Forced to pay $320,000 for seeking 50/50 custody

If you are a good father, certainly the family court will grant you 50/50 custody. But if the mother objects - perhaps out of vindictiveness or to be rewarded by the State with a higher guideline order - your only option may be a contested hearing. How much money do you have? These can get expensive. In effect the Family Court is holding children for ransom. On March 4, 2005, Michael Newdow - the plaintiff in the Pledge of Allegiance lawsuit - was forced to pay $320,000 to the attorneys who the mother of his child used to deprive him of sharing equally in raising their child.

View the KOVR Channel 13 News coverage

IN THE NEWS

Dad Who Mounted Pledge Challenge Gets Partial Custody Tony Mauro Legal Times 09-18-2003 Michael Newdow has regained partial legal custody of his daughter, likely boosting the chances that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up his controversial First Amendment challenge to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. On Sept. 11, following a lengthy trial on the custody issue, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge James Mize told Newdow and his daughter's mother, Sandra Banning, that Newdow, who was stripped of legal custody in February 2002, would regain joint custody. The exact wording of the order is being worked out by both sides

Girl in Pledge case won't hear arguments CNN Tuesday, March 2, 2004 Posted: 9:57 AM EST SACRAMENTO, California (AP) -- The girl at the center of a constitutional challenge to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools won't be able to watch her father argue the case before the Supreme Court, a California judge has ruled. Michael Newdow, an atheist, asked that his 9-year-old daughter be allowed to attend the March 24 hearing in Washington. But the judge said that a custody dispute involving the girl would be discussed before the high court and that it would be inappropriate for her to hear those arguments. "It would be dangerous and not good for the child," Sacramento County Superior Court Judge James Mize said. Banning's California attorney, Dianne Fetzer, agreed with the ruling. "I just don't think it's appropriate for her to be there," she told the judge.

ESSAY - BY MIKE

$375,000.... that is more than 50 times the $8,000 he spent on his own attorneys … California's version of a "level playing field." This was the cost of regaining the joint legal custody that Judge Mize had revoked at a short-cause hearing.

It might be noted that not once during the two years that the Pledge case was in the news did anyone ever hear of what Newdow did wrong to justify keeping him from sharing equally in the custody of his daughter (which is all he's ever sought). The explanation for that is simple: he never did anything wrong. Newdow is a wonderful father, whose sole "crime" is that he refused to allow the State to unconstitutionally deprive him of his parental rights. That's the only reason why - in addition to losing his right to be with his child as well as six years of hard work getting to the Supreme Court of the United States - he has now had nearly half a million dollars taken from him. This money - his money - would be used to pay attorneys to take away his own rights … regardless, said the judge in the case, of whether or not he is right or even if he prevails.

What country is this? And how can anyone prevail when he is told that every move he makes to uphold his basic liberties will come with a price tag in the tens of thousands of dollars?

How long will everyone keep maintaining this illusion? There is no "best interests" when two fit parents - which is the situation in the vast majority of family law cases - are willing, ready and able to care for their loved ones. The term is meaningless. It makes as much sense as decreeing what is the "best music" or the "best religion." What criteria do you use? How do measure people in terms of their meeting those criteria? How do you weigh the criteria against each other? How do you integrate them over time?

Usually when government agents - under the cloak of their official positions - unjustifiably injure citizens, we punish them severely. Yet the governmental agents who unjustifiably take from parents their rightful time with their children commit every day a harm far in excess of what Darryl Rosen did over the span of his career. Why, then, are their abuses - and they are nothing but abuses - praised? And why would we give them the power to tell any citizen who seeks to end their tyranny, that he will be forced to spend his life's savings if he even begins to fight this abject injustice?

Newdow has argued since his first encounter with the family law system that it is the law - not the parties - that turns these situations into battles. To the legislators and judges in this field, where (besides in your fantasies) are the benefits of this idiocy? How did Newdow's daughter - now with two parents that don't speak to each other, with access to a fraction of the wealth her father spent his life working to acquire, and with a previously joyful parent whose life is now comprised of little besides pain beyond words - have her "best interests" served? How have any of the millions of children with two fit parents had their "bests interests" furthered by this completely unproven legal framework that does nothing but cause injury?

Had the guards in the Abu Ghraib prison simply chanted "best interests of the child" during their illegal behaviors, would we have been as quick to ignore the abuses there as we do here, on our own soil, with our own citizens?

Please help put an end to this ridiculous horror.