Constitutional Due Process Protections in Child Custody Proceedings: Under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, the fundamental liberty interest of fit parents to the care, custody, and companionship of their children is constitutionally protected against state infringement (Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57). Family courts cannot curtail parental authority, award unequal time, or impose state supervision without satisfying strict scrutiny and proving parental unfitness by clear and convincing evidence.
You try to talk to your neighbor or your child's teacher and tell them that you really didn't do anything wrong but that the judge ignored your civil rights, and you most likely are met with disbelief.
Worse, if you try to bring up the fact that civil rights exist in family law to your attorney, you probably receive a resignation letter.
This is what parents have been facing despite the fact that there is case law showing that civil rights are being ignored in family law. This case dates back to 1967.
The tragedy here is that parents are paying for attorneys thinking that they are getting this protection and by the time they discover that they are not it is too late, they are broke, time is being lost with their child, and there is no one else there to help them. There is nothing that is protecting parents from these losses. There is no accountability of the judges and the BAR association does not require attorneys recognize these civil rights.
Parents are left to learn these rights and protect them themselves. When they do so they can be punished by the judges in these courts. Their child is used as a way to stop them from speaking out or asserting their rights.
Appellate courts refuse to hear that their rights were ignored if they are not raised. This is putting parents in a bad position of choosing between losing more time with their child or fighting for the protection and full exercise of their rights that they should have received in the first place.
When it is obvious that SCOTUS has known that this egregious and licentious behavior has been going on and is continuing for so long, you would think that the federal court would now see it as the time to step in and take some initiative in ensuring that parents and children receive some protection from these abuses.
There are growing numbers of parents filing in federal court and hoping that they can finally get past the abstention doctrines that have been preventing them from being heard.
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