Case study - child custody and parental alienation

Summary and overview

We represented a mother of a 10-year-old child. Since birth, the child had been in the full-time care of the mother. For reasons described below this situation was turned on it’s head and our client had to fight every step of the way to re-establish shared care.

The facts in brief

In the first 7 years of the child’s life, the father retained contact with the child, but there was no formal agreement in place about how often contact would occur.

Things changed radically after the father refused to return the child to her mother’s care following a period of contact, accusing her of abusing drugs and alcohol and physically abusing the child. After an altercation between the parents in the presence of the child, the father made an application to the court and was granted a Child Arrangements Order (‘CAO’) stating that the child was to live with him and a Prohibited Steps Order (‘PSO’) preventing the mother from removing the child from his care.

This triggered 3 years of court proceedings, numerous false allegations made by the father towards the mother and a period of nearly 2 years during which the child refused to have contact with her mother. Ultimately, with our advice and assistance, we were able to secure a shared care arrangement for the child to live with both her parents.

Advice we gave to our client and strategy

In the devastating situation our client found herself in, we counselled her to be patient and to rely on family law principles which adopt a starting point that it is usually in a child’s best interest to have parental contact and involvement.

We needed to establish, over a period of time, that the relationship between our client and her child would improve and that she was being influenced by the father, resulting in her initial extremely negative views towards her mother.

The steps towards the goal of shared care were difficult and long. In summary :-

• initial contact sessions gradually reduced due to the child’s current feelings until the child refused to have any contact with the mother.

• initial indirect contact between the child and the mother was made difficult as the father would be present and recorded sessions where often the child would not be seen on screen. After a few months, indirect contact ceased completely, and the mother did not have any contact with the child until the court ordered supervised contact to take place 10 months later.

• when contact progressed to a contact centre, the child was reluctant for this contact to progress further outside the centre. However, when contact did take place in the absence of the father, the results were positive and the child was reported to be happy, relaxed, and well engaged with the mother. It was reported that when the father was present or when it was time to return to the father, the child’s demeanour changed, and she no longer wished to engage with the mother.

• after over a year and a half of court proceedings, the court directed that contact was to progress between the mother and the child with an increase in duration and community contact. However, the child again refused. The father also displayed a reluctance to encourage the child to engage with the mother or maintain a relationship with her, cancelling 8 face to face sessions with the mother and failing to encourage the child to maintain letter contact with the mother.

What was the result?

Ultimately, the court directed that it was in the best interests of the child to live with the mother on a shared care basis to ensure that the imbalance of power between the parents was addressed by preventing one parent having more control over the other in relation to contact with the child.

A psychological assessment was conducted for all three parties which concluded that there was no justification for the child’s extreme views of the mother and play therapy was recommended to help the child process these emotions. It was suggested that the father had not actively tried to promote the relationship between the mother and the child and had allowed contact to cease for almost two years.

The result of these proceedings was that nearly three years since court proceedings began, the final order of the court directed that the child was to live with the mother over weekends and week nights on an alternating weekly basis during term time and school holidays would be shared equally between the parents.