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My name is Joshua. I'm your host. For many years here at Radical Personal Finance, the most popular episode of the show was quite an unexpected hit, at least unexpected to me. It was episode 456, which was titled "Protect Your Money by Arrest-Proofing Yourself and Your Children." I used the information in a book called "Arrest-Proof Yourself" and talked about how it's so important that you or your children not be arrested and how important that is to your long-term financial life.

It's no longer the most popular episode, but for many years it was. Today, I want to continue in another episode that in some ways will be similar to this by talking about what to do if you are ever targeted with regard to child protective services. First, a headline that I saw from the Daily Wire.

Here's the headline. "An anti-Christian Reddit group falsely reported a family to child services. DeSantis," the governor of Florida, "says Florida won't stand for it," by Ash Show, published August 1, 2024. A Christian family camping in Florida was the target of false reports of child abuse, and now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says the accusers will be investigated.

J.D. and Brittany Lott, two military veterans from Texas, and their eight kids were camping and posting to their social media following of more than 600,000 when they were contacted by Florida's Department of Children and Families, DCF. The family explained the situation in a two-part Instagram series and included screenshots of the messages they received.

Their story began just a few weeks after Brittany gave birth to their eighth daughter, Florida's Voice reported. Brittany told the outlet she received a message online claiming her child was suffering from "severe jaundice, severe sunburn, and lethargy," and Brittany deleted the message and blocked the sender. But according to the family's Instagram post, this wasn't just one person.

Turns out it's an entire group of anti-Christian group working together on Reddit who concocted this crazy story about us, the Lott said. A top official in the Florida governor's office told the Daily Wire that the targeted harassment is "unacceptable" and will be pursued by the state. "Utilizing government entities to make false reports or harass others is unacceptable and will be referred to law enforcement for investigation and, ultimately, prosecution," Brian Griffin, communications director for Governor Ron DeSantis' office, told the Daily Wire.

And it goes on. One more. "At the end of April, the family had just left Florida after camping at the Topsail Hill Preserve State Park when they received a message from the DCF saying they were under investigation. The Lotts knew immediately where the allegations had come from. An anti-Christian Reddit group had been targeting the family for years.

The group had ramped up its accusations against the Lotts since their youngest child was born with a revolving door of false accusations." You can read the article. I'll link to it as well as the Florida's Voice article and the Instagram posts by the Instagram channel called American Family Road Trip.

What interests me about this topic is that you need to be prepared with different information and different advice to deal with CPS, the Child Protective Services. I'm trying to figure out what name to use given they're kind of different in many states. You need to be prepared with a different set of advice to deal with CPS than you do with many other government agents.

A number of years ago, I read a book called Defending the Innocent from Child Protective Services by an author named Derek William Bootle, who is, if I remember correctly, is a psychologist and a mental health counselor and has also worked as an advocate and counselor for people interacting with Child Protective Services.

What I learned from that book is that the standard protocols that you might use when interacting with the police don't necessarily apply when interacting with Child Protective Services. If you have children, I want you to be prepared with some of this information, and I'm going to do my best to give you an outline of what I know of that you need to be aware of to interact successfully with Child Protective Services, CPS, when they show up at your door.

And I'm just going to standardize and say CPS because that's the one I'm most familiar with. Again, your state may have a different name or your country may have a different name, but most countries, most states within the United States have some version of this. There are a couple things that we need to be aware of.

First and foremost, nobody wants children to be abused. And that's why most of our governments have some kind of government organization that is targeting ending child abuse. And that's probably right. That's probably how it should be. Now, am I for sure about that? No, but I don't want to see children abused, so I'm not going to make this my particular issue to fight about and say, "This is the thing that's got to be eliminated first." But abuse can go both ways.

Abuse can go in the direction of children and abuse can go in the direction of parents. And in the same way that there are many stories about CPS doing a good job of protecting vulnerable and innocent children from abusers, there are also many well-documented stories of CPS abusing parents and for what outcome is unknown.

This is a unique threat that we face in the modern age because most of our governments encourage anonymous whistleblowers as a way of keeping the population in line. My first personal experience with this was many years ago when I bought a house and I came home one day to find a big yellow notice on my front door that I was in violation of various parts of the code, of the county code of what I was allowed to have.

Specifically, they complained that I had chickens, which I did, and they complained that I had a pile of brush in the backyard, which I did. They complained that my hedge was too tall, which as it turns out, it wasn't. And they complained that I had an unpermitted shed, which I did.

And this was my first interaction with them. The thing that was surprising to me is that I considered myself to be innocent with all of these factors. With regard to the chickens, I had specifically purchased a home that was in an unincorporated part of the county because it was my understanding that I would then be allowed to have chickens.

And so I had five hens and a small chicken tractor going around my backyard. I didn't have a rooster, didn't want a rooster, just had five hens that I moved around in a chicken tractor. But I quickly learned that on something like page 515 of the county regulations, as it turns out, I was mistaken, because while I was in unincorporated county, I was not in the unincorporated part of the county that allowed chickens.

Okay, fine, let's be that as it may, that's how it is. So I got rid of my chickens. The brush pile was there because I was actively clearing brush and I was building a hugelkultur mound rather than burn my brush. That was no problem, I just got rid of it all and dealt with it.

So I was doing a cool gardening thing that I thought would be fun experiment, but I did have a brush pile in the backyard. The hedge too tall, I fought and won on the basis that I didn't have a hedge, I had grasses. And nobody said that my grasses couldn't be 12 feet tall and the specific type of palm grass that I had was technically labeled a grass, it was not labeled a tree.

And so I won that case and the government officer listened to me and I won that. So I didn't have to trim my hedges because my hedge was actually grass, not a tree. And then the fourth one, the unpermitted shed was rather funny because the shed, according to the aerial photos from the tax collector, was built sometime in the 1970s.

And it was a big and large and beautiful shed, but somehow it wasn't, it hadn't been permitted at the time. So of course I'd paid extra, I was frustrated most about that one. I paid extra for the property and I thought it would be fine. And I went through a long process with the agents and back and forth and submitted architectural drawings and blah, blah, blah.

As it turns out, my shed was about six inches over the appropriate setback and about 10 inches too tall. So I wound up actually just tearing the shed down. That was the first time that I ever interacted with an anonymous tipster. And I realized how horrible your life can become if somebody makes an anonymous report against you, whether it's true or whether it's not.

And once somebody makes an anonymous report against you, the government agents are legally required to investigate that report. So in the case of my chickens, the neighbor called it, some neighbor, I still don't know who, some neighbor called in and reported me for having chickens to code enforcement. And then of course, while code enforcement is out there, then they're going to do what the Department of Making Me Sad always does, and they're going to find as many infractions as possible, which is how I ended up with my four code enforcement fractions.

It's a ridiculous story, rather entertaining now, but it's a ridiculous story just to show. So this is where Child Protective Services, though, can be used as a weapon against parents by people who wish them badly. And so if you go and you start hearing the horror stories of when Child Protective Services is wrongly called, then usually it has to do with the divorcing spouse, with upset in-laws, with nasty neighbor, and now with someone online.

Now let's do a quick review of how to interact with other government agents, such as a local police officer or a federal law enforcement officer or any kind of government agent that you have to interact with. The most important thing is to do everything possible to never be mixed up with government agents.

So you want to avoid any situation or anything that might lead to your being suspected as for something. So if you don't want to get pulled over, then one of the most important things that you should do is inspect your car. When I did previous podcast episodes on this topic, I talked about the importance of doing a quick car inspection.

If you don't want to be pulled over, your vehicle should be in good running order. Your tires should not be bald. The vehicle shouldn't be loud. It shouldn't have, you know, no muffler or weird muffler. All the lights should be working. Your license plate should be clearly displayed, not showing anything.

That's the starting point, is you just make sure that you're in good shape. Make sure that your car is in good shape. Stay with me, even if this takes me a couple minutes, though. You're going to see all the parallels to dealing with Child Protective Services. So give me a couple minutes to talk about law enforcement.

The next thing that you want to do is think about your behavior. So again, if you are worried about interacting with the police, then you want to, as you should be, then you want to avoid anything that might give reason for a guy with a gun and a badge to pull you over on the side of the street or investigate you in any way, shape, or form.

So you look at your driving patterns and make certain that you use your turn blinker, that you don't speed, that you don't break the law to the best of your ability, that you constantly do what needs to be done so that you don't have an interaction with law enforcement.

If you're having a fight with your spouse, don't yell at each other. Don't raise your voices because if your neighbors hear that, then all of a sudden there's going to be a police officer knocking at the door for a domestic disturbance complaint, something like that. So just avoid the kinds of behaviors that lead to your interacting with the police.

The way I think of it is, I forget who to describe it to, it's not original with me, but don't go to stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things. If you just avoid that, you avoid the vast majority of problems and you never need most of the advice that you're going to have.

Now, the next thing that's really important, though, is if you are interacting with the police, and for clarity here, I'm specifically dealing with U.S. Americans or any person living in the United States, regardless of who that person is. You could be a tourist from Germany and all of this applies to you.

But the key thing with interacting with the police is to exercise your rights. So you have various rights, especially under the Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment. Basically, you have the right to remain silent. And so when I train people on interacting with the police, there are a couple of things that are the foundation of it.

Number one, you always want to be respectful. People who just have a bad attitude towards police officers, usually things don't go well for them. So you always want to be respectful and, if at all possible, you can be and be polite, be understanding. It's not your legal duty to be polite or understanding, but everything will go much better for you if you are polite and understanding.

You also need to comply with the police. So you do what the police tell you to do, but you actively assert your rights. And so that's most important right is remaining silent and not answering questions. So what I teach people to do whenever I'm teaching on the subject is to use something that is very polite.

Police officer pulls me over, starts asking me questions. I'm going to say very respectfully and politely, "Officer, I understand. I'm sorry to do this, and I understand that you're just doing your job, and it's not an easy one. But my attorney has always told me to never answer questions from the police.

So very respectfully, I'm not going to answer any questions." So something like that. You need to actively assert your right, your right to remain silent, your right not to answer questions from the police. You need to actively assert that and then remain silent. And that is the continual answer to basically any and all questions when interacting with any law enforcement officer in the United States is, "Officer, I'm sorry.

I don't answer questions. I don't answer questions." There are many, many important reasons for that. It's very hard for those of us who like to be kind and helpful and who care about things to know to do that. I don't enjoy using language like that. It's not my personality.

But knowing how many ways I can be trapped into accusations of crimes that I've never committed, I have decided that is the only possible answer that can actually work. There's probably a little bit of texture here that most people should know of. You want to understand why the police are asking you questions.

So if a cop runs up and says, "Did you see a guy in a red sweatshirt run down the street this way?" I probably should answer that and say, rather than, "Officer, no, I don't answer questions." In addition, if there's actually something that you're actively involved with, for example, I usually try to include Mossad Ayyub's advice if you've been involved in a self-defense shooting or something like that.

While you can not answer questions and just say, "I'm not answering questions," that's not the best strategy. In a situation like that, you need to give a little bit of information and then wait for your lawyer. So those are the key points. Now, a lot of that holds true when dealing with CPS, but not all of it.

So I want you to assume that you're in a situation like this Instagram couple is. You're publishing your life online, you're publishing your family online, and all of a sudden, some wacko in a Reddit group who hates you calls Child Protective Services and makes an anonymous complaint against you.

First and foremost, I don't know if this is all states, but at least in my research on this subject, at least in many states, Child Protective Services legally can't ever tell you anything about who is actually making a complaint against you. So you're never going to find this out.

And in many cases, they will have an anonymous tip line. So basically, any random person on the internet can call the tip line and file a complaint against you. So you need to be prepared for that. Whether it's in your personal life or public life, you just need to be prepared for it.

So assume that you're at home, it's a beautiful Tuesday afternoon, and all of a sudden, there's a knock on the door and somebody appears. What should you do? In many cases, the answer is probably not actually answer the door. But there are, of course, individual circumstances would vary. There are many times in which you need to answer the door.

But in many cases, when somebody random knocks on the door, it's probably best not to open the door. If you do answer the door, it's probably best to answer the door through some kind of intercom or video doorbell. That's usually a good plan, rather than appearing personally. However, I'm probably not that hardcore.

I respect those who are. Normally, if someone knocks on the door, I'm going to answer the door, because we don't know what's going on. And as you'll see, as I uncover the specifics of CPS, especially when dealing with CPS, it is probably best to answer the door and speak to whoever happens to be there.

So the most important protocol, anytime you're answering the door and it seems like there's somebody there with a badge, somebody there with an embroidered shirt, somebody official, do not ever invite that person into your home. The first thing that you do is step outside of the house and close the door behind you, and in some cases, lock the door behind you, but at least close the door behind you.

You have an inviolable right to be secure in your home and to be protected from search or seizure in your home unless the person has an actual court-ordered warrant, court-issued warrant. And so don't ever invite a police officer, don't ever invite a child protective services agent, don't ever invite any government agent into your home.

Step outside the house, close the door behind you, and then deal with the actual circumstances. What will ordinarily happen is that the CPS agent will identify himself or herself and start to explain to you that we've received a complaint, we're here for an investigation, and start to give you information.

Now the first thing you need to be aware of is that CPS has a different legal approach or a different legal standard than someone like a police officer does. With a police officer, you can always invoke your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. So while, of course, there's probably some reasonable level of, "Hello, officer, why are you here?" pretty much at the first question, if the officer asks you a question and you get any sense that it's about you or something like that, then pretty quickly your answer should be, "I'm sorry, officer.

I know you're just doing your job, and it's not an easy one, but I don't answer questions." And then ask for an attorney if you're going to answer any questions. You would never answer questions without the presence of your attorney. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go.

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2H 2023. Results may vary, not an endorsement. Other restrictions apply. That's because in the United States, you are always innocent until proven guilty. It is not your responsibility as a citizen to give a law enforcement officer evidence against you. If the government has evidence that you've committed a crime or are suspected of a crime or suspected of involvement in something, it is the job of the state to come up with that evidence and then bring that evidence against you.

But you are innocent until proven guilty. And so you can and should always confidently assert your rights when dealing with law enforcement. With CPS, it is not that way. You must speak to CPS and you must answer questions. Why? Well, if a police officer comes to your door and knocks on the door and you don't answer any questions, then that officer goes back to his office and says, you know, I couldn't acquire any evidence of a crime, so we're done.

However, if CPS has received a complaint, they're not allowed to drop the investigation until they get the information that they need to dismiss the complaint. So imagine that somebody calls in a report of a bunch of starving kids at the house next door. And a CPS officer receives this report of a bunch of starved children and comes out and knocks on the door and you step outside the house, kids are inside, you close the door behind you, and you just flat out refuse to answer questions.

You don't talk to the officer at all. What is the officer going to do? Well, the CPS officer has a duty to the children to make sure that they're okay. And so he or she is going to immediately go to court, the judge is going to issue a warrant, and he or she will be back in an hour or two or very quickly with a police officer and a warrant in order to invade your home and do a full inspection and a full review of you.

So what you're trying to do is you're trying to avoid that. And in order to avoid that, you have to give the CPS official the necessary information in order to be satisfied that no children are in danger, that children are well treated, that there's no abuse happening. You have to give the information that is needed so that they can say, "Yes, we've investigated this complaint, it's a spurious complaint, there's no evidence of abuse, and we're closing the complaint." That's the major difference, is they can't drop the investigation.

And so you're basically presumed to be guilty until you can prove that you're innocent. That's very different than interacting with law enforcement. When CPS is involved, you're basically considered to be guilty until you can prove that you're innocent. So you need to speak to them, and you need to answer their questions.

So, of course, you should go outside, and the first thing that you should do is turn on some kind of recording advice. You should take your phone out, you should turn the video camera on, and you should start recording the interaction immediately. And it should be evident in the recording that you are recording.

So you always have the right to record public officials who are doing their duty. Public officials who are exercising their office have no presumption of privacy in that scenario. So you always can record all public officials who are doing their duty. And especially, remember, you are in your home, and so you have full right to record in your home.

You can always record, and you should. You should record, you must record everything that happens with the officer, or with, I shouldn't use officer because we're talking about a CPS representative, with the CPS agent. Record everything. And that should immediately be standard operating procedure for everything. So if you have an interaction, a personal interaction, you record with video.

If you're on the phone, you record video. At the very least, you put the phone on speakerphone, and you have a friend use his or her cell phone to record the audio of you and record all calls, record everything. That's the first thing. The next thing that you need to do is you need to understand and ask questions about what's actually happening.

So your job is to identify why is this CPS agent here? What are they actually asking? What are the charges? So you should ask as many questions as possible about the charges and information. You should not try to volunteer any information to them in response to questions. The first thing you should do is ask questions yourself to understand all of the details of everything that is going on.

Again, back to the same parallel with the police. You should be respectful. You should be kind. You should be polite. This is not the time to get angry. This is not the time to be belligerent. Remember that if you were to get angry, and let's say you started swearing at the government agent, you can legally swear at a police officer all you want.

You'll probably get much rougher treatment. You'll probably get quite frustrated police officer. But swearing at a police officer and being incredibly rude to a police officer is not legally something that is a problem. You can do that. You'd be stupid to do it, but you can do that. A police officer has to deal with that.

However, a CPS agent has the ability to interpret that in many other ways. And so if you start swearing and getting angry at someone, well, all of a sudden now going in your case that you've got anger issues, decent chance you're going to lose your children. And so you need to understand what they're actually going for.

Let me read a short excerpt from Defending the Innocent from Child Protective Services here. "Do not volunteer any information, even if you think it is going to be helpful in your case. This is not the time to open up your past and discuss your issues. People like to use personal historical information to support their position to address CPS accusations.

This is a bad idea. When answering a CPS question, make the answer short and sweet with no backstory. An example of this would be when CPS says, "We have a report of drug use in the house." The incorrect answer is, "I haven't used drugs in five years. I went to rehab and have been clean and sober since." This answer just provided the CPS agent with information that will now be used to build a drug case against you.

What is to say that you haven't gone back to using? Child Protective Services will use this as, "Parent has a history of drug abuse and could be trying to deceive us." The CPS agent will use any loose end like this as a way to manipulate you and turn your story against you.

The only correct answer to this statement is, "No, I don't use drugs." With this statement, it leaves nothing for them to build a case, nothing that they could use as an "in" to your situation. In the report, the CPS agent will state, "Suspect denies drug use." Every statement stated to CPS must be thought of in this way.

Do not give them a loose thread to pull or your family will unravel like a cheap sweater. The charges are going to dictate what steps to take next. Depending on the severity of the charges, this will dictate what you can and should do. If the allegations include direct harm to a child, assault, neglect, you will have to let them see the child.

This does not mean you have to allow CPS into your house. Have them meet with the child on the front step briefly and in your presence and be sure to record the discussion. Inform CPS that the meeting is being recorded. Do not allow CPS to talk with the child alone, ever.

Child Protective Services will be able to make up evidence they need from the child's testimony and you will have no defense against it. Children do not testify in court and the words they use are taken at face value. Even though you can explain it, that evidence will be used against you.

An example would be if they took the child to the car and asked, "Has mommy or daddy ever put something in your behind?" The child will answer, "Yes." "What was it?" will be the next question and of course the answer will be, "I don't know." Now you are losing your son and facing 15 years in prison because you used a rectal thermometer on a three-year-old and the child couldn't explain you were taking his temperature.

So be aware of these kinds of factors. Do not let CPS into your house. There is no reason to let CPS into your house in any circumstance. The only reason that a CPS worker can enter into your home is, first, an emergency situation. So just like a police officer, if a police officer is standing at your door and you've got the door open and he looks past and sees somebody being murdered in the back room, the police officer is now able to come in without a warrant because there's a situation happening.

Same thing applies to CPS. If there's some kind of emergency situation, there's immediate and obvious danger, then the CPS officer can come in. Or they have to come with a search warrant or they come in with your permission. But don't give permission. There's no benefit for you of giving permission.

Now before we go too hard line, let's think about and talk about what are the standards. When I've researched this subject, I'm doing my best to try to squarely be practical and understanding and straightforward. And I'm not scared to exercise rights because that's what we should always do. A right that is not exercised generally gets lost.

But then the question is, what are they actually looking for? Do I need to be worried about what they find in my home? And so here is from a blog article by attorney Brett Pritchard that I read that I thought was really good. He says, "What CPS looks for during a home visit.

CPS caseworkers are trained to look for anything that could be used against you. A CPS investigator will keep the following questions in mind during a home inspection. One, is there enough healthy food in the house? Two, is food readily available to your children? Three, what are the sleeping arrangements for the kids?

Four, do the children have plenty of clothes? Five, how clean is the house? Six, are there any safety hazards in the house? Seven, are there any drugs, weapons, or chemicals left in the open?" So these questions to me seem reasonable, and any parent, we should all be able to pass a CPS home inspection at any time.

Let's go into some more details. Here's a list of things a child protective services investigator will look for when visiting your home. Cleanliness, sanitary conditions, CPS will inspect the cleanliness of your house to ensure that your home has sanitary conditions for your kids. Your home should have sanitary conditions.

Feces, it is a major red flag when a CPS caseworker finds human, animal, and rodent feces in the house. That should be self-evident. Infestation, the investigator will also look for insect and rodent infestation, so get rid of any cockroaches and other pests before the CPS visit. Trash, do not expect a CPS worker to ignore piles of trash in the home.

Laundry, CPS will not be pleased about piles of dirty laundry scattered around the house. Smell, the very first thing a CPS caseworker will notice during a home visit is the smell. Get rid of any unpleasant odors, including the smell of cigarette smoke in the house. These seem like reasonable things to me, and so we should just live this way.

We should not be in any fear of failing a cleanliness inspection. Next category, kitchen. Rotten food, there should be no rotten, moldy, or spoiled food in the house if you want to make a good impression on CPS. Healthy foods, food choices play a role, so make sure that your kitchen has plenty of healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables.

Availability of food, food must be readily available to your children, so make sure that your refrigerator, pantry, and cupboards are stocked with healthy food. Knives and other sharp dangerous objects, any knives, matches, razors, and other dangerous items within reach of your kids will definitely catch the CPS investigator's attention.

I'm okay with all of those things as well, those are standard things, just make sure that they're in place. Safety hazards, choking, strangulation, suffocation, and poisoning hazards. A CPS investigator will look for any objects or hazards that could cause choking, suffocation, strangulation, or poisoning, so it is vital to thoroughly inspect your home for those hazards before the CPS home visit.

That to me of all of these is probably one of the biggest ones because the choking hazards, I think most of us wind up with various choking hazards as careful as you are, but pay attention to that and make certain that you eliminate hazards from your home for the good of your children.

Slip, trip, and fall hazards, your home should be free of clutter, loose rugs, secured wires, slippery surfaces, and other slip, trip, or fall hazards. Electrical hazards, any electrical hazards are also a red flag for CPS during a home visit, make sure that there are no exposed electrical parts or wiring in the house.

Burn hazards, CPS will look for any hazards including electrical equipment, chemicals, and thermal contact that could result in burn injuries to a child. Fire hazards, make sure that flammable items are far away from open flame in the house, a CPS investigator may also ask you if your house is equipped with smoke alarms.

Chemicals and cleaning products, while cleaning your house is good, household cleaners and other chemicals should be stored out of kids reach. General safety hazards, broken appliances, malfunctioning utilities, or lack thereof, shattered glass, stairs without gates, mold, gas leaks, and other safety hazards may catch the CPS workers attention. Now before I go on, I again want to affirm these things, these seem like obviously important things.

I can understand you might be in the middle of a remodeling project and you might have exposed electrical wires, well that's a reasonable thing that you might do, so I can understand why people can get in trouble with this, but these seem like good standards that we should pay attention to.

I'll give you a tip though that I think is really important. Have a locking cabinet. I think before you go through all the hassle of installing a bunch of weird like child safety locks, you know what I mean, like the magnet things and things that people do, which is an enormous hassle, just have one locking cabinet in your house.

If any kind of locking cabinet, you actually need a key to open or a code pad or something like that, and just put all the dangerous stuff in there so that you can be confident that it's actually locked up. As a parent, having a place, a home safe, we'll talk about firearms in a minute, but having a home safe, maybe just have a big gun safe or something like that, and knowing that my things that I need to be private from my children and from their little snooping fingers are properly locked away is a great feeling.

If you don't have a locking cabinet, what I really like is those locking boxes. What are they called? The ones that the construction workers use, job box. They're called a job box usually. You can pick up a job box. You can pick one up brand new for a couple hundred dollars.

You can pick them up used all the time, and they take a couple of padlocks and put one in your garage and keep your chemicals and things like that locked up so that they're there. If you have many chemicals, and we're not just talking about a bottle of bleach and a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner, whatever you happen to have, then you should engage in that stuff of your own volition.

If you're keeping things like hazardous chemicals around, you should have proper compartments for them, and a proper locker is a standard part of chemical safety. So have a place where the stuff is actually locked up, and that will give you enormous peace of mind as a parent. Next, sleeping arrangements.

Children under 18 months. Children under 18 months should sleep in a crib with no pillows, blankets, stuffed toys, or other materials. That's standard parenting advice. Bunk beds. If your children are sleeping in bunk beds, they should have railings on both sides to prevent falls. It is not safe for children under the age of six to sleep in a top bunk.

Again, I got no problem with that. Opposite-sex children. If you have a boy and a girl, they must sleep in separate bedrooms at ages five and older. Firearms. Guns and weapons. If you possess any firearms or weapons, they should be stored unloaded and in a locked cabinet out of reach of children.

My only contention here is what's the point of having an unloaded gun? So certainly if they're not in use, they can be stored unloaded, but the most important thing is just that they're loaded and ready to go, but that they're in a locked cabinet out of reach of children.

Ammunition. Ammunition should be stored separately from firearms. Again, I don't know what the point of storing ammunition separately from firearms is, but I guess if I had a CPS inspection, then I would probably do that. But obviously, ammunition should be stored inside firearms or they're useless when you need them.

Alcohol and drugs. Illegal drugs. There should not be any illicit drugs or substances in the house. Prescription and over-the-counter medications. Medicine should be stored in a locked cabinet out of sight and reach of children. Alcohol. Any alcohol in the house should be stored out of kids' reach. Again, those seem like obviously important things.

Have a locked cabinet for your medicine. Have no illegal drugs in the house, obviously. And alcohol should be out of reach of children. Outside. Swimming pool. If you have a swimming pool in the backyard, it should have fencing to prevent younger children from drowning. Duh. Road safety. If your house is near the road, your property should have fencing to limit the play area of your children and to make sure that they stay away from the road.

So recognize that in most cases, I think those are fine. With the exception of my comments about unloaded weapons, I think those are all perfectly fine and reasonable expectations. So let's not, let's not, you know, get too crazy with this. Now, if CPS enters your house, again, you would want them to enter your house with a warrant.

If they want to come into your house, you should tell them, "No, I'm not comfortable having you in my house." And so they're going to ask, "Why? Why are you not comfortable?" And you just say, "I don't trust you and I don't know who you are. So why would I have you in my house?" Back to defending the innocent from Child Protective Services.

If they ask to enter your house, let them know that you're not comfortable having them enter your house. They'll ask why as they investigate for information to use against you. Just let them know you do not trust them and you do not know who they are. I know it sounds bad, but you have to come up with an excuse that they can't use against you, saying, "I don't want you to," or, "It's not clean," gives them another thread to pull.

Asking, "Why do you want to go in? What are you looking for?" places the focus back on them. If they insist on entering your home, you'll have to invoke your Fourth Amendment right of no unreasonable search and seizure. It won't stop them from going in, but it lets them know your rights.

It lets them know that you know your rights and are willing to fight in court for them. Although your Fourth Amendment right, no unreasonable search and seizure, should prevent CPS and the police from entering your home without a court order, it doesn't. Child Protective Services isn't under the same legal jurisdiction as police.

Child Protective Services is not constrained by the police rules of conduct, and the evidence obtained from an illegal CPS search will not automatically be disqualified by obtaining evidence illegally, fruit of the poisonous tree. This is a very touchy subject and should be understood carefully. Child Protective Services are not allowed in your house without an invitation, but if they walk in and conduct the search without a warrant, the family court judge will take the evidence and suggest the parent file charges in criminal court.

As well, 33 states in America have occupational immunity, which covers the CPS agent in case of illegal actions performed while in the performance of their duties, which means you may not be able to file a civil or criminal grievance depending on where you live. Also, a CPS agent who is willing to go to the judge to get a search warrant for your house will most likely use the same information to obtain an emergency removal order from the same judge.

It doesn't take much to get a court order. The CPS agent tells a judge, "We have a report of abuse, and the guardian will not allow us to check on the safety of the child." Child Protective Services, now with a police escort and a warrant, is in your house, and the child is in foster care.

Your actions depend partially on the charges presented to you while you're talking to CPS. If it's a severe charge, similar to assault or neglect, they will have to see the child to ease their concerns. You may have no other choice, but allow them into the house to appease the CPS agent.

You may have no choice but to let them in, and if you do, expect a long court trial. So the point is that you have to be careful, and the goal is to provide the necessary information for the CPS agent to end the investigation. So you have the information of what the allegations against you are, and if the agent says, "Hey, we got reports of your child being malnourished," then bring your child out on the front porch and say, "This child is not malnourished, obviously." But the goal is to just give the minimum information, and then as quickly as possible get a lawyer and deal with things with a lawyer and with representation.

Now, one of the things that I really appreciate about the Defending the Innocent from Child Protective Services book is that the author talks about the difference between trying to get a gotcha moment with the CPS and actually getting what you're trying to do, which is to actually protect your child and not have your child taken away from you wrongfully.

So when you go on YouTube and you spend time seeing things on YouTube, you see somebody recording something and someone, in many cases, standing up for his or her rights, and that's fine. That's good, except that you don't necessarily see what comes next. Your goal is not to win an interaction by having this person turn around and leave.

Your goal is to present the evidence necessary for the CPS officer to do his or her job and close the case. Be cordial. Having your children removed by CPS or being threatened to have your children removed is an emotional situation. I can't think of a worse thing to do to a parent than to take the kids they love and forcefully adopt them out to strangers, just because an anonymous tip from someone you may or may not know caught the ear of a CPS agent, and they decided to come for an investigation.

The Italian mafia has rules against targeting children, but our government does not. Child Protective Services understand this will be a stressful time for you and will use it to their advantage. They will document everything you say, everything you do, and fully use it against you in court. Take warning of Dave and Sonia's case, a case discussed elsewhere in the book.

Do not threaten violence or harm on the CPS agent. Do not convey hostility or aggression towards them. Talk in a calm, civil tone with no swearing. This topic is as important as recording them and not allowing them into your house. Your demeanor is the data CPS obtains from you at every meeting you have with them.

If you threaten to harm or commit violence against anyone in front of a CPS agent, the CPS agent will perform an emergency removal of your child and place a restraint order upon you. Then, expect those words to be used against you in not only CPS cases, but as evidence against you in any state or federal case in the future.

Ten years down the line, you will be considered a threat, even if you've been to counseling, taking medications, apologized, or died. You will be in your state CPS record forever. CPS documents every action. If you come across to them as reasonable and understanding of the situation, you can manage your way out of CPS charges, as detailed in the next scenario with Frank and his daughter.

But if you automatically swear at, threaten CPS, and slam the door in the CPS agent's face, accept police and a court order for search, seizure, and removal of the child within 30 minutes. Your presentation is crucial. How you say things and how your body language is in the first few minutes of contact is paramount to your success in defeating the investigation.

If you come across as defensive, the CPS agent is automatically going to be suspicious of you. Getting angry and asking over and over, "Why are you here?" and "Who sent you?" will only make a great YouTube video. What doesn't make for great YouTube videos is the long fight with CPS and the expensive court battle that is set against you, which could have been avoided with a different approach.

Your approach should be calm and pleasant, as if this is an ordinary, everyday occurrence. Listening to what's being said and providing short and to-the-point direct answers can avoid a long, expensive fight later. Don't give CPS any reason to return. Please and thank you go a long way to saving thousands of dollars in court costs and your children's future.

Many of the cases in family court do not need to be there. If you know how to handle yourself and the CPS agent, you could be out of trouble before a case is formed. Knowing how and what CPS does helps in managing these issues. So the point is, you don't win by being combative with CPS.

You win by understanding that almost certainly this officer cares about children, and it's his or her job to make certain that innocent children are not being harmed, and he or she undoubtedly cares about that. So your job is to present the necessary evidence so that the agent can be satisfied that this child is not in danger, is not in harm.

Most lawyers agree when talking to the police, the less you say, the better. The police are looking for information to charge you with a crime. Child Protective Services is looking for information not to identify a crime, but to substantiate or refute the accusation. There is a big difference between talking to police and talking to Child Protective Services.

With police, you have the right to remain silent, and it cannot be used against you. This is not the case with CPS. The worst thing you can do with CPS is to refuse to meet with them and ignore the charges. If you refuse to cooperate with CPS and refuse to attend, it will be written in the report.

Then the refusal will be used against you, and worse, have your child removed from the house. CPS will use any refusal to participate as evidence against you. The judge, always siding on the safety and welfare of the child and CPS, will automatically infer that you are hiding something until you prove otherwise.

Remember, unlike criminal charges, your right to remain silent is not guaranteed when dealing with CPS. When you talk to the CPS agent, discuss only the charges. See if you can figure out who contacted them and why they did so. If there's any concern, try to normalize the behavior. Just like Frank, previous story, you don't take your kid to the doctor every time they get the sniffles.

By behaving normal and explaining the circumstances around it, you look less like an abuser and more like a regular parent doing their best for their child. Look for information. Interviews are not one-sided discussions. Feel free to ask questions of the CPS agent. Ask who filed the charges. Child Protective Service is not legally allowed to tell you, but sometimes they make mistakes or give hints about who filed the charges.

Sometimes you can read their body language to receive clues of whether it's a family member, neighbor, teacher, or enemy. Ask what the accusations are. Information is vital because you can only defend yourself against what you know. Ask for specifics on how or what they believe happened and why that is a problem.

For example, if someone claimed you hit your child, ask, "With what? How hard were they hit? Where on the body were they struck? Could it have been someone else?" Then discuss how it wasn't you and who else it could be. Now, in the book, the next specific advice is always hire a lawyer, and that's always good advice, is to have a lawyer and have representation.

You should additionally have witnesses whenever possible, so you should not be with CPS alone. Your child should never speak to CPS alone, and so you should have a lawyer who's able to be there. There may be times in which your child needs to speak with a CPS agent. You would do that under the advice of the lawyer with your lawyer present.

Again, you have to provide enough information to specifically demonstrate that the complaint against you is a false complaint. Now, what is the big picture that we can do? Well, first and foremost, that's why I went through kind of the examples, just do the proper thing. Live a life and a lifestyle that is above reproach so that if at any point in time somebody knocked on your door, your house would be put together, your children would be well taken care of.

Create a lifestyle of care. And a lot of the things that I would do and that you would do automatically protect children. Children who are born into a family and they have a mom and a dad and there's no extra people involved and there's not a bunch of random people coming through the house and there's just one set of children have extraordinarily low rates of abuse.

A single parent with various boyfriends and girlfriends passing through the house, broken homes, children coming and going, all of a sudden the rates of abuse go up enormously. And so you need to build the environment around your children so that they are in a safe environment at all time.

You want to always think ahead of what would happen if you were charged with something. So what would happen, what would your defense be if CPS came against you? And then do the things that would be necessary to actually provide the defense in court. So, for example, number one, don't be neglectful of your children.

Make certain that you hire a proper babysitter if you're going to be away, that you understand what your state's laws are and what good practices are, that you take your children to the doctor, that they have regular medical checkups, that they have good medical care. All the stuff that you would do as a good parent is the stuff that you would present in court that would show that you're a good parent.

So this is always the important things. And recognize that you should collect and have the data for this kind of thing. So strategy. Your strategy should begin before the first contact. It should be a plan for if CPS comes to your house. I'm fully aware that I'm on a CPS list somewhere as a problem person just because I wrote this book.

So before I started writing, I planned what I want the first CPS contact to look like and how to manage it. This strategy includes four goals. Diffusing the CPS charge, information. Proving CPS wrong, data conflicts, keeping CPS out of my life, and maintaining custody of my children, court. Everything I plan to do is based on these four goals.

Being right, being belligerent, or asserting constitutional rights are nowhere on this list. In every defense, you need strategy, plan, and tactics, actions. The approach is predicated on the situation you find yourself in, what the charges are, and what you want as an outcome. A strategy is a plan of action to diffuse, redirect, and redirect the charges that are presented.

A strategy is not, "I'm going to make fools of CPS," or, "I'm going to tell the judge what I think and she's going to do what I say." These are only wishes and will make you look like a fool in court and to lose your child. You may have noticed in this book, I've referred to everything as a defense.

That's because everything you do with CPS is a defense. A family court hearing is not the place to attack CPS. It will make you vulnerable and considered emotionally unstable, and the judge doesn't care. If the CPS agent walks straight into your house, took a beer from your fridge, and drank it in front of you, it is irrelevant to your case.

That needs to be addressed in a conduct report to CPS superiors or in a lawsuit for misconduct, but not in family court. Remember, the court cares only about the court proceedings and the welfare of the child. This means crimes perpetrated against you by Child Protective Services will not be addressed in family court.

The focus is on you, not them. You need to show evidence none of the things occurred or show third-party evidence that Child Protective Services is wrong. You are defending yourself, and the mindset should be only of that. Each line in the CPS service plan must be argued and defended.

It is imperative to take each of the items from the progress plan and isolate each one, then provide evidence directly countering each charge. Defense isn't just for the main issues, but as many as possible. A good lawyer will be able to present this to the judge. There is a possibility CPS will surrender the case at this point due to the counter evidence.

However, as a defendant, do not consider this a probable conclusion. Each item should be listed and some document provided to disprove the issue. This becomes the crux of the defense. It is vital to provide these documents to the court. The records become the witnesses that CPS cannot argue. It is easy to confuse a witness on the stand.

It is easy to ignore a parent's rights, but documentation becomes a thorn in the side of any prosecution. These documents can be almost anything from grocery receipts, video to medical reports, psychiatric evaluations to checking account records. Every paper and video proves something that can be used to chip away at the CPS case.

You can go on, read more in the book about tactics, things like that. It's a good book. It's not nearly as good as Arrest Proof Yourself. And I don't know how, I mean, the guy believes strongly that CPS has an incentive and a desire to kidnap children with a financial incentive.

I don't know if this is true or not. I know that it is true in some places with some people in some countries and some counties and some prosecutors. But I would guess that those are the exception, not the rule. And I hope I'm not wrong about that. So I don't worry too much about that.

But certainly we've heard enough horror stories with ex-spouses and angry people and wackos on the internet. You should take this seriously. At its core, I think how I think about this subject is basically two things. Number one is be a good parent and be the kind of person that is providing all that a child needs.

If you are doing that and intentional about doing that, then that in and of itself is probably going to be the number one key. If you are doing something that makes you vulnerable, then pay attention to that and document your performance. So the biggest vulnerability that a guy like me would have would be homeschooling.

Now, this was a huge issue in the United States in 1960s and '70s and '80s. At that time, I know lots of homeschooling families that they had to be hyper aware of basically the truant officers and child protective services and asserting their rights as homeschoolers. At the time, it was very legally questionable what their actual rights were in the United States with regard to homeschooling.

So I've talked to many older ladies who the idea they would never, ever take their children out during the day to the grocery store, something like that, because then someone's going to file a complaint. Why aren't these kids in school? And so they would always make certain that they were home and that there was no obvious evidence that their children were home at that time.

Now, thankfully, in the United States, we pretty well won that battle. And so the legal situation of homeschooling is very well ensconced now in law and in the vast majority of states. You hear some whining from various states here and there, but in general, it's one of the best total victories of a political movement that I care about in the United States, that that's not really a risk at this point in time for most people.

I know a lot of people around the world, though, who still have that, who are very careful that if it's a school day, their children are not outside in the backyard, but they're inside studying. What I always just imagine is I just say I have a higher responsibility. So if I'm going to homeschool, I need to make certain that I'm not being neglectful of children.

Some people are super into student-directed education and unschooling and all that. I think there's a place for that, but I believe I have a responsibility of a higher degree of performance, higher degree of academic performance than others do. And so I keep careful records, want to make certain that I can demonstrate the academic performance of my children and have good records about what we're actually doing, even though my state doesn't require that.

So I still am going to do it. And I think that same basic thing applies. Imagine that CPS knocks at your door today. Just imagine it. And then ask yourself, well, what would my vulnerability be? If it's homeschooling and are you giving your child the education that he deserves, then make certain that you are and that you have the data to demonstrate it.

If it's cleanliness of the house, then fix the house. Do whatever you need to do to fix the house. If it's a bad relationship with mom and dad are yelling at each other all the time and the cops are going to knock at the door, then fix it. Take some classes on how to communicate better and how to resolve conflict and fix the relationship.

And if it's unfixable, I guess recognize that it's unfixable. The point is, think about it. What would happen? And do you have evidence of it? So keep records of an annual checkup from your physician and keep records of your dental cleanings and keep records of the food in the house and make sure that there is the food in the house, things like that.

If you have those documents, then you should win your case. And that's what you need to know. So that's the first thing that I want to emphasize is just have the environment that is going to be appropriate so you don't have a problem. And then the second thing that I wanted to emphasize is what's different about dealing with CPS versus dealing with the police.

For the fourth time, you can't have the same basic approach with CPS that you do with the police. With the police, the only safety you have of any kind of law enforcement officer, any kind of police officer, any kind of any government agent, the only safety you have is not to answer questions.

If you lie to a police officer, remember, if you lie to a police officer, even inadvertently, that's a felony offense. You could be put into jail just for lying to federal officers. Martha Stewart, a little bit long in the tooth now in terms of the case is a little bit old, but remember, Martha Stewart didn't go to prison for insider trading.

She went to prison for lying to federal officers. Your only possible pathway of navigating a very difficult legal system with officers of any kind is do not speak to them actively. And by the way, just remember, it's not enough to just remain silent. You can't just not speak. You have to specifically state, "I am exercising my right to remain silent and I want a lawyer.

I'm remaining silent. I'm not answering questions. I want a lawyer. I want a lawyer. I want a lawyer. I'm not answering questions. I don't answer questions. I want a lawyer. I'm sorry, officer. I don't answer questions. I want a lawyer." That's your only possible pathway. Because if you mess up, if you say something wrong, if you give them information, there's no protection for you whatsoever except, "I don't speak and I want a lawyer." And then you go into the court process as necessary.

You deal with all of the appropriate depositions with the advice of your lawyer. That's the only way to deal with it with the police. CPS is not that way. And that's why I'm emphasizing this so much because when I learned this, I realized this is important. You do have a Fourth Amendment right to keep CPS out of your house.

And as the author of that book stated, 30 minutes later, the CPS agent will be back with a police officer and a warrant, and your child is not sleeping at your home that day. So you need to exercise your rights actively. Don't give away more information than is necessary, but you need to answer the questions because your goal is to demonstrate to the CPS officer that your child is safe, your child is not in a dangerous condition, and then to figure out what is necessary for the CPS worker to end his or her case and say that it's been fully investigated and there's no problem and no danger there.

And that requires a different strategy than the basic strategy with law enforcement. That covers what I wanted to cover in today's podcast. I hope it's useful to you. I'll link to a couple of these articles to this book in the show notes. You can read more, you can think more.

Basic principles are the same, but live your life above board. Live in such a way that you can always be investigated and not have any problem. But recognize that just because you're living that way today doesn't mean that things can't be there in the future. I know many people, and again, I'm not talking to a U.S.

audience necessarily here, I know many people around the world who are absolute morally upright people who something changes and now their government is enforcing upon them a situation that is different than what it is. And they are now required to stand up for what is morally right, and now what they're doing is legally wrong because they're standing up for what's morally right.

It's wonderful if morality and legality are aligned, but it's very rare in the world to have those conditions for an enduring period of time. Frequently, morality and legality are crosswise with each other. And so you need to be wise in how you negotiate this, and you need to do what is morally right, and also stand up for your legal rights.

And recognize that when you go and put your family online, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. I've wrestled and wrestled and struggled with it, and I've just thought, like, it's important. If all of us who, you know, are good parents and loving parents, if those of us who are loving husbands and take care of our family and provide, if we just all disappear from the world, then what happens is people are just surrounded by stories of wackos and perverts and, you know, jerks and all of that, and then they think that everyone's like that.

And in kind of the enormous isolation that we live in, people tend to think that that's normal. It's kind of like the old thing with the news. If all you do is watch the news, then you think there's a murderer behind every tree, but you have to stop and recognize the fact that the reason you think there's a murderer behind every tree is that you're watching the news, and the news is going to always present that which is sensationalistic.

So you're not getting an accurate view. Well, the same thing is happening all the time now with social media. And so if men like you and I disappear from social media and we're replaced by a bunch of wackos, then we have a problem because now other people are just consuming the wackos.

So I think there are very good reasons for husbands and wives and mothers and fathers who have just normal, healthy families, healthy relationships. I think there's very good reasons for you to put your children online and to create content and things like that. I support it. I really like it when normal, well-adjusted people who have family values and are loving spouses and things like that, I really love it when they just create ordinary, normal content because I think that's important, but it also comes with a significant risk.

So you should expect that if you've got 600,000 Instagram followers and you're live blogging your travels, that it's not too hard for someone to track you down and call the government on you as kind of an internet debate tactic. It's pretty easy for a wacko on the other side of the country or the other side of the world who doesn't like you and doesn't like how you live to weaponize government.

So you need to be prepared for that, which is why I'm trying to create this podcast for you. I hope this information is valuable. If it has been, I would ask you for one favor. Go and teach it to somebody else. Just make a comment about it with somebody.

I find that this kind of advice, most people don't go out looking for it. And frankly, most people aren't interested in it, but still those who need it, need it. And so I really try hard to teach people who are likely to interact with the police how to do that.

So if someone is poor or somebody is an immigrant or something like that and there's a decent chance that person could be taken advantage of, I always do my best to teach rights. And same thing, teach this to other parents so they understand. Take something here and teach it to someone else so that you can just inspire them to go and look for their own advice.

Thank you for listening. I'll be back with you soon. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live, you can do more without spending more.

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