Fathers rights case

[dadinva]

New to the board, thought I would share an article:
Wouldnt let me post a link to it, so I've copy/pasted the information I can provide links if anyone is so inclined. This is taken from the fathersandfamilies website

Utah Does it Again – Deprives a Fit Father of All Contact With His Child
November 4th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
The single-mindedness with which state courts cut fathers out of their children's lives is something to behold.  Every time I think I've seen the worst the courts have to offer, some judge somewhere ups the ante.  Leading the pack is the state of Utah that takes a backseat to no other in its disdain for biological fathers.

By now we all know about the several adoption situations in which dads have lost their children to adoptive parents who've managed to whisk the little ones to the friendly confines of the Beehive State.  There, no act by an adoptive parent is too outrageous to be denied a court's stamp of approval.

The O'Dey case, the Wyatt case and others make it clear that all any mother has to do is deceive the child's father for a day or two – long enough to place the child in the hands of a Utah adoption attorney and sign away her parental rights – and the father has no chance of getting custody of his child.  The lawyer will take the child to Utah, place it with the adoptive couple and that is that.  To my knowledge, no Utah court has ever refused to finalize an adoption done just that way.

But the Ben Keller case is different; it's about not only denial of parental rights, but the very right to prove that he is the father.  It really doesn't get more blatant than this.  Here's a link to his attorney's website describing the case.

Ben Keller and Elizabeth Porter were high school sweethearts in Virginia.  After high school, they lived together for a time, but her mother and father were not pleased about their relationship at such an early age.  So they forced the two apart and Beth went to live in Utah.  There she met Jamison Porter whom she married and with whom she had a child.

It wasn't long, however, before she was emailing Ben back in Virginia swearing she'd made a mistake and that she loved only him.  Ben responded for a time, but his basic attitude was "you're married, so this lonelyhearts emailing has to stop."  And it would for a while, but then he'd get another message from Beth complaining about her marriage and saying Ben was the only guy for her.  He'd put a stop to the emails for a time, but in a few months, they'd begin again.  That went on for three years, during which time, Beth gave birth to another child by Jamison.

Finally she seemed to get serious about leaving her husband, so she prevailed on Ben to drive across country, pick her up and take her back to live with her parents in Virginia.  Just like in high school, that wasn't far from where Ben lived and, to no one's surprise, they started seeing each other again.  That led to sex – unprotected sex.

Soon, Beth returned to her husband and two children in Utah, only to announce that she was once again pregnant and that the child was Ben's.  Indeed, the child could only be Ben's.  He and Beth had had sex close to the time of conception and she hadn't been within 2,000 miles of Jamison.  At first, Beth enthusiastically kept Ben in the loop.

She sent ultrasound pictures and a picture frame that says "I Love My Daddy" to Dad.  She called him from the doctor's office and let Dad listen to the baby's heartbeat.  They discussed baby names.  And then, end of April/beginning of May, 2010, Mom cut off all communication with Dad.

But Ben knew the approximate date of her delivery, and shortly thereafter, he filed suit in Utah court asserting his paternity to the child to whom Beth had given birth.  Like most dads, he wanted to be part of his child's life and pay to support it should a court deny him custody.  In short, he's the type of stand-up guy the President of the United States and countless others say we want – committed, responsible fathers.

The Utah legislature and courts are having none of that.  They're not about to allow a father like Ben Keller into the life of his child, and they're more doSLURPic than most about the matter.  Indeed, Utah law is so anti-father that Ben has been denied even the opportunity to have genetic testing done to find out for certain if he's the dad.

Like most states, Utah presumes a child born to a married woman was fathered by her husband.  Utah statutes set out certain situations and conditions under which a man, not the woman's husband, can attempt to rebut the presumption of legitimacy.  For all intents and purposes, that's just like every other state.  But Utah courts have established precedents that directly contradict the statute.

In a case called In re J.W.F. (commonly known as "Schoolcraft"), the Utah Supreme Court said that a father in Ben Keller's position had to satisfy two state "policies" before he could claim paternity of a child born to a married woman:

(1) preserving the stability of the marriage and (2) protecting children from disruptive and unnecessary attacks on their paternity.

So for a biological father to even be able to ask a court to allow him to prove he's the child's father, he has to prove to a court's satisfaction that the marriage the woman is in can't be saved and that the child won't be harmed by his doing so.

That's hard enough, but in a later case called Pearson v. Pearson, the Utah Supreme Court held that there are essentially no cases in which a father could meet the requirements of the Schoolcraft case.  In Pearson, the mother and husband had already divorced and she'd remarried the biological father.  Further, a psychologist testified at trial that the 15-month-old child not only wouldn't be harmed by a relationship with his father but it was a necessity for the child's well-being.

Even then, the court denied the biological dad any parental rights to his child whatsoever.  Remember, he was actually married to his child's mother.

How could the court reach such a bizarre and obviously destructive conclusion?  Because according to it, the mere fact that the parents divorce doesn't mean that the marriage is unstable.  No, really.  I'm not making that up.

Maybe the court should look up the meaning of the word 'marriage.'

The policy of preserving the marriage extends not only to the preservation of spousal unity, but also to the preservation of parent-child relationships created by the marriage.

So, if you're following, the state legislature created no such policy test for biological fathers to pass.  That was done by the Supreme Court.  Not content with inventing law, the court moved on to make it extreme beyond belief: it concluded that a husband and wife who divorce are actually still married for the purpose of denying parental rights to a biological father.  Indeed, as long as they and the child are alive, their marriage will always be intact and even stable, according to the Utah Supreme Court.

But the court didn't stop there.  (Hey, when she was going down the rabbit hole, Alice couldn't stop either.)  It ruled in Pearson, that, with rare exceptions, no biological dad can claim his paternity if the child was born to a married woman.

Further, when a marital father has assumed parental responsibility for a child born into his marriage, and the father has established a father-child relationship, any challenge to the father's paternity is disruptive and unnecessary.

That is, the second policy test in Schoolcraft can essentially never be met.

So it should come as no surprise that Ben Keller never stood a chance in the Utah courts.

Aside from its bizarre reasoning and rank judicial activism, the judge-made law in Utah may well be unconstitutional.  For one thing it clearly deprives biological fathers of rights they seem to have under numerous U.S. Supreme Court precedents, most recently Troxel v. Granville.  In addition, it treats mothers and fathers differently based on their sex.  Obviously, no mother can ever lose her parental rights under the Schoolcraft and Pearson cases.  They're targeted at fathers only.

Ben Keller promises to pursue this case to the end.  That'll take him through a Utah appellate court and the state's Supreme Court.  Those trips shouldn't take long; Schoolcraft and Pearson defeat his chances, beyond question.  Then hopefully it's on to the Supreme Court of the United States that will have an opportunity to strike a much needed blow for fathers and for sanity.  Let's hope it does.

But legalities aside, it continues to amaze, just how dead-set courts are on depriving loving, committed, responsible fathers of even the slightest contact with their children.  Someone should point out the obvious to President Obama and all the others who believe that the scandal of fatherlessness in America is due to irresponsible men.  On the contrary, it's about irresponsible courts and politicians who refuse to pass or enforce laws that would remove the many legal barriers between fathers and their children.

And all that is done to preserve the power of mothers over the parental rights of fathers.  We see it time and again, but for no one is it easier than it was for Beth Porter.  For her, depriving Ben Keller's child of any relationship with his father was effortless.  She didn't even need to get back together with her husband to do the job.

And so it goes.  Another decent man has lost his child; another innocent child has lost her father.  And the politicians keep prating about irresponsible dads.

Just another day in family court.