California Capitol Rally for 'Parental Alienation Awareness Day

Fathers 4 Justice, CA and Families 4 Justice is organizing a candlelight vigil to be held on the sidewalk in front of the west side of the California State Capitol, on Sunday, April 25, at 8 p.m. in recognition of the 4th Annual Parental Alienation Awareness Day.

Simultaneous vigils will be held throughout the United States in order to bring attention to this vile and hostile behavior most often practiced by one parent against another during and after many child custody battles and cases. Supporting organizations include: Live Be at Dads, A Parents Right, and the Justice Reform Coalition.

For the past few years, several U.S. governors have proclaimed or recognized April 25 as Parental Alienation Awareness Day, including Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska and West Virginia. In addition, there have been two Canadian Proclamations-one in Edmonton, Alberta, and Oakville, Ontario, and an international proclamation issued by the Bermuda Islands.

Parental alienation is a group of practiced behaviors that are damaging to children's mental and emotional well-being, and can interfere with a relationship of a child and either parent. These behaviors most often accompany high conflict marriages, separation or divorce. The children are frequently subjected to various alienating behaviors and bullied into being separated from one loving parent by another.

Parental alienation and hostile, aggressive parenting, deprive children of their right to be loved by, and show love for, both of their parents. These destructive actions by the alienating parent (the parent who is responsible for the manipulations and bullying) are considered a form of child abuse - as the alienating tactics used on the children are disturbing, confusing and often frightening, and rob children of their sense of security and safety.

"Parental Alienation behaviors, whether they are verbal or non-verbal, cause a child to be mentally manipulated or bullied into believing that a loving parent is the cause of all of their problems, and/or are the enemy; someone to be feared, hated, disrespected and/or avoided. It clearly is a form of child abuse," said Donald Tenn, a father of three, including a beloved 6 year old daughter from whom his wife has alienated him from.

All children have the universal right to love and be loved by both mother and father. Statistically speaking, there is much support for the statement "two parents are better than one."

"We encourage Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to join the governor's of 13 other states and issue a state proclamation recognizing April 25 as National Parental Alienation Awareness Day. We further encourage the Governor and the California State Legislature to work on behalf of all children in California to put an end to this assault on children. After all, children are our future and they see much of the world through our eyes," said the sponsors.

F & F Introduces 5th CA. Family Court Reform Bill

F & F Introduces 5th CA. Family Court Reform Bill

April 12th, 2010 by Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive Director

Fathers & Families’ mission is to protect children’s right to the love and care of both parents after divorce or separation. One of the ways fit parents are sometimes driven to the margins of their children’s lives is by one parent using the other parent’s disability or partial disability as a pretext to deny them custody or visitation with their children.

While some disabled people are truly unable to care for their children, many are not. Fathers & Families is joining with disabled rights advocates, veterans groups, and California Senator Rod Wright (D-Los Angeles) in sponsoring SB 1188 to solve this problem.

Existing California family law codes do not address the issue of disabled parents, leaving the door open for unnecessary and often expensive litigation, even in cases where the disabled parent had been successfully parenting the children for many years prior to the separation or divorce.

SB 1188 will add Section 3049 to the Family Code. It will read:

3049. In any proceeding to determine child custody or visitation under this part, in which at least one parent is disabled as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. Sec. 12101 et seq.), a court shall not use the disability of that parent as the basis of an award of custody or visitation to another party unless that party establishes by clear and convincing evidence that a grant of custody or visitation to the disabled parent would be detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of the child.

SB 1188 shifts the burden of proof onto the parent who raises the disability as an issue, serving as a deterrent to a parent seeking to raise the issue as a way to cause unnecessary litigation. It also reduces disabled parents’ litigation costs and helps reduce court calendar time and costs at a time when California is struggling with budget woes.

Fathers & Families often hears from parents who have had their disability unfairly used against them in family court. If this has happened to you, please let us know by filling out our form here.

SB 1188 is the 5th California family court reform bill Fathers & Families has been instrumental in introducing this session. Last week AB 2416, a child custody reform bill, passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee unanimously and has been put on the consent calendar for the full Assembly. Other current F & F legislation includes three child support reform bills–SB 1355, SB 578, and SB 580.

This remarkable progress is no accident–Fathers & Families’ legislative representative Michael Robinson and assistant legislative representative Nicole Silverman have spent many months lobbying legislators and gathering support for our legislative agenda.

F & F is creating real, tangible family court reform today, but our deep, professional involvement in Sacramento requires funding–please contribute to the organization which fights for you by clicking here.

Together with you in the love of our children,

Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers & Families

Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board, Fathers & Families

Melissa Hodgdon
Deputy Director, Fathers & Families

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Tags: SB 1188

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Bills/Initiatives, Elections, Politics, Court Cases, Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Fathers & Families Advocacy Group. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Help California Parents that Serve - Support Child Custody Reform in California

Action Alert: Support CA. AB 2416--Child Custody Reform to Help Parents Who Serve

March 29th, 2010 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families

California AB 2416 will help protect the loving bonds that servicemembers share with their children--to email and fax a letter in support of the bill, click here. Please send your letter whether you are a California resident or not.

Fathers & Families has worked closely with the American Retirees Association, Assemblyman Paul Cook, and others on AB 2416, which will be heard in committee on Tuesday, April 6.

At Fathers & Families we receive many letters from divorced or separated military servicemembers with painful but preventable family law problems.

Many parents serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, or other distant locales are anguished that custodial parents have impeded or completely eliminated their contact with their children. When the deployed soldier calls his children at the court-specified time, nobody answers. Letters are written, but they never reach the children. Needless to say, it is extremely difficult for a deployed servicemember to effectively overcome this visitation interference. Given the length and frequency of current deployments, many soldiers lose all contact and sometimes even their relationships with their children, particularly if the children are young.

Other servicemembers return from serving to find that while they once had a custody arrangement which allowed them to play a meaningful role in their children’s lives, the new custody arrangement allows them only a marginal role, if any role at all. To regain their previous custody arrangement they must engage in costly, time-consuming litigation, which increases conflict and dissipates much of the time and money that they would otherwise be spending on their children.

AB 2416 will address these problems in several ways:

AB 2416 authorizes courts to issue orders granting grandparents, stepparents and extended families the ability to exercise a deployed soldier’s normal parenting time. By encouraging courts to issue such orders, we allow children to preserve their loving bonds with their deployed parents, and also protect the important relationships children share with their grandparents, stepparents, and other extended family. AB 2416 will substantially reduce the current problem of deployed servicemembers being unable to enforce visitation/contact orders.

AB 2416 creates a rebuttable presumption that when a military parent is deployed, upon his or her return, child custody and visitation orders will revert to the original order. This protects the crucial role these parents play in their children's lives, and helps prevent a military parent from having to re-litigate their case.

To send a letter to Sacramento in support of AB 2416 , please click here.

America was greatly moved by deployed sailor Bill Hawes' tearful reunion with his little son and little Siri Jordan's reunion with her divorced father Dan Jordan. AB 2416 will help protect precious relationships like these.

Fathers & Families' legislative representative Michael Robinson and assistant legislative representative Nicole Silverman have spent months lobbying legislators and gathering support for AB 2416. F & F is creating real, tangible family court reform today, but our deep, professional involvement in Sacramento requires money--contribute to the organization which fights for you by clicking here.

Together with you in the love of our children,

Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers & Families

Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board, Fathers & Families

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Bills/Initiatives, Elections, Politics, Court Cases, Fathers & Families Advocacy Group, Military Parents/Military. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Fathers & Families Supporter in Sacramento's Capitol Weekly 'Children who have been alienated need help'

Fathers & Families Supporter in Sacramento's Capitol Weekly 'Children who have been alienated need help'

March 29th, 2010 by Admin

Fathers & Families supporter Michael Hunter recently published a letter in Sacramento's Capitol Weekly (3/11/10) concerning parental alienation. The letter comes on the heels of a debate between Fathers & Families and California battered women's advocate Preston Thymes over parental alienation, AB 612, and how family courts handle domestic violence accusations.

Thymes' article criticizing Fathers & Families is Parental Alienation must be excluded from all custody hearings, (Capitol Weekly, 2/18/10). Our response is Preventing courts from considering parental alienation will harm kids (Capitol Weekly, 2/25/10).

Hunter writes:

Some people contend that legislatures should not adopt a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting because they assert that it would “tie the hands” of family court judges. These advocates do not honor the fact that a rebuttable presumption for shared parenting is rebuttable.

It is illogical for these same advocates to “tie the hands” of family court judges by limiting the testimony that family court judges are allowed to hear. The presumption for shared parenting is rebuttable, and testimony about Parental Alienation is not taken as true without evidence.

I disagree with Mr. Preston Thymes who asserts that recognizing Parental Alienation as a legitimate issue in custody cases would endanger abused children. Not only would abused children continue to be protected by family courts, but recognizing Parental Alienation as a legitimate issue in custody cases would help children who have been alienated.

In genuine cases of domestic violence or child abuse, all sides agree that courts need to protect children from abusive parents. We do not limit testimony about domestic violence or child abuse simply because there is a large body of evidence which shows that false accusations of domestic violence are a major problem in child custody cases.

There are children who have been alienated from one parent as a result of the actions of the other parent. These children need help.

Read Hunter's full letter here.

To learn more about Parental Alienation, as well as Fathers & Families' Campaign to Ask DSM to Include Parental Alienation in Upcoming Edition, click here.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Parental Alienation/PAS, Fathers & Families Advocacy Group. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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