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Sample Pro Se Pleading For Shared Parenting

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This is a sample draft of a pro se pleading to the court asking the court to "uphold both parents' fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their child".

If you intend to use this formal pleading or incorporate it into your arguments supporting shared parenting, you will need modify it to conform to your specific case and circumstances. Items that must be altered are enclosed in brackets, but there are additional items that will almost certainly need to be edited to be relevant to your case. Consult with an attorney or legal aid worker to ensure that the pleading meets all of the criteria required in your State.


FORMAL PLEADING FOR SHARED PARENTING

THAT 1. It is clearly Constitutionally fundamental that a) any Law, Rule, Legal Device, Judicial Act or Judicial Practice, Order, Statute, Code, etcetera, that induces or compels two citizen suitors to compete for a right or privilege that inalienably and constitutionally they both share and or b) establishes a circumstance whereby any single act committed by one of two such competing suitors subjects that one suitor to criminal prosecution for the same act which can be committed an indefinite number of times by the other suitor, who is thus merely possibly subject to civil prosecution, violates, inter alia, the equal protection clause of the Constitution for the United States of America.

THAT 2. No Court has found that [pro se litigant's Name] is an unfit parent.

THAT 3. The Supreme Court of the United States recognizes what the Circuit Court for [your County and State] apparently does NOT; that "There is a presumption that fit parents act in their children's best interests, Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584, 602; there is normally no reason for the State to inject itself into the private realm of the family to further question fit parents' ability to make the best decisions regarding their children, see, e.g., Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 304." [Troxel v. Granville (99 - 138)]

THAT 4. The Circuit Court for [your County and State] applied the opposite presumption, favoring sole custody and visitation schedules and in effect, creating privileged and unprivileged 'competing' suitors and placing on the unprivileged suitor the burden of disproving that sole custody and visitation schedules would be in the in the parties' child's best interest and thus failing to provide any protection for any unprivileged suitor's fundamental right; moreover according no deference and no special weight to the unprivileged suitor's estimation of the child's best interest and establishing nothing more than a simple disagreement between the Court and the unprivileged suitor concerning his child(ren)'s best interests therefore compelling the conclusion that the said opposite presumption exceeds the bounds of the Due Process Clause and unconstitutionally infringes on the unprivileged suitor's right to make decision s regarding the rearing of his child(ren), see, e.g., Troxel v. Granville (99 - 138)

THAT 5. All of the Orders entered pursuant to the above Captioned Case Number [case number] are predicated and maintained upon Judicial notice of an assumed fact not in evidence that: "...one of the things that we know from psychologists and people who deal with families; but although it seems very fair to parents to rotate children back and forth between two homes; it's very detrimental towards young children who are trying to develop; rather than give them two homes it gives them a sense of no home. They are constantly having to adjust to a new environment, new feeding times, new nap times, new parents or caretakers, ability to meet the needs and develop behavioral patterns. Because of this; the court is not inclined to do a rotating schedule back and forth." - the aforesaid prima fascia and defacto not being established by common notoriety and being properly the subject of testimony, and therefore, outside the scope of Judicial notice and within the realm of assumed facts not in evidence and in any case nonsense, not compelling, and not withstanding the common notoriety that citizens are entitled by supreme law to equal justice under law that upholds the sanctity of shared custody and equal access to one's biological child(ren).

THAT 6. The Court furthermore presumes and maintains in the Amended Order of Court of [date of order] "that the Plaintiff, [Plaintiff's Name] is found in contempt for interfering with the Defendant's visitations with the parties' minor child, [Child's Name] ; and it is further,..." "...ORDERED, that [Plaintiff's Name] be and herein is awarded sole residential care and custody of the minor child of the parties..." In effect, the Court "awarded sole residential care and custody" to the Plaintiff for or in spite of the Plaintiff "interfering with the Defendant's visitations"; visitations that presumably the Court 'granted' to prevent harm or potential harm to the parties' child; harm or potential harm the Plaintiff presumably caused the parties' child when she interfered with the Defendant's visitations.

THAT 7. Apparently agreeing insidiously with the Supreme Court's reasoning that the Federal Constitution permits a State to interfere with parents’ fundamental right to rear their children only to prevent harm or potential harm to the child, the Circuit Court for [your County and State] fails to take judicial notice of the fact that the Court routinely acts to fashion hard and fast rules that have the effect of granting to female suitors veto power over the possibility of a shared custody award most often on the basis of fabricated and unfounded 'presumptions' determining that rotating children back and forth between two homes is "very detrimental towards young children" according to " psychologists and people who deal with families" and presumably exclusively under imposed shared custody arrangements, fails to take judicial notice of the legal fact that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause has a substantive component that "provides heightened protection against government interference with certain fundamental rights and liberty interests," Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720, including parents' fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children, see, e.g., Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 651. Pp. 5-8, and interferes with the unprivileged suitor's fundamental right to rear his child(ren) by Ordering that he be the sole "obligor" subjected to "an immediate and continuing withholding Order on all earnings" and that he be the one suitor subject to criminal prosecution for committing, voluntarily or not, the same act which can be willfully committed an indefinite number of times by the privileged suitor, who is merely subject to possible civil prosecution at the Court's discretion; in effect soliciting the privileged parent to conspire with the Court to violate and allow the violation (respectively), to some degree and for some time, of what was Ordered by said Court while strictly prohibiting, by "penalty", police, and Official enforcement, the unprivileged parent from committing any violation of what was said Ordered.

THAT 8. All of the Orders entered pursuant to the above Captioned Case Number [case number] effect a cruel, while not unusual, circumstance that apparently goes judicially unnoticed and exacerbates the tensions between the parties; teaching the parties' child, by example over course of time, that one parent has a greater and superior privilege to that of the other parent to impact the amount of access the child has to the less privileged parent; inherently injuring the minor child's opinion of the less privileged parent and estranging the minor child from the less privileged parent.

THAT 9. The Defendant is defacto the aforesaid 'less privileged parent' and 'unprivileged suitor' in this Captioned Case and is forced, by the impact upon his liberties, his quality of life, and the liberty and quality of life of his children, into additional litigation that would furthermore burden his parental rights.

Wherefore, the Defendant prays,

That the Honorable Court modify the Amended Order of Court of [date of order] to effectively uphold both parents' fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their child by explicitly imposing shared custody between the parties on a rotating or alternating schedule that precludes either parent from violating the other parent's rights without equal penalty for the same act and that subjects both or neither parents to wage withholding.



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