01 / Public document
Declaration of purpose
The personal declaration, including the Nietzsche opening and the express commitment to evidence, lawful proceedings, publication and public scrutiny. Separate from the Act.
JTforME / Initiative / 13 October 2026
Proposed legislation · Public review · Not an official petitionFor Our Children
and Families
An Act To Strengthen Maine Family Court Accountability and Protect Parent-Child Relationships
A child’s life does not restart at the latest motion.
rev9 · Whole-child history first. Workable orders. Timely review. Protected access. Continuous institutional improvement.
On this page
The complete three-document set
The purpose. The proposal. The plan.
The declaration states the purpose. The bill sets out proposed duties and safeguards. The roadmap describes the organizing and review work. Each document has a distinct role.
02 / Public document
Proposed Act
The Obnoxiously Haughty Legalise Edition: operative legislation, advocacy preface, section-change map, unresolved decisions and implementation review.
03 / Public document
2028 roadmap & outreach
The volunteer-only statewide plan, legislative route, 2030 contingency, eleven correspondence templates and source references.
What the proposed Act would require
History. Responsibility. Verified action.
Whole-child history first
Material history in chronological and cumulative context. Each parent’s conduct over time. Relevant historical witnesses. Issue-specific findings. A new motion or judicial assignment does not erase the child’s history.
Orders that can be carried out
Identify the responsible adult, required act, deadline, safe communication method, workable default, backup and review date. A general direction to cooperate is not enough to resolve a proven recurring problem.
Care, education and protected access
Make lawful access to school and provider information usable. Protect minor confidentiality. Assign the adult steps and address barriers without turning the child into the messenger.
Evidence and continuing protection
Examine factual support, continuing protective necessity and deliberate misuse separately. Protect good-faith reports. Review unsupported restrictions without making correction depend on proving bad faith.
Elapsed time stays visible
A reassignment, reopened task or fresh motion must not restart the clock. Require identifiable review and decision steps while protecting safety and due process—not automatic custody changes when time expires.
Continuous improvement, not promises
Assign operational responsibility, test bounded changes, review evidence, publish privacy-safe results, verify delivery and public spending, and correct recurring failures. A purchase, committee or installation is not performance.
A continuing public duty
Modernization must demonstrate delivery.
Plan, organize, lead and control. Make smaller, evaluated changes. Measure what families actually receive. Verify the evidence independently. Correct what fails.
Known duty → assigned owner → original clock → evidence of work → verification → correction or escalation.
The proposal calls for modern service-management capabilities, not a prescribed vendor or an automated custody score. It requires measures for intake, routing, hearings, decisions, implementation, records access, recurring failures, costs and accepted deliverables—with identifying child information kept out of public reports.
Proposed implementation milestones
These are proposed duties, not existing Maine deadlines. Administrative milestones run from the Act’s lawful effective date. An urgent case need does not wait for a reporting cycle.
30 days
Name the executive owner, operational owners and backups; establish a controlled work and failure register.
90 days
Produce a costed implementation plan, available baseline, data dictionary and legal-coordination register.
120 days
Begin the first bounded operational pilot under lawful authority.
180 days
Put operational ownership, event tracking and escalation in use; publish the first deidentified dashboard and report. Use safe manual controls where software is unfinished.
Every 30 days
Review evidence for each active priority improvement. Ordinarily use two- to four-week bounded tests, recording results, adverse effects and whether to adopt, revise or stop.
Quarterly
Publish results, unresolved defects, costs and overdue work within 30 days after quarter end, after the initial reporting milestone.
12 months
Complete the first independent operational and fiscal assessment; repeat annually.
18 months
Complete the broader child-and-family impact evaluation; repeat annually.
Rights are not an experiment
Safety and fair process remain primary.
History without a predetermined result
Material evidence remains subject to applicable evidentiary rules, confidentiality and meaningful challenge. The proposal does not automatically reopen final judgments, presume a parent’s guilt from a child’s reluctance, or require unsafe contact.
Measurement without outcome quotas
No custody quotas, desired allegation-outcome rates, secret evidence channels, blanket surveillance or identifying public child data. An operational test may not suspend a hearing right, withdraw required protection or experiment on adjudicative outcomes.
Questions requiring formal legal, fiscal and operational review
The proposal’s $15,000 fee-budget trigger is not an absolute fee cap. Professional civil liability, statutory allocation, rulemaking and constitutional boundaries, staffing, funding, privacy and new deadlines require express review. The appendices preserve those questions rather than presenting approval as already secured.
Two parallel routes
Legislate sooner. Prepare the initiative.
A 2028 ballot target, a 2030 contingency, and legislative sponsorship pursued in parallel. Timely, effective protection for children and families is the objective—not a particular route for its own sake.
Legislative action
Seek sponsorship and formal drafting, constitutional, fiscal, safety and implementation review. Keep whole-child history and mandatory continuous improvement central. A narrower implementation-and-access measure would be an expressly partial first step—not enactment of the whole proposal.
Volunteer-only organizing
The roadmap assumes no paid circulators, staff, petition manager or fundraising program. It proposes local coordination across all sixteen counties, appropriate review, permitted hosts and accountable document handling.
This is a planning and outreach document—not an issued petition or proof of ballot qualification. The roadmap’s dates are provisional planning aids. Controlling requirements and deadlines must be confirmed with Maine Elections before action. The website does not substitute for official instructions.
Version history
Earlier drafts remain available.
The October 13 rev9 documents above are the current proposal carried in this release. Earlier rev08a material is preserved for comparison, not presented as the current text.