Parental Alienation: It’s Tough to Prove in Court
Proving parental alienation is tough. You need to have evidence to bring to court that your ex-partner has intentionally turned your child against you.
While proving parental alienation can be difficult to do, Family Law Attorney says it’s not impossible. Here are some tips on how to bolster a parental alienation case in this article.
Think You Have a Parental Alienation Case?
Our experienced Family Law Team can discuss the facts of your case and provide some insight into the next steps during your free, 30-minute case assessment. Call 303-688-0944 or click here to set up that meeting.
Review our free, comprehensive Legal Guide on Parental Alienation.
Parental Alienation is a Hot Topic
Proving parental alienation comes up often in parenting time cases. Couples seeking a divorce bring it up. It often comes up in court.
Legal professionals don’t always agree on the topic, and parental alienation is often disputed in court.
Parental Alienation Can Damage Relationships
Parental Alienation is very serious, and it can damage the relationship between a parent and child for a very long time.
While it can have lasting debilitating effects, parental alienation is very difficult to prove in court.
It’s hard to walk into court with serious substantiated allegations of the kind of behavior that would result in parental alienation.
What is Parental Alienation
Parental alienation is any type of behavior that one parent uses to drive a wedge between the child and the other parent.
- It could be something as simple as repeated offhand comments or bad-mouthing the other parent in front of the child to gain his or her loyalty.
- One parent might reconstruct past events in a different way to make the child believe horrible things about the other parent.
- A parent might intrude excessively on the other parent’s time by calling, texting, or trying to contact the child in order to interrupt the other’s parenting time.
Review our free, comprehensive Legal Guide on Parental Alienation.
The legal guide covers proving parental alienation:
- What Parental Alienating Behavior Looks Like
- Common Parental Alienation Tactics
- Effects of Parental Alienation Tactics
- Colorado Courts Take Parental Alienation Seriously
- How You Can Fight Parental Alienation
How Alienation Can Affect Children
Parental Alienation can result in a child’s refusal to go see a parent. The child may become distant from the parent who is the target of a parental alienation effort. Sadly, sometimes the damaged relationship between a parent and child is irreparable.
Parental Alienation is Tough for a Court to Sort Out
How Can a Judge Know Who’s Telling the Truth?
It’s tricky for mediators and judges to know exactly what is going on. Remember, the court’s first responsibility is to ensure the well-being of the child or children. Damaging conversations often occur solely between a parent and child, making it difficult for the other parent to know what’s going on.
If that parent does hear secondhand information, you can’t use child hearsay in court. So you’d have to have an investigator or evaluator look into the situation to understand it from the child’s point of view and the frequency of these potentially damaging conversations.
If a third party witnesses what they think is parental alienation, she or he would only be able to testify exactly to what they heard on one specific occasion. They would not be able to point to a series of conversations that led to alienation.
One Step You Can Take
If you feel like your ex-spouse or ex-partner is trying to come between the relationship you have with your child, we strongly advise you to keep a record of demonstrated things you know happened that could lead to parental alienation.
Proving Parental Alienation: Let’s Get Started
The words parental alienation are thrown around a lot. The best way for you to get the court to take your claims seriously is to be able to back them up with demonstrated evidence.
Your best bet is to keep track of what goes on and contact a family law attorney. Our Family Law Team has experience handling cases in which one parent tries to manipulate the relationship their child has with the other parent.
If you haven’t already, check out our free parental alienation legal guide.
Set Up Your Free Case Assessment
Call 303-688-0944 to schedule a free case assessment. You can also schedule online when you click here.