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The parents left behind: What parental alienation does to a family

Parental alienation, for want of a better description, is a hot topic right now. In fact, it is a term, that as a specialist child and family lawyer, I hear more and more in cases where parents are experiencing difficulties in making arrangements for their children.  

A somewhat controversial concept, parental alienation is often misunderstood and lawyers, social services, CAFCASS and the courts have been trying to deal with it for years in cases where the parents are locked in legal proceedings over contact for their children.

So what is parental alienation?

Parental alienation is often confused with estrangement but they are not the same thing.

Estrangement can occur if a parent is abusive or has behaviour that damages or strains the relationship with the child. Parental alienation is when one parent deliberately manipulates a child to unfairly reject the other parent with the motivation to destroy the parental bond.

Parental alienation syndrome refers to a variety of symptoms displayed by a child when rejecting a parent, and the effects are far-reaching.

Deliberately influencing a child to reject the other parent is very emotionally damaging and often leads the child to fear the alienated parent and avoid seeing them, despite them previously having a loving relationship prior to separation or divorce.

Signs of parental alienation

An attempt to alienate a child from a parent is carried out for many reasons; I have seen it take place as an attempt to punish the other parent or at times, it is a  personality disorder affecting the alienating parent that stops them from handling stress rationally.

Whatever the reason, alienation works slowly and takes place over some time. Here are some warning signs I have noticed with clients over the years:

  • Belittling, criticising and making derogatory comments about the targeted parent in front of, or in ear-shot of the child.
  • Cancelling or interfering with visits or blocking all contact.
  • Keeping important information about the child including medical, educational and social activities away from the targeted parent.
  • Making important decisions about the child without consultation.
  • Interference and /or blocking contact via telephone, text, email, FaceTime etc with the targeted parent.
  • Rejection of the targeted parent’s gifts, cards, holidays and offers of help.
  • Defying the authority of the targeted parent and encouragement of the child to do the same.  

Through this, and many other forms of alienation,  the child is programmed to believe that the alienated parent is worthless and does not care about them. The result – a child is convinced that they would be happier without them in their lives.

So, what can be done?

Emotionally, parental alienation is a complex form of trauma and I would advise seeking out professional help for both yourself and the children if possible.

From a legal perspective, seeking professional advice early on is so important so that you have support to understand the complex legal system. And the courts can help.

If parental alienation does exist properly in a particular case then the court can order that the alienated child spend time (has contact) with the alienated parent and can even increase the time with that parent.  

The court can also impose conditions in relation to the time the child spends with the other parent and can impose penal notices if the order is not complied with by the alienating parent such that he/she may be fined, ordered to undertake unpaid work in the community or, in the most serious of cases, can be sent to prison.  

In the very worst cases where parental alienation continues, despite the court’s attempts to preserve the relationship between the child and the alienated parent, the court can order a change of residence so that the child lives with the alienated parent.

Whatever your situation, do not lose sight of what is important: your children and their well-being. And remember that the family courts are there to protect the best interests of all children.

Need help?

If you are concerned about parental alienation please do get in touch with me . I have practised family law for over 35 years specialising in all aspects of divorce and children disputes including residence, contact, prohibited steps orders, specific issue orders and parental alienation.

The post The parents left behind: What parental alienation does to a family appeared first on Stowe Family Law.


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Author: Mark Christie

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Is the child arrangements terminology awkward and confusing?

When I began practising as a family lawyer in the dim and distant days of the early eighties, the two main types of private law children orders went by the names ‘custody’ and ‘access’. These terms had been used since time immemorial (or so it seemed) and, indeed, were so ingrained in the public consciousness that they are still commonly used today.

In 1989, however, the powers that be decided it was time for a change. What had worked for so long was no longer appropriate for modern sensibilities. Accordingly ‘custody’ and ‘access’ were replaced with ‘residence’ and ‘contact’, the rationale behind the change being that ‘custody’ and ‘access’ were too ‘emotive’, causing unnecessary antagonism between parents.

But, as with all consumables, in the modern world nothing lasts for long. In 2014 our lords and masters decided that ‘residence’ and ‘contact’ were also obsolete, for pretty similar reasons to the 1989 change, and had to be replaced (well, not entirely, as I will explain in a moment). In a Monty Python “And now for something completely different” moment the government came up with the child arrangements order, which we were told means an order regulating arrangements relating to any of the following:

(a) With whom a child is to live, spend time or otherwise have contact, and

(b) When a child is to live, spend time or otherwise have contact with any person.

Hmm. There is a slight problem here. Whilst the words ‘residence’ and ‘contact’ may have gone the way of the dodo, the concepts behind the words remain. After all, a child may still reside with one parent, and have contact with the other. Thus ‘residence’ became ‘live with’, and ‘contact’ became ‘spends time with’.

But wait a minute, doesn’t the word ‘contact’ still appear in the new terminology? Well, yes it does. So maybe ‘contact’ was not such an awful word after all? Does this mean that we can interchange ‘contact’ and ‘spends time with’? Are the two exactly the same? I honestly don’t know. (I note that the relevant standard family order refers to a ‘Live with order’ and a ‘Contact order’.)

I confess I was never very impressed by the new terminology. It did seem to me to be very awkward, and didn’t seem to achieve an awful lot, being little more than a quibble over semantics, driven by a desire not to upset anyone. Still, I put my lack of enthusiasm to one side, and moved on. Until recently.

Reading law reports relating to child arrangements applications I have been increasingly struck again by how awkward the terminology is. Instead of the judge referring simply to a ‘’residence order’ or a ‘contact order’ they now have to refer to a ‘live(s) with order’ or, worse still, a ‘spends time with order’. This terminology is not just ungainly, it can also be hard to follow, particularly, I suspect, for litigants in person.

But it is not just the awkwardness of the terminology. It can also be quite confusing. Take, for example, this extract from the judgment in the recent appeal RC (A Child), referring to the orders being appealed against:

“ii)       Paragraph 18

lives with order: the child shall live with both parties …

iii)        Paragraph 19

spends time with order: the parties must make sure that the child spends time with the respondent father within a regular fortnightly cycle for at least six nights, into blocks of three nights …”

Erm, doesn’t paragraph 18 contradict paragraph 19 (or vice versa)? Surely, if the child is to ‘live with’ both parents, then, to use the old terminology, they reside with both parents, i.e. there is a joint residence order. Why, then, is there a need for a ‘spends time with’ or ‘contact’ order as well? Surely, a parent has residence or contact, not both? Of course, as a family lawyer I understand what is happening here, but do parents involved in child arrangements proceedings, particularly those who are not represented, understand? I’m sure that many are left confused as to exactly what the court has ordered.

OK, perhaps I should leave it there. I am of course a family law dinosaur (and perhaps soon to be a dodo). Maybe those younger and less stuck in their ways have no problem with the terminology.

I would also like to point out that the above should not be interpreted as a call for yet another change in terminology – that is the last thing we need.

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Author: John Bolch

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Rebreathers

Diver using a rebreather

Taking scuba to new depths

If I end up completing all the tasks on my Life’s To Do List, I’ll live to be a very old man indeed. So many places to visit, books to read, foods to try, experiences to have—and the list is perpetually growing. “Learn scuba diving” is on the list, but like “visit Machu Picchu” or “have sushi at Sukiyabashi Jiro,” it’s something that requires a greater investment of time and money than I am able to make at the moment. Still, it’s something I’d like to do if the opportunity ever presents itself. Yes, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff underwater—the marine life, the shipwrecks, and all—but equally appealing is the geek factor. Scuba diving requires lots of cool, specialized equipment, and just think of the entirely new range of dive-enhancing gadgets I could justify buying!

Then perhaps one day, if I become sufficiently advanced and still have some money to spare, I’ll invest in the ultimate piece of scuba gear: a rebreather. This fabulous piece of kit could set me back as much as US$20,000, not to mention the extensive additional training and certification I’d need to use it. But a rebreather does for scuba diving something like what a hybrid engine does for a car: it provides much greater fuel efficiency while reducing noise and pollution. These things may not seem like a big deal on the road, but underwater, they can make all the difference in the world. (Rebreathers are also used in spacesuits and gear for mountaineering and firefighting, among other applications, but I’ll focus on the underwater use here.)

Heavy Breathing

In ordinary scuba diving, you have one or more tanks of air—or, depending on what sort of dive you’re undertaking, a mixture of oxygen with nitrogen, helium, or other gases in carefully measured proportions. Regulators deliver just the quantity of air you need, at an appropriate pressure, through a mouthpiece; when you exhale, a valve releases the used air into the water. Each time you take a breath, though, your lungs absorb only about a quarter of the oxygen in the air; the rest is exhaled along with the carbon dioxide you produce. So a lot of the oxygen divers take with them is essentially wasted. The deeper you dive, the more rapidly you use up air, so a dive’s maximum duration is determined by its depth and the number of tanks a diver carries. Even though air tanks don’t feel heavy underwater, there are practical limits to how much a diver can carry, and thus limits on the duration of a dive.

Rebreathers change this equation by recirculating the unused oxygen from every exhaled breath. Instead of being expelled into the water, the used air is channeled into a “scrubber,” an assembly that uses a chemical such as a soda-lime mixture (sodium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide) to absorb the carbon dioxide. That leaves a good bit of usable oxygen, which is recirculated into the system and supplemented, as needed, with more oxygen from a tank. In this way, a rebreather can provide dramatically longer dive times with a much smaller and less cumbersome apparatus. In addition, because air isn’t discharged into the water when you exhale, there are no bubbles (or at least very few). As a result, a diver wearing a rebreather can swim almost silently and invisibly—handy if you’re photographing bashful fish or, you know, sneaking up on the enemy spy who’s trying to sabotage your submarine.

In the Loop

Conventional scuba apparatus is “open-loop” (or “open-circuit”), meaning the air goes out of the system when it’s been used. Most rebreathers, by contrast, fall into one of three major categories:

  • Oxygen rebreathers are the simplest variety. They use a single tank of pure oxygen, but because of the danger of oxygen toxicity (a situation where pressure forces too much oxygen into the blood), they can be used only at shallow depths of about 6 meters (20 feet) or less.
  • Semi-closed circuit rebreathers replace the oxygen tank with a tank of mixed gases, allowing deeper dives. But their design also requires that a portion of the used air be vented into the water to maintain the proper levels of oxygen and other gases.
  • Closed-circuit rebreathers are the most complex design. They use two gas tanks: one for air (or at least an oxygen-nitrogen or oxygen-helium mixture) and one for pure oxygen. Oxygen sensors feed data to a microprocessor that regulates the oxygen pressure in such a way that no gas needs to be expelled. Closed-circuit rebreathers also enable the diver to maintain very low levels of nitrogen (or other non-oxygen gases) in the blood, which reduces the need for slow decompression when ascending from deep water.

As great as rebreathers are for certain applications, they have some disadvantages compared to conventional scuba gear. For one thing, because rebreathers are so complex, more things can (and do) go wrong. They must be carefully maintained—and even then, they are far more prone to failure than a simple tank-and-regulator setup. (Failure of one’s breathing apparatus deep underwater, of course, is a rather serious problem.) In addition, it’s surprisingly difficult to regulate oxygen pressure precisely so that it falls into the narrow range between too little (which can result in a potentially deadly condition known as hypoxia) and too much (which can result in the potentially deadly condition of oxygen toxicity). If a rebreather fails to deliver just the right mix of gases, the diver is in trouble.

And of course there’s the price, which is not a big deal for the military, but problematic for many recreational divers. Note to self: Put “become fabulously wealthy” higher on Life’s To Do List than “learn to use a rebreather.”

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on February 17, 2005.

Image credit: Peter Southwood [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons


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Author: Joe Kissell

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Single Tasking Day

"Do just one thing" graphic

Years ago I ran across a job listing at Apple, and although I don’t recall the specifics, I remember one of the job requirements being the ability to “multitask while multitasking.” And I thought: Ha ha ha ha hard pass. Multitasking is a thing that computers can (sort of) do; it’s not something that humans can do. There are people who think they can multitask, but study after study has shown that when we try to switch rapidly among tasks (which is what multitasking really means, after all), our overall efficiency decreases quite a bit because of the extra cognitive load involved in getting the brain back up to speed where it left off on a previous task. In other words: it’s an illusion, and people who try to do it are not just fooling themselves; they’re actually decreasing their productivity. So just cut it out, already! Today is Single Tasking Day, and you celebrate it like this: Do one thing at a time. That’s it. Finish the thing, or get as much done as circumstances permit, then do the next thing. Repeat indefinitely.

While we’re on the topic…who decided that “single tasking” is the term for the opposite of “multitasking”? It should be “unitasking,” which is what I call it and what I (try to) do!

Image credit: John LeMasney [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr


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Author: Joe Kissell

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Sturm v. Moyer

(California Court of Appeal) – In a case where a creditor sought to collect a judgment, held that California’s Uniform Voidable Transactions Act may apply to a fraudulent agreement between spouses to prevent collection of the debt. The debtor’s premarital agreement here said that each spouse’s earnings and other property acquired during marriage would not become community property.


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Mother successfully appeals against findings of fact made against her

Despite the impression that may be gained from other posts I have written here, it is very unusual for findings of fact to be overturned on appeal. The reason for this is simple: the appeal court does not have the benefit of seeing all of the evidence (and hearing the witnesses), in the same way that the court that made the findings. How can the appeal court make different findings without seeing all of the evidence?

However, it is possible for a judge to be in error in reaching conclusions that are not supported by the evidence. That was the situation in the recent case A (Children), which concerned a mother’s appeal against findings of fact made against her.

The facts in the case were quite complex, so I will simplify them, and the main issues, for the sake of clarity.

The parents were both born in Pakistan. When they were married in 2001, the father had been living in the United Kingdom for some time and was a UK national. The mother came to England in 2002, once she had been granted a spousal visa. The visa, however, would lapse if she spent more than two years outside the UK.

The parents had four children who, by the time that the mother’s appeal was heard last November, were aged between 16 and 10.

In May 2012 the whole family travelled to Pakistan following the death of the maternal grandmother. They stayed there until February 2016, when the father returned to the UK with the children. In May 2016 the mother, still in Pakistan, commenced child arrangements proceedings in this country. The mother eventually obtained a visa enabling her to return to the UK in October 2017.

A crucial issue in the case was why the mother had not returned to the UK with the family. The mother claimed that the father had stranded her in Pakistan, by retaining her passport and preventing her from returning before her visa lapsed. The father denied that he had stranded the mother, and claimed that he had given the passport to the mother’s family.

Connected to this issue was the fact that the children were vehemently opposed to having contact with their mother, and were also abusive towards her, their abuse being “perhaps the worst” that the children’s Guardian had seen in decades of experience. The mother claimed that the father had alienated the children against her, in part by suggesting that she had abandoned them by remaining in Pakistan. So in very simple terms the question was: had the father stranded the mother as part of a plan to turn the children against her, or had the mother not actually been stranded, and just chose to remain in Pakistan?

At the first hearing Mr Justice Keehan found that the father had withheld the mother’s passport from her, but the mother had not been stranded, because she had been able to obtain a replacement passport without the assistance of the father, although she had not explained why she did not. The mother appealed against this finding, to the Court of Appeal.

Giving the leading judgment of the Court of Appeal Lord Justice Moylan noted that Mr Justice Keehan found that the mother was “an extremely unsatisfactory witness”, and that the father was “in the main, candid and honest in his evidence”. However, his conclusion that the mother was not stranded was not supported by his analysis. The fact that the mother had a ‘remedy’ (i.e. to obtain a new passport and visa) did not detract from the fact (as Keehan J found) that the father had withheld the mother’s passport from her. Lord Justice Moylan explained:

“Simply stated, the judge’s determination that the mother was not stranded is inconsistent with his finding that the father kept the mother’s passport. This was the key act which impeded her ability to return to this country and, in particular, to return prior to the expiry of her visa. The judge’s reasoning … that the mother might have been able to take steps herself to overcome the situation created by the father and had not explained why she had not, cannot, therefore, support his determination.”

Accordingly the appeal was allowed, and the case remitted back to the lower court for rehearing.

The full judgment can be read here.

The post Mother successfully appeals against findings of fact made against her appeared first on Stowe Family Law.


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Author: John Bolch

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Bhutanese Archery

Bhutanese archers

Shooting game

One day Morgen and I were having a brainstorming session about interesting things related to the theme “hit or miss.” As we began talking about things that involve hits and misses. Morgen said, “Do you know what the national sport in Bhutan is?” I was embarrassed to admit I did not even know exactly where Bhutan is located; it’s simply not a place I’ve ever spent much time thinking about. Morgen told me that Bhutan is between China and India. Although this didn’t give me any strong clues, I made what I thought was a safe guess: soccer. That turned out to be a particularly bad guess, because Bhutan’s national soccer team is nearly always among the lowest-ranked in the world. In 2002, it was ranked 202 out of 203 worldwide; FIFA sanctioned a special match that year, at the same time as the World Cup finals, between Bhutan and 203rd-ranked Montserrat; the match was covered in a documentary film called The Other Final. (Bhutan’s soccer ranking has since risen all the way to 186—go, team!)

In fact, Bhutan’s national sport is archery. That fact alone, I think, qualifies as an Interesting Thing, but there’s more to the story.

Weapons of Play

Bhutan is a Buddhist nation, and one of the central precepts of Buddhism is a reverence for all life. So it seems somewhat incongruous that the nation’s favorite game involves a hunting instrument (or, depending on how you look at it, a weapon of war). But in Bhutan, the bow and arrow can be used only for play. In fact, when making arrows, one can use only feathers that were found on the ground; killing a bird to obtain its feathers would be considered wrong.

Each village has its own archery range, making them as common as curling rinks in Canada. (That is to say, extremely common.) Although modern, high-tech equipment is making some headway, most competitors use traditional, hand-carved bamboo bows and arrows. Village teams compete against each other in rowdy, elaborate, alcohol-fueled, multi-day tournaments that are as much about spectacle as they are about hitting a target. Archers can use almost any means at their disposal to distract or demoralize their opponents, including dancing in front of the targets. A major part of the sport goes on behind the scenes, as teams conspire to throw off their opponents’ game. It is this, rather than what I typically think of as team interaction, that gives Bhutanese archery such popularity.

The Wide World of Archery

You might imagine that since archery is the national pastime, Bhutanese archers would be world-renowned for their skills. So far, however, the country has not distinguished itself in international competition beyond Asia. Until 2012, archery was the only Olympic sport in which Bhutan participated (now they also compete in the women’s 10m air-rifle event), and they have been sending their best archers to the Olympics since 1984. But the country has never received a single Olympic medal. This is largely due to the fact that traditional Bhutanese archery is much different in both equipment and style from Olympic archery—insulting your opponent during Olympic competition is, shall we say, bad form. But Bhutan remains optimistic that their athletes will eventually earn recognition as the world’s finest archers.

I’ve tried archery only a couple of times, and I found it a lot harder than I’d imagined. And in America, at least, I would consider it rather unsafe to taunt someone who’s pointing a deadly weapon in my general direction. All the same, I think I could get behind a national sport that is as much about fun and mischief as about skill.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on December 25, 2004.

Image credit: Göran Höglund (Kartläsarn) Hoffman [CC BY-ND 2.0], via Flickr


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Author: Joe Kissell

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National Cherry Pie Day

A slice of cherry pie

I’ll gladly consume almost any type of pie (well, not key lime), but I have a special fondness for cherry pie, that quintessentially American dessert with a delightful mix of sweet and tart flavors. I don’t think I fully realized the superiority of cherry pie until I watched Twin Peaks, after which it seemed obvious. (I have, by the way, met Pat Cokewell, the woman who baked the amazing cherry pie that inspired David Lynch to make it a Thing in Twin Peaks—and I’ve tried her pie too. He wasn’t wrong about that.) It’s National Cherry Pie Day today, and I should probably get myself a nice large pie—big enough that there will still be leftovers on February 24, which will be Twin Peaks Day. Hmmmm. I don’t know if they make pies that big.

Image credit: Sam Howzit [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr


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Author: Joe Kissell

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Mother did not fail to protect her children

I don’t normally comment here in detail on public law cases, but as the events that happened to the mother in the recent case L-W Children could happen to pretty well any parent, I thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog.

The case primarily concerned the mother, her four year old daughter (‘L’) and the mother’s new partner (‘GL’), who was not L’s father but had fathered twins with the mother. The mother, GL, and the three children appeared to be a perfectly ‘normal’ family. As Lady Justice King remarked:

“Prior to the events which took place in January 2018, there had not been, and there was no reason to believe that there should be, any involvement by social care in the domestic lives of either the mother or GL.”

It was true, she said, that GL was known to have a quick temper, but there was no suggestion that there had been violence at any time within the household. It was also true that L, as is not unusual for children of her age, was known to tell lies about various matters.

So what happened in January 2018? Well, it was the nightmare scenario for the mother.

On Friday the 12th of January and Saturday the 13th, L stayed overnight with her father, returning on Sunday the 14th. The mother went to work on the Sunday afternoon, leaving the three children in the care of GL. So far as the mother was aware, L went to bed in the usual way between 6-6.30pm, as did the twins.

The mother returned from work at 10.15pm. She went upstairs to kiss L goodnight, and noticed a lump on her forehead. L told her that this had happened when she had fallen on her doll’s house whilst visiting her father. As the only light in the bedroom was a nightlight, the mother did not notice any other bruising to L’s head or face at that time.

The following morning the mother saw that the lump on L’s head was significantly bigger, and that she had bruising to the left-side of her face and her ear. When asked how she had come by the bruises, L said that her father’s partner had caused them. The mother checked L’s whole body and discovered a number of fresh bruises.

The mother then phoned the GP in order for L to be checked out, and also called the health visitor. In addition she contacted GL, who was at work, and L’s father, asking what had happened to L whilst she was in his care. GL returned home. The mother did not ask him what had happened to L, as she was afraid that this would have “caused a big row”.

GL told the mother not to go to the GP, but the mother ignored him. A child protection referral was made and at the subsequent child protection medical, a number of very concerning bruises, particularly around L’s left ear, were seen. The bruises were highly indicative of non-accidental inflicted injuries.

Care proceedings were commenced in April, and at a hearing in September the judge found that GL had inflicted the bruising to L, and that the mother had failed to protect L from physical abuse at the hands of GL, and also her other two children from the risk of physical abuse at the hands of GL. The mother appealed against that finding, to the Court of Appeal.

Giving the leading judgment of the Court of Appeal Lady Justice King found that there was no evidence which could properly lead to a finding that the mother failed to protect her children. She knew that GL had a short temper, and had been involved in violent incidents with two adult males, but this did not mean that she should have known that he presented a risk of physical abuse to L or the twins, and that therefore she should not have left the children in his care. She had failed to ask GL what had happened whilst she was at work, but GL’s “unattractive personality traits and/or the controlling personality of GL did not prevent the mother from acting quickly and appropriately when her child was injured, and she maintained her independence sufficiently wholly to ignore GL’s suggestion that L should not be taken to see a doctor.”

The appeal was therefore allowed, and the finding against the mother deleted.

As I indicated at the beginning of this post, it is easy to imagine this kind of scenario happening in many families. After all, who really knows what their partner is capable of? This mother, however, could not have been expected to know, and when she found out what had happened to her child she did pretty well all of the right things. To say that she had failed to protect her children would be harsh in the extreme.

You can read the full judgment here.

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Author: John Bolch