Would that not be because a family court isn't the forum for citing constitutional rights? Please explain how a family could possibly use that defense in Family Court after CPS has removed their children, Bob.
We gave our constitutional rights to the family court and I think it woke our judge up to the fact that our rights were violated. We did not stipulate to anything. Also when we did our dec of facts and objections corrections forms it was a slam dunk for us. We presented case laws, our parental rights, constitutional rights and amendment rights. No thanks to our lawyer who told us to stipulate(and would not file our dec of facts etc.) and the lawyer who had quit when we first started told him he should not make us do that because they would be in our lives forever.
The reason it took so long to get our granddaughter back was because we had to keep putting off our hearings for cps. Three of their lawyers quit. The one when we started our case quit before the first hearing, the second one quit before our first hearing, the third one quit before our first hearing. Which took months.
Then the state had a judge that retired and the judges met for the summer months to reschedule their schedules for each county.
When we finally got into our first hearing the judge told them they could not file any more petitions. We were on a roll from there. I figured if all of the hearings had not been canceled we would have had her back in 2-3 months.
There is no pat answer as to what is going to work in each case we all know that.
Guardianship prevents them from taking your kids and if they take you to court then your kids are safe and out of the foster system.
Jumping through their hoops and jumping ahead of them and taking whatever classes works besides doing what is necessary in the way of Dec of Facts O C's to back you up in court. Those two things work together, but many parents our jumping through their hoops for months and years because they did not know about doing the dec of facts and O C's and once they did that their children came home.
Being assertive from the beginning works if you know how to keep them at bay with your constitutional rights. If they have your kids and you spout your constitutional rights then know how to do it by filing the necessary forms to let the judge know you know.
The second time around with them we knew our constitutional rights and had our guardianships. They sputtered through the meeting and so did their lawyer. They looked like whipped dogs by the time our daughter and her lawyer were through with them.
They did the cowardly thing and slinked off into the background and did not even have the guts to tell us that our case was closed even before it was opened. That was from the horses mouth months later.
It makes me ill that this has become a numbers game of wins. All I can think of is the numbers lost and not being able to help them enough. Wishing I could be in court with them.