Does doing one preclude doing another? — how the status paths interact
Grounded in reading the sources' own documents (local mirror: 459 SEDM files, the Amnesty Coalition set, the Wisconsin Assembly/Anna Von Reitz corpus, You Are Law). The short answer: they are competing routes to the same claimed destination, not complementary steps — and stacking them is worse than picking one.
⚠️ Same honesty rule as the rest of the site: none of these paths is shown to actually achieve the claimed change of federal status, and several are on the IRS frivolous list or otherwise court-rejected. This page is about how the paperwork systems relate to each other, not an endorsement of any of them.
They aim at the same destination by different roads
All three status systems try to move you from "federal U.S. citizen / taxpayer" to some form of state national / non-federal person — but each claims a different mechanism, and the mechanisms contradict each other:
| Claimed end-state | Mechanism (from their own docs) | Where it aims | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEDM | "national but not citizen" / "non-resident non-person" | Statutory status + domicile argument; resign the "compelled Social Security trustee"; attach status affidavits to tax paperwork. "NON-RESIDENT NON-PERSON POSITION" (Form 05.020); passport "as a 'state national'" (Form 09.007); "Basic Checklist to Liberty" (Form 09.015) | IRS / tax records |
| Wisconsin Assembly / Anna Von Reitz | "American State National" → "State Citizen" | Expatriation and repatriation: expatriate from U.S. citizen, then repatriate and record membership through a jural assembly. "Section 57 — Expatriation and Repatriation"; "accept the rights, responsibilities and duties of a State Citizen" (Jural Assembly Handbook) | County recorder / assembly file |
| Amnesty Coalition | non-14th-Amendment man/woman | Novation of the birth-certificate "contract"; assert the change via a passport application | State Dept (DS-11) / IRS |
The tell: SEDM and the Assembly world both use the words "state national," but they get there by opposite premises. SEDM says you were always a national and never truly a statutory citizen (nothing to expatriate from). Anna Von Reitz says you were a U.S. citizen and must expatriate and repatriate. Those two sworn premises cannot both be true of the same person — and that is exactly the problem with doing more than one.
Why stacking them backfires
- Inconsistent sworn statements. If you file SEDM's "I was never a statutory citizen" and the Assembly's "I hereby expatriate from U.S. citizenship," you have sworn two contradictory things. Courts and the IRS treat inconsistent sworn filings as evidence of bad faith, which compounds credibility damage and (for the tax pieces) §6702 frivolous-filing penalties — each filing is its own $5,000 exposure.
- Single-instance documents force a choice. You file one DS-11 passport application. Each school has its own accompanying statement (SEDM's citizenship attachment, Amnesty's Explanatory Statement, the Assembly's declaration). You cannot coherently attach all three; picking one is unavoidable.
- The tax-exit mechanisms conflict. SEDM's "resign SS trustee," Amnesty's "8822-B + novation," and the Assembly's "Revocation of Election to Pay Taxes" are three different theories of the same exit. Filing several tells any reviewer you don't have a coherent position — the opposite of what a status claim needs.
What is genuinely separable (and legitimate)
Some pieces are not status theories and can be done regardless of which path (or no path) you choose:
- A trust is asset-holding, a different domain from personal status. A real irrevocable trust for estate/retirement/family planning can coexist with any citizenship position — but note the LAPT already exists in two formats (Red River statutory-style and the You Are Law common-law-contract version), which is itself a redundancy to reconcile, not a benefit.
- A passport application is a real government process; you can apply on the ordinary basis without any of the accompanying "statements."
- A clean administrative record — keeping every notice, response, mailing proof, and receipt — helps in any real dispute and is theory-neutral.
Bottom line
- Legally: "doing one" does not preclude "doing another," because none of them actually changes your federal status — there is no real status to be used up or locked in. Courts have rejected these theories across the board.
- Practically: the paths are substitutes, not complements. Running several at once creates contradictory sworn records that increase risk (bad-faith findings, stacked §6702 penalties, passport false-statement exposure). If a person insists on pursuing one, the least-harmful posture is to pick a single coherent theory, keep the legitimate/separable pieces (a properly-formed trust, an ordinary passport, a clean record), and get independent legal review before filing anything that asserts a changed status to a government agency.
See also: docs/PROCESS-COMPARISON.md (step-by-step spine), docs/SIMILAR-SITES.md
(who publishes what), docs/TRUST-CODE-AND-COMPLIANCE.md, and the SSN/VPA research.