CALL IN INTERNET RADIO TALK SHOW ON FAMILY LAW CASES Monday October 5 - 8 am to 10 am (Ala. Time)

A Cleveland, Tennessee Radio station < www.woopfm.com > is airing an internet radio talk show about family court cases and constitutional law with hosts William “Wilky” Fain and Constitutional law attorney Stanley Charles Thorne.

The talk show will air at 8 am (Alabama time)  

You can listen and watch live on online.

Calls are requested from all over the United States. The Station owner said if there are many calls to the show, the hosts can have the same hours Monday to Friday for one month.

About the Hosts

William “Wilky” Fain made a movie “A Father’s Rights” about his fight for his rights to protect his daughter.

Through making of the movie has either changed laws or made several new laws affecting the family court system throughout the state of Tennessee.  All they rely on is fair treatment from the judges and protection awarded by our state and federal constitutions.

For more about Wilky go to his web site < www.WilliamFain.com >

Stanley Charles Thorne is a Constitutional law attorney.

Thorne works with Wilky as "Thorne the Regulator" producing video DVD's, and a pilot television show that you could describe as “Dog the Bounty Hunter” but along the lines of pointing out injustices in family law.  See < www.ThorneTheRegulator.com >.

On the Thorne web site, you can see the documentary on the Sara Evans divorce story.  

In the near future the web site will tell the story of Huntsville, Alabama firefighter Chris Hobbs and his “Why Judge Little . com” public awareness campaign.

< www.FamiliesUnite.org > - is an organization to bring family - friendly people and businesses together to protect our children’s rights to BOTH parents and to protect fit parents from government intrusion into their relationships with their children.

WHAT: Internet Radio talk show on family law cases < www.woopfm.com >

WHEN: Monday 8 am to 10 am (Alabama Time)

WHO: YOU, we need you to listen in and call in.

YOU ARE INVITED TO LISTEN AND CALL IN at < www.woopfm.com > 8 to 10 am October 5, 2009

29 Sept 09 - Florence, Alabama Parent Files Constitutional Challenge to Alabama Supreme Court Opinion

On September 11, 2009, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a ruling in Davis v. Blackstock, in an appeal of a child custody case involving the mother and father of a seven year old daughter.

On September 25, 2009, the father, Mark Davis, challenged as unconstitutional how the Alabama Supreme Court allowed a trial judge to decide the “best interest of the child” without any evidence Davis is an unfit parent who has harmed his child.

“ Davis' constitutional challenge could have a direct and immediate impact upon the thousands of parents and children subject to custody orders in Alabama," stated Holly Wales, State President of the Alabama Family Rights Association.

Davis questions the authority of Alabama judges to take away parental rights in most custody cases. Davis argues as a fit parent, he is legally equal to the fit mother, and for that reason he is entitled to equal time with his daughter under the Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. and Alabama Constitutions.

Davis and his former wife, Tonya Smith Blackstock, were divorced by a Tennessee court in 2002 when their daughter was an infant.

Since 2003, the child has thrived under an equal-time Tennessee court order, alternating four consecutive days at a time with each parent. This alternating equal-time schedule protects the child’s relationship with each parent as required by the Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. and Alabama Constitutions.

But in 2006, an Alabama trial court judge Ned Mike Suttle changed the Tennessee courts’ equal-time parenting plan, giving the mother custody of the child 286 days per year, and the father custody of the child 79 days per year. 

Such limited father-child parenting time is unconstitutionally discriminatory.  Davis claims the lopsided custody is unfair and is needlessly hurting his daughter’s relationship with him.

The father questions why the state of Alabama thinks he is not qualified to be an equal parent in his little girl’s life.

Constitutional law attorney Stanley Charles Thorne said, “This is an interesting case for a Constitutional challenge because the Tennessee courts and Alabama courts each looked at essentially the same facts, but reached radically different results using the best interest of the child standard.”

U.S. Constitution, Section 1, the Fourteenth Amendment

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Alabama Constitution, Section 13, Courts to be open; remedies for all injuries; impartiality of justice

That all courts shall be open; and that every person, for any injury done him, in his lands, goods, person, or reputation, shall have a remedy by due process of law; and right and justice shall be administered without sale, denial, or delay.

24 September 2009 - Panel on fatherhood at the Congressional Black Caucus at the Washington, D.C. Convention.

Several members of Congress spoke, and other special guests offered comments, so that the 2 hour discussion was busier than planned. I was introduced, and had the opportunity to ask a question in front of the 250 attendees of Joshua DuBois, (pronounced Due-Bwah), President Obama's White House advisor on fatherhood.

David Levy of the Children's Rights Council said that 400 fathers assembled for a forum at Abyssinia Church in New York City several weeks ago, and many complained that they were paying child support, but that they were not getting to see their children. 

Mr. Levy also advised that custody, access and visitation needed to be part of the conversation that reaches the President. DuBois agreed. I know that so far, access and visitation are not being addressed by DuBois in various meetings, but they need to in order to present a full picture in an upcoming report to the President. 

A few of the panelists, whose organizations help young black dads obtain employment, deal with child support issues, and encourage marriage, said they are looking for new ways to cope with the problems that young dads (and moms) face. Indeed, several other young men asked questions about visitation problems.
 

Mr Levy said he planned to contact organization leaders who are providing job training, child support information, and marriage-incentive information to young dads (and moms), and urge that they finally come to embrace a presumption for joint custody. They need to do so for the following reasons:

1. Joint custody will help their marriage movement. If young men know that there are resources to help sustain marriages (which there are), but that if divorce occurs, they will not be cut out from being part of their child's life, that will help encourage and sustain marriage. If mothers know that they also need to work on sustaining the marriage, but that if divorce occurs, they will not necessarily be the "gatekeepers" who control the father's access to the child, there may be less incentive to divorce. 

Every marriage represents a successful child support order, every marriage represents a successful access/visitation story. The "mothers as gatekeepers" idea arose several times during the discussion, and although of course it is advisable for parents to remain on good terms with each other in raising the child, which CRC always recommends, too many moms do not see any value in the father's presence in the child's life, and thus "deadbolt" the father out of the picture. This can happen in reverse, too, of course, in the rarer instances when dad has custody, and can "deadbolt" mom out of the picture.

2. Joint custody will also help both parents be involved in their child's life, regardless of the parents' marital situation. Absent a charge of neglect, abuse, or some other serious matter, the parents should know they will have legal joint custody (shared decision making) and physical shared parenting (at least a third to a half of the time
with the child on a year-round basis).

Dr. Ron Mincy of Columbia University, the "guru" of the never-married fathers movement, Jeff Johnson, head of NPCL (National Partnership for Community Leadership), which helps "train the trainers" for fatherhood programs, and Joe Jones, head of the Center for Urban Families in Baltimore, are looking for ways to help fathers -- and mothers. It is long past time that joint custody becomes one of their causes to really help dads and moms, and especially children.

Question from Focus on the Family Website:
 
What about parent-child separation that occurs for reasons other than divorce? Is the pain any less intense for kids when a parent has a good reason to be away?

 Answer

Research confirms that the consequences of any parent-child separation can be severe. In one study of fathers whose jobs required them to be away from their families for long periods of time, the children tended to experience numerous negative reactions, including anger, rejection, depression, low self-esteem, and commonly, a decline in school performance. 188 Those findings have been confirmed in other contexts, as well.

Some of those conclusions were presented at a White House conference at which I spoke a few years ago. The other speaker was Dr. Armand Nicholi, professor of psychiatry at Harvard University. That day, Dr. Nicholi explained how family circumstances that make parents inaccessible to their children produce some of the same effects as divorce itself. Cross-cultural studies make it clear that parents in the United States spend less time with their children than parents in almost any other nation in the world. For decades, millions of fathers have devoted themselves exclusively to their occupations and activities away from home. More recently, mothers have joined the workforce in huge numbers, rendering themselves exhausted at night and burdened with domestic duties on weekends. The result: No one is at home to meet the needs of millions of lonely preschoolers and latchkey children. Dr. Nicholi expressed regret that his comments would make many parents feel uncomfortable and guilty. However, he felt obligated to report the facts as he saw them.

Most important (and the point of his address), Dr. Nicholi stressed the undeniable link between the interruption of parent-child relationships and the escalation of psychiatric problems that we were then seeing and that are even more pronounced today. If the numbers of dysfunctional families and absentee parents continued to escalate, he said, serious national health problems were inevitable. One-half of all hospital beds in the United States at that time were taken up by psychiatric patients. That figure could hit 95 percent if the incidence of divorce, child abuse, child molestation, and child neglect continue to soar. In that event, Dr. Nicholi said, we would also see vast increases in teen suicide, already up more than 300 percent in 25 years, drug abuse, crimes of violence, and problems related to sexual disorientation. 189

I have reason to understand a measure of the pain spoken of by Dr. Nicholi. I experienced it when I was 6 years old. My mother and father left me with my aunt for six months while they traveled. That last night together, I sat on my mother's lap while she told me how much she loved me and that she and my father would come back for me as soon as they could. Then they drove away as the sun dropped below the horizon. I sat on the floor in the dark for an unknown period of time, fighting back the tears as depression engulfed me.  That sorrowful evening was so intense that its pain can be recalled instantly today, more than five decades later.

In short, even when parent-child separation occurs for valid reasons in a loving home, a boy or girl frequently interprets parental departure as evidence of rejection. If we have any choice in the matter, we should not put them through that painful experience.

188 Judith S. Wallerstein and Joan B. Kelly, Surviving the Breakup (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 211.

189 Presentation given by Dr. Armand Nicholi, psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, at White House Conference on the State of the American Family, May 3, 1983.  Copies of the presentation are available in the Congressional Record, Extension of Remarks, 3 May 1983.