Parental alienation can be difficult to address in a custody case. Most alienation occurs behind closed doors, making it challenging to tie your child’s changed behaviors and perceptions to wrongdoing initiated by the other parent. However, with family courts becoming more receptive to arguments pertaining to parental alienation, there are powerful and persuasive ways to present your case.
Tips for building your parental alienation case
If you want to win your custody case by presenting evidence of parental alienation, you need to be adequately prepared before going into court. This includes doing the following:
- Documenting everything: You might be able to paint a better picture of parental alienation if you can put it all in context. Documenting a timeline of your child’s changed behaviors and other key events can be illuminating. Emails, text messages, calendars, school records, photos and videos can all be helpful here.
- Securing an expert: To truly understand how parental alienation occurs, you have to understand the psychology of it. So, too, does the court. By having an experienced expert witness testify on your behalf, you can give the court a better idea of what’s going on in your case and how to remedy it.
- Using others’ perspectives: In your case, you might be able to use the guardian ad litem or an in-camera interview between the child and the judge to give the court what could be perceived as a more unbiased perception. This can be powerful in showing the impact of parental alienation.
Confidently build your case
These are just some of the many ways that you can build a robust case against parental alienation. Heading into your case, you need to be as prepared as possible. Hopefully by doing so you’ll be able to protect your child and your relationship with them, giving you the opportunity to rebuild the relationship that was damaged because of the alienation.