulterer on the other side of the net, and assuming Lob 4 didn’t horrifically draw one of each, in tandem!) It tends to get really ugly from here, but four things are clear from both types of tennis partners:
(1) what they were once sold as the terms of salvation is not matching up with what’s now being presented…
(2) who they thought they were in Christ is now being shaken to the marrow of their bones (with which we should all achingly and deeply empathize)…
(3) if it means they can’t have their “salvation” on the terms they were sold, they’re not about to take our suggestion to study up to make sure they’re as “saved” as they think they are.
(4) they must have a full retraction and apology from you, and they will stalk you by tagging, with repetitive points and demands for “answers” to extraneous questions, day and night until they get it (or you decide life’s too short and block them), even if they happen to presently be separated from said legalized adultery partner.
By this point, there is zero question that we are dealing with one or more antinomians in the conversation. Antinomianism (from the Greek: ἀντί, “against” + νόμος, “law”) is any view which rejects laws or legalism and is against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so.[1] The term has both religious and secular meanings. In Christianity, an antinomian is one who takes the principle of salvation by faith and divine grace to the point of asserting that the saved are not bound to follow the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments.[2][3] The distinction between antinomian and other Christian views on moral law is that antinomians believe that obedience to the law is motivated by an internal principle flowing from belief rather than from any external compulsion. What they don’t take into account is that if you don’t obey, you can’t really claim to believe. The eighteen inches from head to heart has not been spanned. They’re stuck on simple mental assent which fails to engage their feet, in the way that the tax collector Zachheus’ feet were engaged when he came to saving faith. Following the ten commandments is an essential element of following Christ that precludes our own presumptions about what He “would want” for us which they were hoping might suspend one or more of those “impossible-to-follow” commandments. Jesus died, they insist, for our past, present (unrepented) and future sins!
If the site owners are paying attention, and booksellers good enough to make a living at it always pay attention, we’re about to find out if they, too, are antinomians. All too often, booksellers appealing enough to the masses to have half a million people following their facebook page, are almost always antinomians, not just people who honestly don’t know any better. The exchange with the Vallotton page has not been that contentious so far, and nobody was “unduly” triggered there by the truth-tellers. Vallotton, who has slightly under 400,000 followers seems to have a loyal opposition consisting mainly of the LGBT community and their sympathizers who are among the most vocal on that page, and that’s where most of his attention seemed to be going. Some marriage permanence disciples had already been there, challenging the premise that “blended families” are covenant families and are holy matrimony unions, before SIFC arrived there to comment. This was also true on the FierceMarriage page, where the owner’s response to the weekend proceedings arrived around noon Monday, as follows…..
“Hi everyone,
Ok, this is a very nuanced topic, and perhaps we didn’t do the intro justice. I’ll modify the introduction of the blog post so it’s not misleading, but I do want to address some things here about assumptions we’ve made—we’ve (wrongly) assumed that you know where we’re coming from and the premises we had in mind when posting this content.
“For clarity:
1: Divorce is never God’s best for any marriage, Christian or non-Christian alike. In fact, the Bible says that “God hates divorce”. (Malachi 2) It’s never His best for any marriage.
2: As a last resort, and “because of hardness of hearts”, the Bible gives two clear grounds for divorce: (1) sexual immorality (Matthew 5:32; 19:9) and (2) abandonment by an unbeliever (1 Corinthians 7:15). There is nuance to what constitutes “abandonment by an unbeliever” that can only be discerned on a case by case basis, with pastoral care, prayer, and biblical counseling.
3: The two grounds above shouldn’t be construed as situations “requiring” divorce. Divorce is not required or even encouraged in the above cases. They’re exceptions made, not imposed requirements. Repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation are always the best possible ways forward.
4: If the divorce was for unbiblical reasons, there are no grounds for remarriage. If there are instances where divorce occurs and it’s biblically justified, remarriage is acceptable for the innocent party. (Matthew 19:9) But even then, we encourage couples to fight hard for their marriage (see #3 above) through prayer, counseling, and pursuit of each other.
5: This is a very sensitive and nuanced topic for many that requires speaking “truth in love” in a relational context. We must speak truth, yes, but we must do so in a way that encourages others in Christ, builds each other up in him, and lovingly urges holiness in light of God’s grace in Jesus. For this reason, we urge you to only post comments if you can be lovingly truthful without being brash or harsh.
6: There are other questions like, “can I remarry if I got divorced while I was an unbeliever”. This, and questions like it, are complex questions that are very hard to answer quickly. For that reason, we urge you to get biblical counsel from a pastor who knows you and can read God’s Word with you to find the answer.
7: Finally, a divorced and/or remarried believer should not feel any less loved by God. This is not to condone sin, but rather, to reiterate that our being loved by God is a GIFT (“so that none may boast” Eph 2:9) despite our sin, and is good for our salvation in eternity and our sanctification until we get there.
(Uh-oh!)
“standerinfamilycourt’s” response:
Ryan and Selena, a growing number of pastors and other serious disciples who are familiar with the history of bible versions and revisions over the last 150 years, who are familiar with church history for the first 400 years, and who faithfully apply sound principles of scriptural hermeneutics in studying this topic deeply, must respectfully disagree with several of your points.
Overall, a couple of great books by faithful men of God would be a good read for the two of you.
“One Flesh” by Joe Fogel
“Have You Not Read?” by Casey Whitaker
“Til Death Do Us Part?” by Dr. Joseph Webb
Briefly answering a few of your points:
1. God has *commandments*, not “bests”, “ideals”, “purposes”, “designs” or the like. When Jesus said, “what God has joined, let no human (anthropos) put distance between (choresthetai)”, this was in the imperative mood. This is a commandment with eternal consequences if it goes unrepented. Further, Malachi 2 is (in full context) a rebuke of his priests who divorce their God-joined wife and marry another. God makes clear this breaks all fellowship with Him until repented, because HIs covenant remains with the still-living spouse of his youth. God does not hate the divorce out of remarriage adultery with some other living person’s God-joined spouse.
2. Since when has “hardness of heart” been an acceptable attribute in a Christ-follower? This makes the very dangerous assertion that God is obligated to make allowances for our unholy attitudes. This is not scriptural in any sense. Most of us have bibles that read: if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven (Matt. 18:23-35), do not demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Matt.5:38), do not take your own revenge (Rom. 12:19), and unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter heaven (Matt. 5:20). On the contrary, Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 describe what happens to an indulged hard heart in a disciple.
3 and 4. Studied deeply and responsibly, we find that the so-called “biblical grounds” for divorce simply don’t exist once principled hermeneutics are applied to the scriptures relied upon. Historically, they are the invention of the homosexual humanist Catholic monk known as Erasmus Desiderius, who was unsavory company for the likes of Martin Luther and other Reformers. All of the above 3 books address this in detail, as does our blog, www.standerinfamilycourt.com. The only biblical ground for divorce is to get out of a biblically immoral relationship with somebody other than your God-joined one-flesh original mate. The only biblical ground for remarriage to somebody other than that person is widowhood (Rom. 7:2-3; 1 Cor. 7:11,39).
5. Since on three separate occasions Jesus stated, with no exceptions, “EVERYONE / whosoever / whoso marries a divorced [person] enters into an ongoing state of adultery”, and since at least twice Paul warned, “do not be deceived…adulterers have no inheritance in the kingdom of God” (speaking only of those who die in that state), “speaking the truth in love” requires speaking the truth in eternal terms that lead to actual repentance – the cessation of the sin in order to recover that inheritance.
6. This question melts away once the evangelical myths of 5 centuries are dispensed with. Getting saved does not sever the one-flesh entity created by God’s hand with one’s true spouse, nor does it dissolve the covenant between that entity and God. Matt. 19:5-6,8 The truly regenerated person, properly discipled, should long to reconcile with their true spouse and should get out of their legalized adultery. Many manage to do so despite being discipled by hirelings, because the Holy Spirit directs their path, as Jesus promised He would.
7. It is definitely true that no sin, including even homosexuality, diminishes God’s love for us, but if we reject His commandments as regenerated people, the indwelling Holy Spirit (the main manifestation His enduring love) will drive us toward repentance. If we instead choose to grieve and quench the Holy Spirit instead of choosing to obey Him, we would be miserable in heaven for all eternity even if we arrived there, because we’d still resent moral absolutes just as we did on earth. He’s too loving to allow that. By contrast, there’s conclusive documentation from the minutes of annual conferences that many denominations in the 1970’s voted to officially change their marriage doctrine to accommodate the civil enactment of unilateral “no-fault” divorce in order not to lose finances and members, much like what is happening now with the homosexual community in the wake of legalized gay marriage. This is not soul-care in either case. Would you not make every effort to warn the homosexual that if they persist in their legalized sexual sin, they will not see heaven?
For about 4 years, your excellent memes have encouraged covenant marriage standers who follow our page, to obey Paul and remain chaste or be reconciled to the spouse of their youth. God has convicted many prodigals to exit their civil-only “marriage” and reconcile with their covenant spouse – to His great glory. If you persist in encouraging households that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous to remain in their sin, we will be compelled to blog an explanation as to why the fans of our page can no longer rely on your ministry. Precious souls are on the line here. You have used a public platform to advance a dangerous heresy (albeit you likely didn’t know any better). The godly response, therefore, needed to be equally public. Now you have ample basis for our suggestion that you study this a bit more purposefully, and we pray that you do.
We truly wish there was a “loving, nuanced” way to warn people that what they thought was holy matrimony, Jesus actually regards as ongoing adultery, and that it’s a heaven-or-hell matter. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; although the kisses of an enemy are profuse.” Prov. 27:6
“Let not many become teachers, for they will incur a harsher judgment.” James 3:1
Nobody relishes rebuking a ministry leader, or even an individual, in front of 500,000+ followers, and it should never be done lightly. The starting presumption should always be that they didn’t know any better, and the rebuke should never be more public than their infraction was — but the people to whom false doctrine was disseminated need the faithful biblical truth, even if unpleasant exchanges with “triggered” people must be endured, and even if it means the page owner cuts us off as “divisive”. There has been no further response all afternoon from the Fredericks, who seem to have become the infallible dispensers of marriage wisdom after less than 15 years’ experience. By the grace of God, may they remain so, in a world where “gray divorce” is the only growing category, and the church is growing increasingly immoral in all things marriage. That they have not been so quick to respond the second time seems like a good sign of character. Hopefully, they’re on Amazon right after dinner, looking for those three excellent books “standerinfamilycourt” recommended. “Standerinfamilycourt” was once a notorious antinomian, too, mentally equating all sins great and small, until the great and eternally merciful shaking came!
More probably, something needs to be said privately to Kris Vallotton, in light of his restrained response to those correcting him, but whose closing words in his blog piece go so far as to formally “bless” households Jesus called adulterous, and to encourage the divorced that “they can love (somebody other than their estranged, true spouse) again”:
“If you have been through a divorce and remarried, I bless you today. I bless your family and your children— both your biological kids and your step-children! I encourage you to say out loud that you receive this blessing for yourself and for your family!
“If you’ve been through a divorce and are single, I want to tell you today that you will love again.
( 
SIFC: People who have “been through a divorce” are NOT “single” unless their spouse is dead, or their spouse was already someone else’s spouse and not actually theirs in the first place.)
“Hear me: You WILL heal, and you WILL love again! God’s redemption is bigger than anything in your past and He can do miracles that we never even dreamed of before!”
“Standerinfamiycourt” would just love to be able to influence 400,000 or 500,000 souls all at once, given what we’re trying to accomplish in amassing enough support and influence to overthrow the unilateral “no-fault” divorce regime that brought us to where we are with the harlot church of today. But this will likely never be, because the moral price of discouraging anyone living in this sinful state from full, physical repentance is just too high, and Jesus has already prophesied otherwise:
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
Does Any State Have a Materially-Constitutional “No-Fault” Law? Yes, Surprisingly!
by Standerinfamilycourt
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! – Isaiah 5:20
What does a materially-constitutional “no-fault” divorce law look like? Above all, for a unilateral divorce law to be constitutional, there must be no front-door (nor back-door) means to force a divorce on any unwilling spouse who has done nothing to seriously harm the marriage or family members: to the full extent that such harm is not objectively provable with hard evidence. Beyond that, no spouse should be deprived of property, parental rights, free association, free exercise of religious conscience, nor be subjected to arbitrary, vague charges that cannot be understood in advance sufficiently to avoid running afoul of them. In other words, any law that removes these explicit fundamental Bill of Rights protections without regard to proof of marital fault, over which the defendant has had reasonable self-control, should be deemed unconstitutional on its face.
Additionally, notwithstanding abusive past judicial precedents such as Maynard v. Hill, if the state law retroactively renders a contract unenforceable, this is a violation of Article 1 Section 10. After 50 years of divorce-on-demand laws which changed the marital contract from enforceable to unenforceable in most states, this primarily impacts a dwindling number of marriages that were contracted prior to the mid-1970’s, since in virtually all states, licensed civil marriages undertaken after enactment of a state’s unilateral “no-fault” law are merely registered cohabitations, voidable at-will after a defined waiting or living-apart period.
Finally, there should be no violation of the separation-of-powers between the branches of government, as laid out in Articles 1 and 3 of the Constitution. Most liberal, socialist schemes do indeed involve violation of the separation-of-powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government, or between the legislative and executive branches. For example, when a Federal Judge or Justice proclaims a new fundamental right, such as “privacy” without undergoing the rigorous Congress-based, state ratification-based process of amending the Constitution, there has been a violation of separation-of-powers. Hence, judicial precedents and subsequent legislation which rely on an alleged right to “privacy” to legalize or expand abortion, overrule sodomy or adultery prohibitions, require state-paid contraception (and the like), would have been seen as constitutionally invalid by our nation’s founders.
Under this same principle, a legislature may not pass a law that strips the judicial branch of its assigned powers under Article 3 (and its state constitution counterparts), by channeling matters through a court only for appearance sake, while reducing the role of the judges from discretionary to purely administrative. Similarly, legislatures may not delegate powers reserved to them to another branch. There used to be individual legislative divorces enacted as special laws in the legislature which fell into disfavor in case law. Yet “no-fault” unilateral divorce laws are essentially legislative divorces in blanket form, with the states’ family courts administering them in a way that generally does not require judicial discretion.
When any state’s divorce statute eliminates objective fault-based grounds for divorce and declares that the court “shall” * grant a contested divorce upon administratively-valid petition, with no discretionary consideration of the facts in the case as they relate to allegations about undefined terms such as “irreconcilable differences” or “the best interest of the child / children / family”, a violation of Article 3 has resulted. Under this exacting standard, it is reasonable to argue that even mutually-consenting “no-fault” divorce is unconstitutional on these same separation-of-powers grounds, even though fundamental rights of neither spouse would be violated under a strictly consensual divorce law, whereas the fundamental rights of the children of the marriage, and the objective state interest in limiting the cost of services to families, might still be compromised. (Hence, in this blog, use of the term “materially-constitutional” will refer to a state statute where the fundamental 1st and 14th Amendment rights of neither spouse is violated, and both spouses receive equal protection under the law, taken as a whole.)
* Existing Texas statute uses the term “may” instead of “shall”, but under the heavy-handed influence of the Texas Bar Association, their “family courts” consistently administer the law as though the judges have no independent discretion to deny unilateral divorce petitions. Texas is presently considering HB922 and HB926 (formerly HB93 and HB65, respectively), which will remove non-consenting no-fault grounds, but leave all other divorce provisions except the very brief 60-day waiting period unchanged.
Because of the high cost of serving (or mitigating societal ills from) broken families, a few states have experimented with opt-in “covenant marriage” laws (Arkansas, Arizona, and Louisiana) while maintaining all their regular divorce-on-demand machinery for those who don’t opt-in. Since there are no 1st nor 14th Amendment protections for those who don’t opt-in at the time of the marriage, these states don’t qualify as having constitutional divorce statutes. These states have extremely low rates of voluntary participation in these measures, and Arkansas in particular remains among the states with the highest divorce rates.
“Standerinfamilycourt” cannot possibly be familiar with key provisions of all of the various state divorce laws, though the “model” UMDA (Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act) provides a general roadmap, and various state-by-state tables are available which capture the variations in how the “no-fault” model was enacted and / or implemented in any given state. Not too long ago, a comrade in the effort to repeal unilateral grounds for divorce pointed out that there are two states, Mississippi and South Dakota, with consent-only “no-fault” grounds. Knowing how deceptively the historical practices around “no-fault” laws have developed in the various states (sometimes, even despite well-meaning original statutes), and seeing the relative divorce rates in those states compared with other states, SIFC was skeptical, and so, purposed to analyze both of these state statutes in detail to see to what extent this was likely to be true, as the laws were applied to real families. Texas, for example, will not have eliminated forced divorce on “no-fault” grounds simply by passing HB922, because existing law will be unchanged in a crucial provision that allows either spouse to file (purportedly) fault-based grounds based on living apart for 3 years, even if the filing spouse has refused to live with the non-filing spouse (who did not consent to the separation and therefore was not actually responsible for the alleged fault). Could there be a similar situation going on in Mississippi or South Dakota?
With somewhere between 75% and 80% of divorces nationwide opposed by one of the spouses, typically, a state’s divorce rate correlates with barriers to finalizing a divorce, such as the length of any waiting period or statutory living apart period required. Yet, neither Mississippi nor South Dakota figure in the states with the lowest divorce rate — both states are pretty much “middle of the pack” in their rates of marriage “dissolution”. Both states appear to have had their consent-based “no-fault” laws in place for a considerable length of time, not as a result of the sort of repeal that is being sought in Texas. According to 2017 statistics from the American Community Survey, South Dakota ranks 9th highest with a divorce rate of 13.59 per 1000 married couples of all ages. Mississippi’s rate is somewhat lower, at around 12 per 1000 married couples, as compared to states with the highest rates at 17-19 per 1000, and states with the lowest rates at 5-7 per 1000 married couples. If unilateral divorce is indeed restricted to fault-based grounds in these two states, why isn’t either state’s divorce rate in the lower ranges?
Why would South Dakota, for example, still rank only 33rd out of 50 states in protecting families, if unilateral “no-fault” divorce is restricted by statute ? We’re about to find out. Before looking at the state specifics, we need to reflect for a moment on the coercive power of the state bar associations in shielding the lucrative divorce trade, also in controlling all three branches of state government, and the degree to which the state budget benefits from Federal Title IV-D funds from court operating rules and from legislation that confiscates children from the families those courts have shredded. Then we need to look at whether other provisions in the divorce law which deprive law-abiding citizens who want to keep their families together of their due process and fundamental rights are counterbalancing the consent-only provision. There is also the religion factor, which layers over all of the other factors in law. States with the lowest divorce rates (sadly) tend to have the smallest “conservative” Protestant and Jewish populations, and a typically-higher Catholic population. Lastly, there is the dwindling marriage rate among younger citizens due to a law-driven deliberate preference for cohabitation, and ultimately causing the “per 1000 married couples” measures to disproportionately consist of divorced and remarried older citizens, especially in states where non-consensual “no-fault” grounds are the only grounds available. The map below shows data for those age 30 and under, where Mississippi likely has a higher young marriage rate than South Dakota, and a bit higher consensual divorce rate in that young age bracket.
In a picture where there are many “moving parts”, restricting to consent-only “no-fault” grounds most likely offsets other factors in keeping that state’s divorce rate lower than it would otherwise be, and improvements on other battle fronts (notably, the behavior and doctrine of the church) would catalyze with adopting a materially constitutional statute in lowering that state’s divorce rate.
Here is a summary table of the specifics of each state’s consent-only “no-fault” grounds, and surrounding statutes influencing the net degree of family protection. Mississippi appears to have enacted its “no-fault” law in 1972, while South Dakota’s base “no-fault” law was enacted in 1976, and modified in 1985, possibly to add back the mutual consent feature.
Deep Dive – No Fault by Consent Only (version 1).xlsb
In this table (click on document to expand), red shading indicates provisions in the law defective enough to override all or most benefits from requiring mutual consent for “no-fault” divorce grounds such as “irreconcilable differences”. Yellow shading indicates cautionary areas (“it depends”), and green shading indicates provisions that are materially consistent with Bill of Rights fundamental protections for the non-offending spouse and innocent family members. Demonstrably, most of the green and none of the red is associated with key provisions in the Mississippi statute, making it the most protective toward rightful families, of all the family codes in the nation, whereas South Dakota has left a few “back doors” open, whereby a unilateral divorce may ultimately be obtained without an innocent spouse’s consent, if traditional back-up allegations are pursued to exploit longstanding vagueness of definitions in the statute, such as “mental cruelty”.
“standerinfamilycourt’s” Conclusions:
Obviously we see the old adage, “the devil is in the details” when we take a close look at the consent-only “no-fault” divorce laws, with a critical eye to whether they nevertheless still effectively function as unilateral laws with delayed timing–by which people can still be manipulated by determined “family law” practitioners who, in the larger picture, continue to have an enormous financial conflict of interest with the true best interests of the family and the objective best interests of even the state.
South Dakota’s divorce statute is obviously better than that of 48 other U.S. states, but it still contains perverse financial incentives that boost the divorce industry at everyone else’s expense, and that encourage divorce coercion, because marital fault is not considered in either child custody (hence, still subjecting the citizens of the state to Title IV-D abuses) or in property division. Additionally, definitions of “abuse” as an alternative ground for divorce in the statute remain more vague than in Mississippi’s statute, which is a problem because “mental cruelty” has long been the next reliable “go-to” when other unilateral grounds are not available. Finally, the provision for defaulted, implied consent in South Dakota creates a weaker law than in Mississippi, and opens the door for process service abuses, which is also a potential issue with Texas’ HB922, as currently drafted.
All things considered, Mississippi comes the closest of all 50 U.S. states to having a substantially constitutional “no-fault” divorce law that is only unilateral when it comes to fault-based grounds. Among the best features of Mississippi’s statute:
-> No potential for abuse of a non-consenting spouse via default judgment provisions (rather than explicit appearance via joint petition, or service of process compliance).
-> 60 day waiting period, even with written mutual consent.
-> Some consideration of marital fault in property division, if the consenting parties cannot agree, and the offended spouse would be at a disadvantage.
-> Strong consideration of marital fault in child custody decisions
-> Fairly explicit and actionable definition of physical and mental abuse, in terms of defining severity, extent, duration and other terms that in most states are vaguely defined by intention. Limited “back door” available by resorting to cruelty allegations if “no-fault” fails to secure a “dissolution” decree.
– >The abandoner cannot allege “abandonment” nor “living apart” as back-door unilateral grounds, if unable to gain the non-offending spouse’s consent to the dissolution.
(Had the case against “SIFC” been brought in Mississippi, instead of Illinois, it is highly doubtful the petitioner would have prevailed on any grounds. Had the case been brought in South Dakota, the petitioner would likely have had to resort to false charges of “mental cruelty” in order to prevail, or there would have had to be a risky strategy of process service fraud leading to a default in-absentia judgment that could likely have been successfully challenged upon discovery.)
Why should it matter to take a deep look at what’s working in states like Mississippi, as we seek to repeal unilateral “no fault” grounds in additional states, such as Texas? One big reason is to be prepared for the likely charge from the powerful “family law” lobby that these laws have not significantly reduced the divorce rate enough that the “threats” to women, gays, and abused spouses from repealing unilateral grounds for divorce is justified. Looking at the above map, this will surely become a more prominent challenge if and when the movement begins to pick up steam–and purely emotional arguments can no longer carry the day, as they do today. We need to be armed with facts that demonstrate exactly why having a constitutionally-defensible statute may not have had the impact we would hope for, especially as it relates to those “back doors” left open in some states. The second reason is to clearly recognize and target other barriers to family preservation that lie outside the law — for example, immoral church practices, which might become more susceptible to reform under a tighter law. The third reason is to gain important comfort that the state of Mississippi has managed to survive for 43 years, over the entire divorce-on-demand era, as the only state with a materially constitutional consensual-only “no-fault” law which powerful special interests have never succeeded in overturning in court based on “privacy” challenges.
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. – Philippians 2:3-4
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!