A Brazilian couple has been fined for home schooling their children instead of enrolling them in the country's school system.

The verdict was issued despite the children having passed stringent government-imposed exams and qualifying for law school at ages 13 and 14.

The parents, Cleber Nunes and his wife Bernadeth, have refused to pay the $3,200 in fines even in the face of a possible 15 to 30-day jail sentence.

"If they impose tests it means that two possibilities should be considered. They could be suffering intellectual abandonment, or not," Cleber told Life Site News. "In other words, they were trying to prove they were victims. But they passed and they kept saying we were criminal."

He dismissed the notion of appeal, saying he was deeply distrustful of Brazil's court system.

"They already showed who they are and what they want," he said. "They are not interested in protecting our kids....They want to take control of them, of their minds, they want them out of their home."

Although home schooling is legal in several countries including the U.S., Brazil's socialist regime - established in the 1990s - prohibits the practice.