The petition you are looking at, "Petition to enforce equal rights for children and parents at a Federal Level" would have the following effects if introduced and passed:

1. Express the Sense of Congress that children have an inalienable right to be raised by their parents, and that parents have an inalienable right to the custody and care of their children.
2. Recognize that the best environment for raising children is in a two-parent married home.
3. Recognize that all citizens, men, women and children, are entitled to equal protection under the law and that adults may not be treated differently under the law due to your status as a never-married, married or divorced person.
4. Request that the 50 States of the Union pass laws that would overhaul their divorce, child custody and child support systems to provide that:
   • Biological or adoptive parents have the right to provide for their children directly in the form of food, clothing, housing and medical care, and that the state may not interfere with the exercise of this right so long as that parent is willing and able to do so.
   • No parent may interfere with the other's right to custody, or with their parenting time.
   • No parent may be forced to provide a higher standard of material entitlement (eg: college education) to a child as a consequence of being divorced or never married to the other parent than the state imposes as an identical duty upon married or single adoptive parents.
   • Both parents would have to live in close enough proximity to each other to make this arrangement possible, and that a parent who removed themselves from that region would give up custody to the other and would not be able to take the child or children with them.
   • A parent who deliberately interferes with the other's parenting time, attempts to remove the child from shared custody (eg: parental kidnapping) or who makes a false allegation of abuse against the other would be deemed guilty of an act of child abuse.
   • A parent found unfit due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment under the above provisions would be deemed a non-custodial parent and be subject to paying child support.
   • No parent who is not unfit and is exercising their shared responsibility and rights with respect to their children may be ordered to pay child support to the other parent.
   • Any court which enters a judgment that provides for sole custody must document in the findings a legally-sufficient reason for doing so under the above provisions, including proven actual or likely abuse, neglect, or abandonment of shared custody. Any sole custody award made without this documentation would be reversible upon appeal.
5. States that fail to pass this legislation would lose 20% of their Title IV-D welfare and TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) funding for each year they are not in compliance, up to a maximum of 100%, and the funds that they would otherwise receive would be given to those states that do comply. A state that comes into compliance would have its funding restored for subsequent, but not previous, years.

It is also our belief that this legislation would provide a strong incentive for children to be born to married couples instead of single persons and that it would decrease the rate of divorce by removing financial and social incentives to use children as weapons during and after divorce proceedings.

Return to the petition in order to sign it.