Understanding Parental Alienation Laws

Breaking physical ties with your former spouse is never easy. When a family drifts apart it can be emotional and frustrating for everyone involved, including your children. After any divorce, legal separation or uncontested divorce involving children it is natural to wonder how your child or children will settle into a different way of living with their parents. Cases concerning child support, child custody or visitation agreements can be tumultuous and very emotional. There is no guarantee that a former spouse will be able to maintain an amicable relationship with you after the divorce or separation.

It is in just such an emotional climate that parental alienation can occur. At Jones Law Firm, PC, when we take on a case like this, our Denver family attorney discusses the details and carefully listens to all the client has to say. We then educate the client on parental alienation and develop a personalized strategy for proceeding.

Parental alienation is the term used to describe the efforts of one parent to sour a child’s relationship with his or her other parent, especially in cases where the child already harbors some resentment toward the other parent. It can be consciously or unconsciously done but the effect is the same. If conducted over a long period of time or if criticism of the other parent is particularly severe, the effects can be heartbreaking.

The child will eventually begin to express strong and unreasonable hatred or dislike toward the other parent. This is actually considered a form of child abuse as it is the attempt to manipulate a child into turning against their other parent. In regular child abuse cases, the child will begin to reject the abusing parent in order to protect themselves but with parental alienation, the opposite is true.

Whether the abusive parent is consciously or subconsciously turning their child against their former spouse, there are signs and indicators that can help you identify parental alienation behaviors.

If you know that you child is suffering from parental alienation and you are slowly losing their love and respect, you must take immediate legal action to reverse this abusive behavior. In the event of a divorce or legal separation, the courts will not tolerate parental alienation because it is detrimental to the health and well-being of the child and their relationship with the other parent.

A very capable Denver parental alienation lawyer at our firm may be able to help you prevent parental alienation from ruining your relationship with your child or children. We are competent in all our practice areas of family law. We are also skilled in fathers’ rights cases. Our legal team cares deeply about families and we strive to help preserve a stable environment for children long after a divorce.

Contact Jones Law Firm, PC and see what we may be able to do for you to save your relationship with your children.