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Few issues affecting
families are as heartbreaking as those involving Parental Alienation. PA cases
often arise after a divorce, as one parent turns his or her children against the
other parent, destroying the loving bonds the children and the target parent
once enjoyed. Today California family courts are only marginally effective at
combating PA. A new bill authored by Assemblymember Ira Ruskin (D-Redwood City)
will harm children of divorce by making it much harder for courts to protect
children from alienation. Under AB 612, mental health professionals will be
discouraged from issuing findings of PA in child custody cases.
The backlash against PA
is being driven by misguided women’s advocates such as the California National
Organization for Women. While both mothers and fathers can and do poison their
children’s minds, usually it is the custodial parent who is best able to
alienate children in a divorce or separation, and most custodial parents are
mothers. CANOW insists that PA is “junk science” which noncustodial fathers use
as a courtroom weapon against mothers, and Executive Director Helen Grieco
labels it a "scam."
Nevertheless, Parental
Alienation is a common, well-documented phenomenon in divorce. For example, a
longitudinal study published by the American Bar Association followed 700 "high
conflict" divorce cases over a 12 year period and found that elements of PA were
present in the vast majority of the cases studied. Mental Health professionals
have been making progress in increasing recognition of PA, and three states now
officially recognize April 25 as “Parental Alienation Awareness Day.”
The pain and heartache PA
causes children would be hard to overstate. Family law mediators J. Michael
Bone, Ph.D. and Michael R. Walsh Esq. explain that in PA situations children
fear abandonment, and "live in a state of chronic upset and threat of reprisal.”
Bone and Walsh note that when children “express positive approval of the absent
parent, the consequences can be very serious...The child is continually being
put through various loyalty tests…the alienating parent thus forces the child to
choose [between] parents...in direct opposition to a child's emotional well
being.”
Last fall, The CBS
Early Show discussed PA’s effect on children in its series How Divorce
Wars Take a Toll on Kids. Michelle, an adult child of divorce who had been
alienated from her father by her mother, told CBS:
"I couldn't love my mom
and my dad at the same time. I felt bad...It shocked me how quickly and
dramatically I changed my opinion of him. I would have nothing to do with
him...He hadn't done anything to hurt me. And so, when I was asked for details
[why she was so angry], I didn't have them...I still, to this day, have to live
with the mean things I said to him. The letters that I wrote to him. There are
things I did purposely to hurt him."
When a parent’s children are being alienated, he or
she must wage an often long and expensive fight to get family courts to
recognize the alienation and take decisive action. AB 612 would discourage
independent mental health professionals from issuing findings of Parental
Alienation in divorce/custody cases. It would also make it more difficult for
target parents to get courts to order psychological evaluations as part of child
custody investigations. Under AB 612, such evaluations will be allowed only
under “exceptional circumstances when there is strong evidence that a parent’s
current mental or psychological status might seriously impair his or her
parenting ability.”
This standard is
unreasonably high, and will prevent many target parents from saving their
relationships with their children. The legislature should be exhorting family
courts to protect children from Parental Alienation, not putting up barriers to
prevent them from doing so.
This article first appeared in the Riverside
Press-Enterprise (4/2/07).
Jeffery
M. Leving is one of America's most prominent family law attorneys. He is the
author of the new HarperCollins book
Divorce Wars: A Field Guide to the Winning Tactics, Preemptive Strikes, and Top
Maneuvers When Divorce Gets Ugly. His website is
www.dadsrights.com.
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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