Right To Privacy - Part 5

"This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice." -- Oliver Wendell

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Legal Arguments:

F. The Search for a Compelling State Interest

In the Law

After Connor 668 So.2d, and independent of Connor 668

So.2d, there is no legal doctrine supporting a compelling State interest for
lifetime support of one spouse to another. The above noted legal origins of
spousal support provide no legal basis, let alone a legal doctrine, for
statutorily mandated lifetime spousal support after the dissolution of marriage.

Certainly the State cannot articulate a compelling reason to require permanent
postdissolution spousal support, let alone set a standard of support to a former
spouse to be at the level of the lifestyle of the marriage as held in
Canakaris 383 So.2d 1197 (Fla.1980). There is no evidence in the opinion
that the Canakaris standard was anything but an arbitrary choice made to resolve
the conflict of a multiplicity of standards established by district courts
prior. There is no statement of public policy or expression why that standard
was chosen over the others. More important, the ruling now violates the Privacy
Amendment and conflicts with Connor 688 So.2d.

The Supreme Court in Canakaris 383 So.2d changed the standard it
established only six years earlier in Kennedy v. Kennedy, 303 So.2d 629,
631 (Fla. 1974) when it interpreted the public policy of the State to be if a
spouse had the capacity to make her own way through the remainder of her life
without her spouse's assistance the courts could not require alimony other than
for rehabilitative purposes.

In six short years, in Canakaris 383 So.2d, the court ratcheted up the
standard to the lifestyle of the marriage. In light of the Privacy Amendment and
Connor 688 So. 2d it is not the place of the State, and especially the judicial
branch, to determine and assume whether a former spouse can make her own way
through the remainder of her life. Now with the subsequent passage of the
Privacy Amendment and the Connor 668 So.2d opinion such rulings and the statutes
upon which they are based do not muster to a compelling State interest. The
rulings and the Statutes fail the compelling State interest test and are
therefore unconstitutional.

All dissolution proceedings are to be in Chancery with the mandate the doctrine
of equity be applied. (See § 61.011 Fla. Stat., § 61.08 (2) Fla. Stat.) Equity
is not a compelling State interest.

INTERESTING READING:
* Navigating The Former Spouse Protection Act. What happens to military
pensions in a dissolution of marriage?
* The Criminalization of Fatherhood: Family Court Most Powerful Branch of the
Judiciary by Stephen Baskerville

LEGAL INFORMATION AND RESEARCH CORNER:
* Harvard Law School Library

EXAMPLES OF A JUDICIAL SYSTEM GONE ASTRAY:
* A System of Injustice America Locked Up
* Judge under scrutiny again
* Judge is accused of bias in Allen affair

RELATED WEBSITES OF INTEREST:
* Mens Activism News Network