They do not feel that a refusal to sign the plans puts their clients at a disadvantage but rather that action gives them bargaining power and lands them in a position to negotiate.

"I think it gives a client the leg up if you are going to request a jury trial or even have it before a judge quite honestly. They (her clients) are not going to sign some piece of paper and be held to every word and possibly be misconstrued as to whether they completed the task," Goodman said.

Goodman, a former prosecutor who now practices family and criminal law in San Angelo, said that by signing the service plans, her clients would been subjected to the "subjective" assessment by Child Protective Services as to compliance with the mandates.

"If you sign off on all these agreements in the service plans, then CPS can continue to beat them over the head as to what they did or did not do," she said.

Goodman represents one FLDS mother with two children in state custody and a couple from Canada who had children on the ranch. She said that was another inherent problem with the plans because her couple did not even get a chance to physically review the mandates in any depth.

It was the intent of Goodman and Rios to demand a jury trial to hear the components of the plan the child welfare agency wanted their clients to sign.

If Thursday's appellate ruling declaring the child agency had insufficient evidence to remove the children had not happened, the duo was prepared to try the justification of the plan's components before a jury or a judge and perhaps win some concessions of their own.

While he has been critical of the plans from the outset, FLDS spokesman Rod Parker said the parents who did sign could later say they agreed to the dictates because they were under duress.

"The parents could just say they made me sign it. My lawyers said I had to sign this in order to get my children back," he said.

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Contributing: Ben Winslow
E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com