Happy Ending to a Long and Sordid Tale

"Anna Nicole Smith's daughter Dannielynn Hope is growing up so fast. The 12-year-old made her appearance at the Barnstable Brown Kentucky Derby Gala on Friday in Louisville, Kentucky, posing alongside dad Larry Birkhead on the red carpet..."
http://people.com May 4, 2019

Well I was so pleased to see a happy ending to a story I had posted about on this blog over a decade ago which was the whole Anna Nicole Smith debacle.  Her daughter Dannielynn Hope was at the Kentucky Derby recently with her father and she appeared to be happy, healthy and safe (and in the United States where she belonged) in spite of the chaos of her early life and that's about all we can ask for these children I think...

Best of luck to her and her father in the future...

Courts Continue Usurping Mothers Natural Rights

One of the most errie aspects about this whole custody of Anna Nicole Smith’s body is how closely it mirrored the Teri Schiavo case in showing us the working of the courts and how they establish legal rights of guardianship over those who can’t speak for themselves. If you recall Teri Schiavo was the young Florida wife, who was in a coma (cause unknown). Her husband, Michael Schiavo, was also the one legally empowered to make medical decisions regarding her care. Similarly to the Howard K. Stern/Anna Nicole Smith situation (over the custody of her body), Michael Schiavo too was in an ongoing fight with Teri Schiavo’s parents about whether or not to disconnect the food/water tubes keeping her body alive.

Over the last few weeks, I actually felt like I was reliving the trauma of the Schiavo case all over again. I happened to be sick at home during the beginning of the Anna Nicole Smith court fight and was furious watching that Judge totally disregarding Anna Nicole Smith’s mother while setting up a legal scenario designed to favor Howard K. Stern. Clearly assigning a guardian to represent the so-called ‘best interest of the child’ favored the man who had helped abduct that child in the first place and was currently fraudulently named on her birth certificate as her ‘father’ so he already had defacto legal custody of the child in question.

It was a foregone conclusion from the moment the guardian was named that any so-called guardian 'for the child' would have to name the child's current defacto custodial parent as the person with the right to claim her mother's body. Logic demanded it, unless the birth certificate could be found to be fraudalent before the right to claim the mother's remains was decided. Since this was not likely to happen, the whole hearing was a setup from the moment the statue was disregarded and a child UNDER the age of 18 was designated as next of kin. The whole thing was just a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo designed to empower the men involved and ignore Virgie Arthur's more powerful legal and as well as natural claim to her daughter's remains.

So basically Howard K. Stern was rewarded for perpetuatng a fraud. This entire legal situation was instigated by said fraud to ensure a baby was born outside of US jurisdiction. It has been a so far successful attempt to deny that child’s father any contact with his child, deny the child her American citizenship, as well as any connection with either side of her extended US family. Anna Nicole Smith was replicating the same scenario that she had gotten away with ten years earlier, alienating her son from his grandmother, Virgie Arthur, who raised him for the first five years of his life. Now Anna Nicole Smith was pulling the same stunt with her daughter and I was just sick watching this Judge rewarding an active participant in this fraud, Howard K. Stern.

Now to return to the Schiavo case: I was ready to fly down to Florida during that situation, that’s how upset I was by the whole thing. But was turned off by the hoards of religious fanatics who had taken over the argument. Anyway, even though our President himself claimed he was supportive of Teri Schiavo’s parents being named as her guardians, yet we were told the law was strictly defined vis-à-vis designation of a guardian in Florida, first a spouse, then a child OVER 18, THEN parents.

That was it.

The republic itself was at stake to listen to the media drone on about it. The President himself couldn’t change this, as it was unconstitutional for him to try to overrule a sovereign state’s laws. The President’s brother, Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, supposedly was planning on having his own police detail drive in with an ambulance and just remove Teri Schiavo from the home she was in, yet the county the home was located in found out about it and threatened a confrontation involving the state police if he tried it, so he backed down. The Supreme Court held a special session, yet they too turned down Teri Schiavo’s parents as there was absolutely no way around the Florida statues. NONE.

Even though Michael Schiavo was living as man and wife with another woman for almost ten years, he even had two children with her. Clearly he was no longer in a position to act in the best interest of a ‘wife’ lying in a coma. Yet the Florida statues were so clear, that her parents had to stand by helplessly as their daughter was starved to death. There was nothing anyone could do. Not to mention Michael Schiavo’s final spite filled act of cremating Teri Schiavo’s body and then not letting her parents even know where she was going to be buried, so they couldn’t attend her funeral. Actually I was kind of relieved he did this as it justify me hating the guy. Since this final venomous curtain call in the Teri Schiavo drama said more about him then anything else that had happened up to that point and ensured his place in the history books when this case is written about and guess what: it won’t be a good one.

Anyway until last week I think most of us believed that the Florida statues were written in stone. Guardianship statues were tamper proof, no deviations, no wiggle room, no interpretation allowed. Okay. Fine. Thus I fully expected to see Howard K. Stern, leaving the courthouse with his tail between his legs, as Anna Nicole Smith’s mother reclaimed her daughter, probably shortly followed by her grandson being removed from the Bahamas (where he had previously spent ONE NIGHT before dying there) and being reburied right next to his mother in the country of their birth. As Stern was not ever married to Anna Nicole Smith. It’s even doubtful if he was ever really her boyfriend or just a stand in to help commit paternity fraud. Thus he was entitled to no standing under Florida’s presumably very strict statues.

Yet much to my shock it appeared Florida statues are not written in stone. As the Judge in the case decided to overlook the strong possibility that Howard K. Stern engaged in fraud to get himself named on this child’s birth certificate. Or that he might have strong financial motivations (as in Marshall estate ruling) to wish to remain as a guardian, utilizing a baby, to manage the Anna Nicole Smith’s estate.

Although Howard K. Stern was shown to have leeched off Anna Nicole Smith for years, he was quickly given the moral equivalence pass, since, Virgie Arthur, Anna’s mother was found to have gotten a plane ticket to the Bahamas paid for by a magazine publisher. Excuse me but how in the heck do people think this woman, a retired grandmother, is able to finance an ongoing court battle going on between Florida and the Bahamas? Unlike Stern, who is making millions by selling exclusive rights to Entertainment Tonight for interviews or Larry Birkhead, whose parents are footing the bill for his stupidity in getting involved with this situation, Grandma Arthur has to pay for everything herself. She’s probably draining her retirement account just to pay the lawyers. AND just like most other grandmothers, she is concerned about her grand daugher being the pawn of a bunch of leeches determined to get custody of this kid so they can keep milking the situation, just as they did when her mother was alive. Grandma Arthur couldn’t do anything at that time, but she can and should act now. After all she’s already lost one grandkid to this bunch, I can see her being concerned about losing another.

There is something very disheartening about the level of jealousy within people today, who simply refuse to admit that a mother’s bond with her children is more powerful then other social bonds and don’t want to accept the possibility that Virgie Arthur is doing this out of love for her daughter and concern for her grandchild. Or that a daughter like Anna Nicole Smith: total screwup, drug addict, spite filled alienator who refused to even visit her mother for ten years, money-grubbing conniver who used men for money, could still have a mother out there who loved her and worried about her children. Yes, believe it or not this happens everyday. The most horrible adults in the world still have a mother who loves them, even if that love is not returned. Everyone keeps pointing out that video where Anne Nicole Smith appears to hate her mother. Well guess what: it doesn’t matter, as it tells us nothing about how her mother felt about her.

Anyway this new interpretation of Florida’s guardianship statues appeared to be fine with the media and the courts, since any statue that can usurp a mothers’ natural rights to her children, even when they are dead, appears to fit the bill here. This latest ruling pretty much ignoring the past precedence set was just another obvious spit in the eye to biological parenthood and let’s be clear about this: everytime it happens it’s an attack on mothers. As mothers are the only ones who have our rights designated through natural law due to our more meaningful biological link to children. It is men who need the cover of the courts to give them any legitimate claim. So each and every attack favoring legal over biological connections is an insidious attempt to undermine women in their role as mothers. To place any and all relationships over and above the mother/child one and to once again place man, any man at the center of all things in a women’s life, be he husband, boyfriend, your attorney, whatever. Sadly men do not seem to be able to deal with not being featured with star billing in every show.

Still Relevant After All These Years...

I just came across this, oldie but goodie, which premise still holds true over 10 years after it was written by Professor of Family Law, Mary Ann Mason.

As usual if we 'follow the money' we can see where it leads:  courts attempting to give illegitimate rights to men in order to generate child support payments from what are basically recreational sperm donors, who should have no more rights to children then the man in the moon. 

The thing that troubles me is that people who presumably can act upon this have known about it for almost a decade and yet I  have seen no significant changes in public policy to make any improvements in the situation...

Frankly I feel that if courts are going to rule on custody using a strictly biological relationship to the child then the maternal grandmother should have as much if not more rights then a biological father, since genetically speaking she is more closely related...

Women who can, need to start speaking up on these issues instead of just sitting around on their hands while these attacks on mothers and children are allowed to take place.

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NEWS RELEASE, 1/28/99 Modern custody disputes favor father's rights over child's welfare, according to UC Berkeley study

By Patricia McBroom, Public Affairs 

Berkeley -- The modern drive to expand fathers' rights in custody cases has resulted in a significant decline in decisions made in the best interest of the child, according to new research by a University of California, Berkeley, professor of family law.

States now give higher priority to blood ties than to parenting and children can be ordered to live with biological fathers they have never known, said Mary Ann Mason, a lawyer and professor of family law at the UC Berkeley's School of Social Welfare.

"An unwed father who has never seen his child will be given custody in most states in preference to unrelated individuals who have done the actual parenting," said Mason. "Unwed fathers now have the same rights as married fathers - a major historical change of the past two decades."

She added that such disregard for children's needs also occurs in divorce cases where courts "have rushed to 'divide the child,' by insisting on joint custody and ignoring what we know about early child development."

Children are not being represented in court or given a voice of any kind, Mason says in a wide-ranging analysis of custody law published this month (February) as a book.

In "The Custody Wars: Why Children Are Losing the Legal Battle and What We Can Do About It" ( Basic Books, N.Y.), Mason evaluates the contemporary and historical status of custody decisions, demonstrating that modern-day courts have regressed in their concern for child welfare.

This has happened, in part, because states - now wanting to encourage unwed fathers to pay more child support - offer unprecedented rights to them as parents based purely on biology, not actual parenting, said Mason. In another arena, she added, parental rights have been expanded via joint custody decisions - unwise in the case of very young children who need stability in their lives.

"Young children's best interests are largely ignored in joint custody decisions," said Mason. "If very small children could speak, they would not choose to divide their lives in half. It is just not developmentally appropriate."

Courts have known this about small children, ages six and under, since the turn of the century when the "tender years doctrine" became law. Today, nearly 100 years later, the doctrine - which favors a primary parent - is being ignored in a "politically correct" move to joint custody, she said.

But it is in the case of new rights for unwed fathers that Mason finds the most egregious examples of a legal system that disregards the welfare of the child.

Until a Supreme Court decision in 1971, unwed fathers had no rights to child custody based on the genetic relationship. Now, most states have given unwed fathers all the rights of a married father.

"In the case of unwed fathers," said Mason, "states have abandoned the child-centered 'best interests' test. 

Today, it must be shown only that it would be harmful to the child to live with the biological parent, not merely in that child's best interest." She said this means that a young child can be taken from an adoptive parent with whom he or she has a strong attachment, as in the celebrated case of Baby Jessica, because the biological rights of the father have become paramount.

In Michigan, four-year-old Baby Jessica was raised by adoptive parents only to be given in a custody dispute to her biological father. The father was not married to Jessica's biological mother and the child had never seen him.

"If our first concern was truly the best interests of children, we would look at unwed fathers in a different light," said Mason. "We would look, first of all, to whom is performing the actual parenting."

In a current California case, an unwed father was allowed to make a paternity claim for a child being raised by his former girlfriend and her husband.

In the past, such a claim would not have been tolerated by courts because their primary intent was to preserve family stability. This time-honored tradition, in which the married father was always the legal father, also protected the child.

But no more, said Mason.

By allowing this paternity claim, the California court "paid little attention to the rights of Brian, now age four, or even to his needs. His best interests were not considered at all," she said.

If paternity tests bear him out, said Mason, the unwed father may sue for custody and sink that family into dispute, with serious psychological risks for Brian.

"Countless studies, focusing both on married and divorced families, indicate that conflict produces serious negative results in children who need the stability of a primary parent," she said. "We should not be making the rights of parents, whether the mother or the father, paramount in custody cases."

Mason argues strongly that children need advocates in court and that most custody disputes should be settled on the basis of the needs and wishes of the child involved, with changes depending on age.

Until they are adolescents, children should be represented not only by attorneys, but by child advocates, Mason recommends. Currently, psychological evaluations in custody cases test only the personality fitness of the parents, through tests that detect psychotic tendencies. They give little weight to who is doing the parenting, and the evaluators rarely listen to what the children want.

As a result, it is common for children to be forced to divide their lives or spend time with parents they don't want to see, said Mason.

"This is not a child-centered policy. The equal rights of the parents, not the best interests of the child, are the guiding principle," said Mason. She recommends that the United States follow the example of English courts which have provided all children in custody disputes with two advocates -- a legal and a personal representative -- since passage of the Children Act of 1989.

"The philosophy of the Children Act is that children are usually the least powerful party in any dispute and need the greatest protection," said Mason, pointing out that children get far better representation in U.S. criminal courts than in family courts.

Mason believes the wishes of mature children over the age of 13 should prevail in a custody dispute, unless they are at risk of being harmed by their choices.

In addition, she calls for regular reviews of custody arrangements to adapt to the changing needs of children as they grow. And, she urgently endorses a return to the policy of favoring a primary parent, during the tender years.

"The fundamental concept of attachment, introduced after World War II by John Bowlby has withstood a new generation of researchers," said Mason. "For children under six, it can be very destructive to disrupt their bond with a primary parent."

"There must be a place where children are heard and their changing needs are addressed," she said, "a place where judges are educated in child development; a place where the rule of law, while flexible, truly promotes the best interests of the child rather than catering to gender politics."

Added Mason, "Children are not property to be exchanged."

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