I was back in court in Ft. Worth on Wednesday as an expert witness on home schooling for the same mom who was challenged for custody of her daughter, by her ex-husband, last month on the basis of the fact that she home schooled their daughter. The judge rejected that request, and the ex-husband filed another request this month asking the court to grant him authority to make educational decisions for his daughter.
When we arrived at court, the mother had made copies of the curriculum her daughter has been working on, along with evidence of that work. The attorney for the ex-husband wanted the judge to issue a ruling based on the previous hearing that would either give her client control of educational decisions or require the mother to have the child tested on a regular basis to prove there was academic progress. The judge pointed out that the father has his daughter on a regular basis and there is nothing that would prohibit him from having the child assessed. The hearing that day focused on the new request from the father for extended visitation.
The attorney for the mother pointed out that the ex-husband was doing these things to harass the mother and what the mom should do is take away his opportunity to do so. In other words, the mother should give regular updates to the father on the education of their child, curriculum being used, copies of her work being done, and copies of tests or assessment results to show the child’s academic progress so that the ex-husband has no grounds to challenge her educational decisions of her daughter. I could not agree more and have stated as much in an article on home schooling and child custody.
It is a terrible thing to have to live in such a circumstance, but it is wise to prepare and do the things necessary to protect your child and defend your right to homeschool. The judge will issue his decision on both issues in the near future. Please continue to pray for this mom.
About Tim Lambert
It is maddening that our courts are being clogged up on legal harassments. It’s just another way to continue the domestic violence against a spouse once the spouse has tried to escape the abuse.
Judges so often rule according to which party’s attorney is making the most $$ campaign contributions or yuckying it up with them buying lunch OR worse – they are so overtly judgmental – in a personal way – like back in high school when you didn’t know better – and just decide they don’t like an expert – or they don’t like one of the parties. That’s when the children suffer & the rulings are outrageous.
Really sad. We must continue to pursue getting our country back to our founding principals.
It so saddens me that there are so many homeschoolers that I meet who want that – but won’t lift a finger or voice to actually do anything about it.
They just agree it’s bad & continue on their merry way…. what will we all do when that merry way is no longer there – the choice is gone?
Thankfully Tim Lambert took s stand, let God lead him in smart ways & he’s in turn been extremely successful in protecting all of us. More successful than anyone could have ever imagined!
One person can make a difference & if Tim can do what he did & strike out on his course & gain support from so many – then imagine if ALL of us took up a government cause & did a 10th or a 5th of what Tim has done…. this WOULD be a different country.
It’s make or break time this election & the next few elections.
It’s God or Satan…. which will it be? Do you have the belief in God, do you care about the country your children will be living in enough?
Enough to get out there and stand for something? For a candidate?
I hope the answer is yes!!!
Praying for this mom and the family!
Robin Dallas You say you want to see changes made by everyone, but then we have our hands all tied up. Forces around us that people think they own our children and can take them away if you dont do what is said. There are a lot of people out there who want changes, but dont want to buck the system for fears of being in these kinds of situations. This is wrong and I hope the father realizes how he is harming his daughter. What an idiot. It WILL affect the child either way.
As a divorced home-schooling father, I can appreciate the father’s wanting some kind of authority over educational decisions. My ex and I could agree that we were not going to agree regarding home-schooling and since she has primary custody of my now 17-year old daughter going to public school, we agreed that she would have sole authority over (and therefore sole responsibility for) the educational decisions for her, but I would retain sole authority (and therefore responsibility for) that of the boy/girl 14-year old twins over whom I have primary custody.
So the father wants testing, allegedly to see that progress is being made. I invite consideration that where home school students are tested for such a reason, that it be compared to the average public school “progress” measured by the same standard. Since home school students on average outperform public school students by approximately 20% on college entrance exams, such testing should show home-schoolers progress would far outperform the “progres” of public school students, and would lead to questions as to why anyone would opt to public school their child in the first place; thereby fracturing the foundational paradigms associated with such reasoning.
My own home-school children have progressed so overwhelmingly and obviously stronger that my ex has said to me in a resigning statement, “I am 100% convinced that you made the right decision to home school (our children).” What a wonderful sound to hear from someone who at one time vehemently opposed it, and enlisted extended family members into overt and covert “campaigns” to reverse my decision. I only wish we could have found such agreement before our divorce.
I acted on faith, not my intelligence–although I did not abandon available intelligence–but my primary impetus was a spiritual tug from which I could not tear myself away, and with which I have learned over time to cooperate. I stepped forward into an adventure without knowing the outcome, acting on faith, and now the path is so convincing, even my enemies concede.]
The underlying issue at play here (as in almost all contemporary family law cases of any sort) is the same as if we were considering any other fundamental right (for example, the right to practice one’s faith or campaign for one’s favorite political candidate) … On what basis is government (courts in these cases) intervention justified at all? In other words: Why do we even find ourselves discussing this stuff?
If a parent has not wronged his or her children via abuse, or wronged his or her spouse via adultery, abandonment, violence, reckless behavior such as substance abuse, or cruelty then the rest of us (i.e., the state) have no legitimate interest in these issues. The issues may be painful but they are private. To allow otherwise is to destroy the distinction between public and private that is essential to our way of life. To use our instinctual sympathy toward children as an excuse for eroding that distinction is to inflict societal leprosy on ourselves as little by little our way of life succumbs to the ravages of a 50% divorce rate.
Facts are stubborn things. To fail (or refuse?) to face up to this fundamental problem with family law is to whistle passed the graveyard.