Use names only when the record supports it.
Names and titles belong only where the source is a court record, docket entry, official correspondence, public filing, public compensation record, or another record-supported material.
WE THE PEOPLE
“… establish JUSTICE …”
Citizen initiative · Public-review draft rev08a · Nonpartisan
Justice for Children, Families, and the Parent-Child Relationship
An Act To Strengthen Maine Family Court Accountability and Protect Parent-Child Relationships
A citizen-led proposal to make family-court orders real in practice: timely implementation, meaningful record access, safe parent-child contact, public accountability, and due-process-protected remedies when delay becomes harm.
104,041 external-safe pages. 108,080 legal-matter pages. Process is not justice.
Public-review status: This is a citizen-led public-review draft, not an official ballot petition. The open letter is a public accountability record, not a request for ex parte adjudication, not a request for public officials to decide a case, and not a request that any court consider material outside lawful process.
WE THE PEOPLE
“… establish JUSTICE …”
Public Statement: Justice for All
Justice for all cannot mean justice only for people who can afford delay, transcripts, procedural gamesmanship, and professional gatekeeping.
“Justice belongs to the public. It cannot be guarded like private property by any professional class.”Justin A. Tahai
In family matters, delay is not neutral. Children grow while adults argue. Young people inherit the damage when courts, lawyers, parents, institutions, and political systems reward escalation instead of repair.
This initiative is not partisan. It does not ask Maine people to join a party, defend a profession, or excuse a system. It asks citizens to insist that public institutions do what they already claim to do: protect children, preserve safe parent-child relationships, provide meaningful access to records and review, and make justice function in real life.
Process is not justice when children and families are left to drown in delay.
Independent citizen reform
Not left. Not right. Not party-owned.
JTforME is independent and citizen-led. Justin Tahai is not a member of any political party. This is not party machinery, partisan fundraising, or adversarial political theater.
Children are not Republican or Democratic. Parent-child relationships are not left or right. Court access, record access, public accountability, and institutional responsibility belong to the people.
The adversarial nature of the two-party system mirrors the adversarial failures of family court when systems reward winning over truth, delay over repair, and positioning over responsibility. That harms society, children, and young adults.
WE THE PEOPLE
“… establish JUSTICE …”
By the Numbers: 108,000+ Pages Is Not Justice
The open letter is not offered to retry a family matter on a website. It is offered as a public accountability record showing how delay, ambiguity, record barriers, eFiling friction, transcript cost, and professional nonaccountability can overwhelm the basic promise of justice.
The constitutional promise to “establish justice” means more than keeping a docket technically alive. Orders must be implementable, records must be reachable, review must be meaningful, and children must not lose developmental time while adults and institutions preserve appearances.
104,041external-safe indexed pages
108,080legal-matter baseline pages
24,904filing/service/receipt/rejection/entry records
The question is not whether every disputed allegation is already proven. The public-policy question is simpler: Why should any parent-child matter require this much preserved paper to obtain basic implementation, access, review, and accountability?
rev08a current framework
A sharper initiative draft starts by narrowing what can be attacked.
rev08a moves the initiative from a broad anger-and-remedy draft toward a submission-hardened framework: clearer definitions, stronger safety exceptions, written findings before rights-affecting action, phased implementation, fiscal/capacity awareness, and a clean line between findings and enforceable language.
Public accountability standard
Record-supported public accountability notice.
For avoidance of doubt, this public-review work may identify public officials, court personnel, agency personnel, and publicly compensated actors by name and title where their actions appear in court records, docket entries, official correspondence, public filings, or other record-supported materials.
Any such references will be made for purposes of accuracy, source attribution, public accountability, and institutional reform. They are not intended as personal attacks. Where a statement concerns disputed facts, the statement should identify the facts as disputed. Where a statement concerns a filed document, order, docket event, or official communication, the statement should describe it by date, role, and record source.
The point is not personality. The point is that children and families experience institutional harm through identifiable decisions, omissions, delays, procedural barriers, and implementation failures. Public accountability requires enough specificity that the pattern can be audited rather than dismissed as a generalized complaint.
Separate fact from dispute.
Filed documents, orders, docket events, and official communications should be described by date, role, and record source. Disputed facts should be marked as disputed.
Keep accountability institutional.
The purpose is accuracy, source attribution, public accountability, and institutional reform, not personal attacks or unsupported motive claims.
Section map
rev08a public-review section map
Download: initiative_rev08_section_map.csv · Machine-readable: initiative-rev08-section-map.json
| Section | Title | Revision note | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Purpose and findings | Keep findings separate from enforceable commands; state public-interest goals without deciding private facts. | Keep |
| 2 | Definitions | Narrow definitions to conduct-specific terms, safety exceptions, and due-process thresholds. | Rewrite |
| 3 | Early case management and timeline reporting | Require administrative tracking and public reporting of prolonged cases without forcing unsafe speed. | Rewrite |
| 4 | Resolution-aligned incentives | Shift from punitive fee caps to disclosure, written findings, and review when delay appears unnecessary. | Narrow |
| 5 | Parent-child relationship protection | Use best-interest, safety, and evidence standards; avoid overbroad alienation labels. | Rewrite |
| 6 | Good-faith safety reporting protection | Protect abuse, coercive-control, stalking, sexual-assault, child-safety, mandated-reporting, DHHS/OCFS, and emergency safety actions. | Add |
| 7 | GAL and evaluator capacity/accountability | Use qualification, capacity, disclosure, and reporting requirements; avoid unfunded mandates without phase-in. | Rewrite |
| 8 | DHHS/OCFS separation and coordination | Keep child-protection lanes distinct from private family-court disputes while allowing safe coordination and public routing. | Add |
| 9 | Public reporting and implementation | Phase implementation through reports, rules, pilots, training, and source-published metrics. | Rewrite |
| 10 | Review, severability, and effective dates | Add review channels, severability, phased dates, and guardrails for rights-affecting actions. | Add |
Non-negotiable guardrails
Strong reform language must not create new safety or due-process failures.
Safety protection rules
- Protect good-faith abuse, coercive-control, stalking, sexual-assault, child-safety, mandated-reporting, and emergency protective actions.
- Do not make a parent choose between safety reporting and fear of punishment for reporting.
- Keep DHHS/OCFS, criminal, protection-order, emergency, and private family-court lanes distinct.
- Use child safety and best-interest standards before administrative speed.
Due-process rules
- Require notice and opportunity to be heard where rights, time, sanctions, or fees are affected.
- Require written findings and materiality thresholds before restrictions or penalties.
- Make review, correction, appeal, or reconsideration paths clear.
- Use severability and phased effective dates where provisions may be challenged.
Public review text
Copy-safe rev08a current framework language
Status notice
Draft / pre-submission: These materials are a public-review framework for a proposed citizen initiative. They are not an official ballot measure, not legal advice, and not a substitute for qualified review.
Purpose statement
The purpose of this proposal is to improve public accountability, child safety, family stability, timely process, and transparent reporting in Maine family systems while preserving due process, good-faith safety reporting, and the separate legal roles of the courts, DHHS/OCFS, protection-order processes, criminal processes, and support services.
Revision rule
Each enforceable provision should identify who must act, what process applies, what record must be created, what safety exception applies, what due-process protection applies, and when implementation begins.
Pair with: red-team issue register and public review center before publishing excerpts as final.
Next movement
rev08a is the bridge between anger and enforceable reform.
- Public review. Collect language, safety, due-process, fiscal, and source-quality comments without private case intake.
- Submission counsel / statutory drafting review. Convert the framework into submission-ready statutory language.
- Fiscal and implementation notes. Identify training, staffing, reporting, technology, and administrative ownership.
- Official citizen-initiative process. Link to official Maine Secretary of State resources rather than presenting this site as the procedural authority.