Why is Family Court so Unpredictable?

You go court convinced that the law will set things straight but you leave the courtroom with that dear-caught-in-headlights expression of pure shock. And then to top it all off your lawyer says, “that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Well if the lawyers can’t predict what will happen in court… who can?
This brings me to my next topic…
Why is family court so unpredictable and how can you have any control over its outcome.

No one and I REPEAT, no one knows what will happen in family court or can predict an outcome. And the reason why is simple. Its called “best interest of the child”.  Family court uses “best interest of the child” as a guideline and this guidline trumps just about any law ever made. This guideline essentially gives the court COMPLETE control over decisions and rulings without regard to any written laws. What this means is, judges can do whatever they want and use this guideline as their reason for doing so. Now throw in the fact that judges are human and susceptible to the same bias, intimidation and brainwashing that everyone human on earth is subject to and you have a recipe for a really big cluster. Don’t let anyone, including a really expensive lawyer, a self-assured guardian ad litem, an experienced family therapist or expert witness tell you that they can predict exactly what will happen in family court. If they do, the are lying. Scary but true.

Consider criminal court. Its doesn’t have anything like a “best interest of the public” guideline. Its a little easier to predict the rulings judges will make in criminal court because everyone is operating under the premise of using the same “rule book”. In family court that “rule book” is as unique as the person creating it… the judge. The rule book changes, it morphs and distorts according to the whim of the judge.

Now what to do about it. KNOW YOUR JUDGE. He or she has the rulebook for their own courtroom so find out what the rules are.  If he or she has shown bias in one way or another in the past it is important to know about it BEFORE you go to court. Don’t trust your lawyer to know this or care about it, research it or even consider this important. But think about it this way. If you know your male boss doesn’t respect frilly, feminine women, why would you wear a pink, flowered dress to a meeting requesting a raise and more responsibility? You can’t change who your boss is or their unreasonable bias so you work with what you know and wear a dark, pants suit, layoff the pink lipstick and give him a very firm handshake. Another scenario… Your coach seems to be really interested in promoting Brand A sports equipment to the point he benches anyone using another sports brand. You can’t change your coach and you certainly can’t accuse him of getting kickbacks from Brand A and risk getting kicked off the team… so you stock up on Brand A equipment and stay in the game. My point is work with what you know about your judge and find a way to use the judges own bias/prejudice/quirks in your favor.

Knowing who your judge is, how they think, how they’ve ruled in the past, decisions they’ve made is crucial to predicting how they will make decisions in your case.

Why do “PAS Experts” whimp out?

So why do PAS experts “whimp-out” and what can you do about it?

For the sake of this post… I won’t go into another heated debate about what constitutes an individual as being an expert. I will however state that I am referring to someone you’ve hired, the court has appointed or you’re being asked to see in regards to your PAS case. This goes for consultants, therapists AND lawyers.

#1: they aren’t an expert

They may have a very successful practice, business or group. Their names are tossed around by all of the “important” people in the industry. They are members of all of the “important” groups, organizations and foundations. They have degrees, teach other professionals and regard themselves as pillars of the community. They may have consulted, provided expert witness testimony and evaluated for hundreds of PAS related cases… BUT… that does not make them an expert of PAS.

Beware of the profiteers! Anyone who will say or do anything for a buck. One minute they argue that PAS doesn’t exist, but in the next hearing they are telling a judge and anyone who will listen how PAS is destroying a family. Don’t assume that a judge, your lawyer or anyone else for that matter knows who these two-faced people are or is willing to tell you who they are. Do your own research, find your own experts and don’t just ask your lawyer who you will be using… TELL, DEMAND and INSIST on who you will be using to help your case. Start with the internet. Look for people that have focused on PAS. Find out who has been attending and speaking at PAS conferences. Call pro PAS organizations and ask them who they recommend. You will start to hear the same names over and over. Call those people and have a simple chat. You will know within 5 minutes if the person you are speaking to understands PAS and more importantly if they know how to handle it properly.

#2: they aren’t willing to confront a bully

How many times have any of us been confronted with a bully throughout our lives? I’ve had a few. And each time I tried to diffuse the situation by not making it worse… boy or girl, I think most of us take this path. It involves avoiding the bully and changing my own actions and behaviors in order to not attract the bully’s attention. Makes sense right? Its so much easier than actually trying to get the bully to stop bullying. This tactic does not change just because we grow up, become adults, earn a degree, get a job and wear a suit everyday to the office. If anything, as we enter the professional world it becomes standard operating procedure as who would condone “meet me at the playground after last bell”.

In a PAS case you are dealing with the same scenario… a bully and the bully’s victims. Lawyers, therapists, guardian ad litems, and judges can become victims just as much as the family involved. It doesn’t matter what the evidence is, written, historical or otherwise. Bully’s are experts at distorting the truth, preying upon your weaknesses and the tirelessly pursuit of conflict. On the other hand, the rest of us have practiced compromise, peace, avoidance and the path of least resistance. In the case of PAS… a perfect recipe for disaster.

PAS cases require the exposure of hard truths, the first truth being that there is a bully, and that bully should be dealt with just like the one on the playground. The playground bully should be exposed for what he/she is, reprimanded for being a menace and then steps taken to prevent the bullying. You wouldn’t tell all of the other kids to avoid playing outside on the playground to avoid being bullied so why do experts recommend to victims of PAS to do just that.  Lawyers recommend settling for less than what is your right as a parent. Experts evaluate and provided testimony suggesting compromises and tend to take a “its everyone’s fault” position and make recommendations that split the responsibility down the middle. Meanwhile the bully is left to continue to alienated the children, waist the courts time and money and provide ample opportunity to expose their own children to a litany of psychological and sometimes physical abuse.

So how do you find experts that will call it what it is and make recommendations that stop the bullying? Again, I recommend doing your own research and not leaving it up to just your lawyer. There are professionals that are willing to take the risks necessary to provide insight and solutions to the courts that will make a difference in dealing with Alienators. Now, how willingly the courts follow through on these recommendations is another topic completely.

#3: risks are to high

I mention this above… “There are professionals that are willing to take the risks necessary to provide insight and solutions to the courts that will make a difference”. What risks? you ask. You remember the bullies on the playground… well now they are adults. If children that bully are hand-full to deal with, don’t like getting in trouble and being reprimanded for their actions how do you think an adult bully will handle it? Not well.

Besides the myriad of ways that alienating parents manipulate the system and reek havoc on the courts and their own family… here are few tactics they use to insure that even the best experts refrain from even taking the stand… there are even cases of other professional using the tactics mentioned below to eliminate competitors.

• they file a malpractice lawsuit against the PAS expert/therapist/evaluator
First of all, not everyone has malpractice insurance. Unlike medical doctors… therapist, evaluators and psychologists are not required by law to carry malpractice insurance (contrary to what a lot of mis-informed laywers will tell you). So the cost incurred to fight a lawsuit becomes their sole responsibility.

Now some of malpractice insurance. This can be good or bad depending on who you ask. The insurance companies can charge a lot for malpractice insurance (just like they do for all other kinds of insurance… take one quick look at any downtown city landscape and notice the names on the biggest buildings). So the therapist may be paying the insurance company to protect them but its up to the insurance company NOT the therapist, how a malpractice lawsuit will be handled. The insurance company determines whether they settle out of court and under which conditions. Insurance companies settle most of these out of court because its cheaper to do so rather that go to court. So basically, you may have one or several malpractice claims that settled out of court, making it look like you are guilty of malpractice, hurting your reputation, but infact… you are only guilty of being completely controlled by your insurance company.

Another consideration with malpractice insurance… lawyers love it. If they decide to sue someone or file a malpractice lawsuit, they want money and the insurance company has it and will easily give it up to make a major court trial go away quickly. There are actually cases of lawyers calling a therapist to ask what kind of malpractice company they carry. They are surprised to hear that they many not have one. I believe that malpractice insurance actually CREATES lawsuits.

• they file complaints with the state licencesure board
These are free, malpractice lawsuits are not, so they are very popular with angry, disgruntled PA parents. Even if the expert has malpractice insurance, it doesn’t cover board complaints. An expert is not protected just because a judge or court ordered them to participate on any given case. This is extremely serious business as the expert can loose their license to practice. It requires the same if not thousands more to fight with the help of a lawyer and other experts to protect yourself from a board that may not even agree with the terms PA and PAS. So the expert has a choice. Speak the truth and risk the retaliation of an angry PAS parent, or keep it right down the middle and protect yourself.

• they start blogs or launch campaigns full of malicious gossip and untruths
Again, these are free so they are very popular. Typical bullying tactics.

So, as an expert/therapist/evaluator, if you are asked to address the issue of PAS and you have the above mentioned risks hanging over your head… how likely are you to want to make anyone angry… most of all an alienating parent or better put, a bully?

As an expert, you are putting your neck out, taking a huge risk. The cost, the time, the battles, the inability to make a living may be too much to fight against. There has to be a way to protect those who are trying to protect children. Do we want teachers, doctors and others to refrain from reporting the abuse of a child because they are worried about the repercussions. This is exactly what the system does to anyone addressing PA and PAS in the courtroom. The system protects the alienator, not the children.

Not all experts “whimp out”, and some don’t “whimp out” all of the time. Just be aware that whomever you have working on your case has to think about not only your case but their own ability to work and live as well. Do your own footwork and ask LOTS of questions. The same goes for lawyers… they can “whimp out” too.

When Alienation Makes Sense, Part II

This post is a continuation of, When Alienation Makes Sense

I wrote the above story to set the scene for further discussion of PAS.

My father’s abusive behavior was the perfect opportunity for my Mom and others to keep us away from him. She got the hell out of dodge in one quiet night. We packed up and left town with a note placed on the kitchen table for him to read. She filed for divorce and custody. After the divorce my Mom did her best to protect us from being hurt anymore… not just from him but from the whole situation. Let me explain how she DIDN”T use PAS to make circumstance any worse for us all.

My mother protected us from him, BUT she did not alienate us from him. She protected us by:
• going to court to ask for custody of us.
• she stressed that when we were with him to be good, listen and follow instructions.
• she talked with us and did not scare us about how to act on our visits with him.
• she explained that every household has different rules and that when we were with him we lived by his rules and when we were with her we lived by her rules just like anyone does at anyone else’s house.
• she never called him names
• she never repeated her conversations with our father to us
• she never told us how scarred she was when we left to go visit him
• she listened with interest and smiles when we returned with stories of the fun things we did.

She did this and I’m sure a thousand things more to ensure that we were not scarred, angry, frightened or sad when we left her to visit him. As a result, we visited him without fear. We had fun most of the time and we felt comfortable sharing when we got back to her house without feeling “grilled” for information.

But what if she had used another way of dealing with the whole situation? What if Mom recounted the abuse that happened when he lived with us. What if she had us tell him on the phone that we didn’t want to visit him. What if she told us details about the custody battle, the child-support and divorce proceedings. What if we all sat around the dining room table discussing in open, how our violent, angry, racist father that took out his frustrations on those around him with physical violence. What if she used phrases like “you both need to know your father is not a nice guy” or “I’m sorry your father ruined your lives”?

I can’t imagine what it would have been like as a 7 year old to board a 747 with only my sibling to visit my father for an entire month in another state. Can you imagine how scared we would have been? The terror we would have felt getting on that plane and waving good-bye to our Mother, only to arrive at another airport somewhere far away and come face-to-face with the monster that we were being forced to visit, our father.

Luckily, that’s not the way it went for me. I remember my first flight to visit dad clearly. I remember the book of “Dolls from Around the World” that was inside the surprise gift bag my Mother gave each of us as we boarded the plane. I remember how very nice the stewardesses (that what we called them then) were to us and how they gave us as many cokes and rolls as we wanted and playing will all of the controls and buttons at our seats. And I remember seeing him as we deboarded the plane with the stewardess, and we ran to greet him and hug him. We were happy, it is a happy memory for me… maybe a little bittersweet now as so many childhood memories can become… but one that makes me smile now.

Looking at it from a child’s point of view (my view as a child) … we shared good times and bad times with our father. And later, when I was older and more mature I decided that the man that is my father is not a man I want to be around. And I am grateful that my Mother gave me the right to make that decision for myself. He is abusive, he is scary, angry and racist, he is not a nice guy but he didn’t ruin our lives and neither did our Mother by trying to ruin our relationship with him. He alienated himself in time. His behavior never improved and as we both grew older our understanding of how adults should act made it clear that he needed some work.

Personally, I cannot stress enough the role of a parents love, or even “perceived” love on a child’s sense of self. I’m so glad now, as I was then, that I felt love for my father, I was allowed to show it and express it and even more important, I felt love from him.

In conclusion… Alienating is a cowards way to deal with your own hurt, fear or shame. It shows you have little if any empathy or compassion for your own children. It doesn’t matter how awful the other parent can be… and I know first hand how awful it can get. If you are willing and able to commit your family to alienating behaviors and actions, you are no better than the man pulling his wife by her hair, on her knees, into the hallway.

A Brief Description of PAS and PA

I won’t get into any of the debates about which term is legitamate, proven or valid in this posting. I believe those that have experienced these phenomenon will recognize that while the terms, syndromes and names used to describe it may differ the results are the same. Abuse is abuse no matter what name you give it.

PAS or Parental Alienation Syndrome

It is a term coined by Richard A. Gardner that refers to a disorder in which a child, has become alienated from a parent due to a combination of factors, including indoctrination by the other parent (almost exclusively as part of a child custody dispute).

Here’s a great article written about PAS that has helped many,

THE FLORIDA BAR JOURNAL, VOL. 73, No. 3, MARCH 1999, p 44-48
Parental Alienation Syndrome:
How to Detect It and What to Do About It
by J. Michael Bone and Michael R. Walsh

http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/pas/walsh99.htm

PA or Parental Alienation

Parental Alienation refers to the behaviors engaged in by the parent, with the possible result being the development of Parental Alienation Syndrome in the child. Parental Alienation refers to the actions of one parent onto the children. For example, when one parent is denigrating, criticizing and attacking the other parent in front of and ultimately with the children. It represents the one parent’s attempt to remove what is referred to as the “Target Parent” from their children’s lives, and making it appear that it is the child who feels this way.

In conclusion:

Parental Alienation are the actions.

Parental Alienation Syndrome is the result.

This link lists some PA behaviors and PAS symptoms.

http://www.jmichaelbone.com/jmb_site_files/jmb_site_files/page11.html

If the Judge doesn’t like it, don’t use it.

PAS or Parental Alienation Syndrome, PA of Parental Alienation, Alientation, Estrangement, Child Abuse…

It is crucially important to use the correct term under the correct circumstances.

If you are facing a court hearing in front of a judge that doesn’t agree with the term PAS for whatever reason… don’t use it. Is sounds simple enough.

Imagine… Why would you add onions to your daughter’s tuna fish knowing she hates onions. You can go through the whole routine of getting her to taste it, showing her how good it is but inevitably, she won’t eat it. Now you’ll have to go through the work of making something else for lunch and end up with a bowl of unusable smelly albeit tasty onion tuna fish.

In the courtroom, that’s money, time and energy waisted.

The above is actually a great intro into another topic… The courts are not unbiased.

When Alienation Makes Sense, Part I

I have one particular memory of my father’s physical abuse that is extremely vivid. There are other’s but this one is unique.

We were all in the living room watching TV. My sibling and I sat on the floor, keeping our eyes glued to the TV set. Behind us on the couch, the argument between my parents got more and more tense. I remember my sibling and I both sliding closer and closer towards the screen, inch by inch, moving very slowly we tried to become invisible. I also remember not being able to see what was on the TV screen because my tears were blurring my vision. We didn’t dare cry out loud, not sure why, I just know we didn’t that night. At some point, when it seemed I couldn’t possibly sit any closer to the TV, my parents were standing in the hallway to the bedroom. I eventually turned away from the TV to see what was going on when I heard my Mom say, “please don’t”. She was no longer standing but trying to shuffle across the floor on her hand’s and knees. My father’s hand had grabbed her by the hair and she was being dragged into the bedroom, while his other hand opened the bedroom door. I don’t remember anything more about the evening after that. So, my Dad is not a nice person. In fact, he is down right scary. He scared me then and he scares me now. My parents eventually divorced.

The really interesting part about this particular incident is not the abuse, or the fear, its how I remembered it or maybe even more so… when its meaning changed and how that changed my relationship with my father. I was in high school. I was laying in my bed thinking my way awake after a peaceful night’s rest just like I usually did each morning. My mind drifted to how I felt sorry for my Dad, living all alone now, as my parents had divorced many years ago. Then I thought about the years at my childhood home. My mind skipped from one memory to another in no specific order and then without warning, to that specific evening. Suddenly, I was bolting upright in bed. Sitting up, feeling somewhat stunned, I replayed the events of that evening in detail like I had many times before. The TV, the carpet, the tears, the sounds, the sight of my Mom struggling under the ruthlessness of my Father’s actions. You see… this wasn’t the first time I had thought about that night. But this was the first time I felt differently about it. In times past, it was just another memory. Now it had words like violence, ruthlessness and fear attached to it. I told myself then, as I tell myself now… I just happened to be ready to put the memory into the category it belonged.

I never told my Mom about that morning, or what I remembered. Not until I was an adult did she know I even thought about my father as a violent man. I don’t know why that memory seemed to reside in a state of suspended animation until that time but that was when I decided I didn’t need to feel sorry for him anymore and I could do without tension-filled, guilt-trip ridden visits with him. If anyone should feel guilty, it should be him. I stopped participating in visitations with my father. I told him and I told my Mom that I had other things to do that just couldn’t be rescheduled. I never mentioned my epiphany to either of them.

So, how does this all relate to the subject of this blog, PAS?

I chose not to see him. I realized I didn’t like him. One could argue that I was alienated from him. And isn’t alienation also called PAS?  Well, in this case, it may have been alienation but it wasn’t PAS. Here’s why… The reason I felt the way I did about him and chose not to see him was because of him, his actions and his behaviors, not someone else’s. This is the ONLY time alienation makes sense or better put… alienation is an understandable and an appropriate reaction.

If someone like my Mom had kept me from visiting him, convinced or told me of the person he is, and then I chose not to see him and dislike him, then that would be PAS. While my Mother did her best within the system to protect us from him, she did not alienate us from him. There’s a big distinction here between protect and alienate. While protecting your children helps them, alienating them harms them. We’ll talk lots more about this later.

Gratefully, I was allowed to come to my own decisions about my father. I didn’t want much to do with him, I didn’t like him and I had very good reasons why. Sadly, I still do.

Read a continuation of this post at, When Alienation Makes Sense, Part 11

PAS is Child Abuse

I’ll start the ball rolling with this comment… “PAS is child abuse.”

Plain and simple enough I guess, but PAS is anything but simple. The debates, the arguments, the turf-guarding and much more make this topic one in which even the most cool-minded individual may find themselves boiling at the collar. I want the chance to clear my mind and share some of what I know and what I’ve learned about PAS and PA.

Stay tuned.