to think the 'common law/freeman on the land' thing is a whole load of bollocks?

[qwertypop]

I've come across a few people over the last few years that take it very seriously and bang on at length about how the police and courts have no authority over them as they are self declared 'freemen'. Something to do with common law being the only true law in Britain, I think? And not having to wear bike helmets or pay for TV licenses or repay your debts also seem important to the ones I've had the dubious pleasure of meeting.

A couple I met at the weekend have taken the biscuit though and not registered their baby's birth because apparently this will mean said baby grows up to be a 'freeman' (she's actually a girl but the term appears to be freeman anyway). They believe quite firmly that to register her birth will mean that the law assumes her and her name (which is a fucking corker, of course) are one and the same and that only by NOT registering her birth can she be free to be a human being. Quite what this actually means is a mystery to me and tbh the mumbo jumbo they gave me by way of an answer leads me to suspect they don't really know either

I've tried to read up on it but all the info I can find is written in a style you'd expect of an paranoid, delusional, and possibly hallucinating chimpanzee let loose with a legal dictionary.

So AIBU to think this is bollocky woo of the most fucking ridiculous type? Or is someone going to come along and actually enlighten me as to wtf its all about, preferably in plain English with no pseudo-legalese?

I should add here on a serious note that nearly all the major espousers of this shit that I meet are men - very very few women seem to be into this stuff. The mother of the baby I met this weekend was far less vocal about it than the father, to a degree where it gave me a rather uncomfortable feeling in fact. I don't know what this means, if anything, but it's odd...

Well, I have no idea and am mainly posting to mark my place for the explanation. But certainly the term 'freeman' originates in a culture where it definitely doesn't mean you're above the law. And given our law is based on precedent I'd be a bit surprised if the term's suddenly taken on a new meaning.

Total and utter shite. Common law exists but certainly doesn't do the things they claim. As for not registering their daughter's birth- good grief! Your penultimate paragraph sums up nicely why you can't find any more info on it.

This is the kind of thing I mean

Definitely total bollocks. I have a feeling the couple who didn't register their baby's birth may soon find out the hard way as they'll end up being prosecuted and fined.

Here's a non-woo explanation of what common law actually is

We need to know the baby's name

On debt/loan agreements.... "They can't verify any claim against you - as a flesh and blood human being with a living soul - they will be attempting to talk to your legal fiction NAME"

Huh?

Totally. Utter wankers in rl too

YANBU

I've come across a few of these nutters.

From what I have been able to fathom, this behaviour is basically a belated teenage petulance, messing with the paperwork and admin of the system they basically rely on, as a sort of foot stamping exercise to express their oppositional attitude to routine, and their superiority complex.

VERY BORING INDEED

I teach teenagers the whole time, so have to spend my life placating and nurturing the poor unreasonable, rebellious, angry, hard done by feeling little creatures, but in teens it is a natural result of hormones and growing up, and I can sympathise.

When the behaviour extends into adult hood, and particularly when they seem to deliberately set out to inconvenience their own children to make some half cocked ill conceived point about how "independent" and "free thinking" they are pretending to be, i do not sympathise.

i just can't be bothered dealing with them at all

I want to know the child's name - I know you can't say. Was it Liberty?

We need to know the baby's name
Oh yes! Please spill.

The short answer to the gender question is that women do better out of stable, law-abiding, consensus based societies than lawless ones. You can be a rich, powerful man in a lawless society (warlord in Somalia for example) but women in those societies do tend to have a horrible time of it.

They clearly haven't thought this through properly if they think common law is the true law and therefore the courts have authority over them. Common law is the authority of the courts. It's the law made by judges as opposed to statute law which is the law made by government.

By not registering their daughter's birth she is free from receiving child benefit, an education, a passport and the ability to travel abroad and probably a whole host of other public services. Her parents are commiting and offence and are opening themselves up to prosecution.

I'm not going to post the name. I feel it would be a step too far and also make the parents (and possibly me) very identifiable. I'll stick to taking the piss out of their utterly stupid politics .

Years and years ago I worked at the County Court and had to deal with a wide cross section of nutters.

One very seriously told me that the feudal system had never been abolished.

It is true, there has never been an act of parliament abolishing feudalism (which was a term not used until the seventeenth century). There was no act of parliament abolishing eg feudal dues. However it was abolished with case law in the sixteenth. There was a particularly grabby/hard up landlord who tried to get his tenant to pay up one of the old manorial customs that hadn't been current for nearly a century and the court ruled that the old dues (fines on entry, heriot, permission to marry etc) were no longer valid and it set the legal precedent.

When I told the nutter this he looked seriously disappointed. I am sure he went away believing I said that just because I was part of 'The System'.

MrsTerry this is what I was just musing on. Women do tend to need a degree of involvement with various authorities in a way men don't - ante/post natal care for example brings you into the view of other services.

On debt/loan agreements.... "They can't verify any claim against you - as a flesh and blood human being with a living soul - they will be attempting to talk to your legal fiction NAME"´

Huh?

I think they are trying to say that a debt cannot be persued because the unregistered person has no official legal identity. What they seem to have missed is that, by their own reasoning, they have no official legal identity so they won't be able to take out a loan in the first place. No reputable financial service will loan anything to someone who cannot prove who they are. Muppets.

From the link above - I mean, really

If you do (somehow) end up in court

You will be asked your name, or whether you name is … e.g. Veronica Chapman.

The correct reply is "If I tell you my name, will I have a contract with you?"

If the answer is "No", then you say "I'm a flesh and blood human being, with a living soul, and commonly called Veronica" (Obviously substitute your own Given Name - or use mine which would constitute a fraud … your choice). If they continue to use your legal fiction NAME (e.g. 'Ms. Chapman'), do your best to ignore it, until they make it clear they are addressing you, and then repeat "I'm sorry, were you addressing me? I'm commonly called ".

If the answer is "Yes" then you can say "Then you need to provide me with FULL DISCLOSURE, some CONSIDERATION, the LAWFUL TERMS AND CONDITIONS, and we would both need to SIGN. Is that not so?".

Either way, you would be seriously looking at "Case Dismissed"!

If they threatened 'Contempt of Court' (a trick they often use), then the response is "Is that CIVIL or CRIMINAL contempt?".

DO NOT SAY ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL YOU RECEIVE AN ANSWER. (Do not be sucked into filling in 'empty silence').

If the answer is "Criminal", then the response is "Who makes the CLAIM, what is the CRIME, and who is the INJURED PARTY?". If they say "The COURT makes the CLAIM", the response is "You know that the court is not a human being, and that only human beings, blessed with a living soul, can make a CLAIM!".

If the answer is "Civil", then the response is "Please explain the CONTRACT. Will you provide FULL DISCLOSURE, what is the CONSIDERATION, and will you provide the SIGNATURE of a human being with a living soul?"

(I wish I had known about this when I was young!)

(By the way, they generally hate LIPs - Litigants In Person - who actually know the ropes. On the other hand, if you stick to your guns, there's not a whole lot they can do about it. But they are sharks, and will try every trick. You need to remain alert. More information here)

Veronica: of the Chapman family

(January, 2009)

So the baby doesn't exist, so no medical treatment, education, job or benefits ever??

And if they don't answer and just order you to be taken down and locked up pending psychiatric assessments, what's your smart arse response then Veronica?

Ask if he will call the Fire Brigade if his house is on fire. The benefits of civil society far outweigh the costs IMO.

From what I have heard, every time anyone tries on the Freeman on the Land defence in court, they get laughed out of it very fast (and still get fined/sent to prison). It seems to be a favourite with people who have fallen for all sorts of other nonsense, conspiracy theories etc, e.g. this rather unpleasant quack who was recently prosecuted under the Cancer Act.

I feel very sorry for the daughter of the people you met, because without a birth certificate they probably won't be able to enrol her in school (so will probably homeschool her with all their crackpot ideas) and she won't even be able to get a passport to leave the country and get away from them.

Rationalwiki has a good page on the topic for the uninitiated. Note the 'successes' and 'failures' sections at the bottom.

I wonder how long it'd take them to call the police if their house got burgled.