Petition for Guardianship: Rights of the Parent
In January of 2010 the California Appellate Court ruled in favor of a parent when considering an application for appointment of a guardian who was not a parent or relative in Suleman v. The Superior court of Orange County.
California law presumes a parent is competent to care for his or her own children, unless it is shown and found that a parent is unfit to perform the duties imposed by the relation or has, by abandonment of the child, forfeited the natural custody rights. (Estate of Akers (1920) 184 Cal. 514, 519-522. The Court equated the right to raise one's own child with Federal due process and went on to state that the right to raise your children is considered a fundamental human right. As such, the court weighed the interest of the children's biological parent in raising their child against the allegations brought forth by the petitioner for guardianship and held that the the petitioner's allegations were insufficient to infringe on the parental civil rights.
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