UK’s challenge to parental alienation: a lesson for NZ courts

Opinion: When child custody battles turn ugly, accusations of “parental alienation” can take centre stage. However, new guidance from the UK Family Justice Council is challenging the use of this controversial concept, arguing that it can distract from what truly matters: the well-being of children.

According to the theory behind parental alienation, children who reject a relationship with, or express fear of, one parent have likely been brainwashed by their other parent into doing so.

This alienation is allegedly perpetrated almost entirely by women (more than 90 percent of parents accused of alienating their children are mothers), and its male “victims” are disproportionately white and almost entirely higher socioeconomic status.

The council’s recommendations aim to reshape how courts address these fraught cases, offering a sharp contrast to practices in Aotearoa New Zealand.

A multidisciplinary group of experts produced the UK Family Justice Council guidance after one of the most extensive consultations in the history of the council. The experts involved highlight how the focus on allegations of “parental alienation” and the alleged “alienating behaviours” of one parent is often counterproductive to the best interests of children, and shift the focus of custody proceedings away from the voice of the child.

The UK Family Justice Council expresses concern that family courts have been making findings of alienation at far higher rates than would be expected. They note that children withdraw from relationships with parents for a variety of reasons, including neglect or abuse and other forms of poor parenting.

They admonish that parental alienation should not be treated as equivalent to actual family violence; and instruct that, before a court finds a parent has psychologically manipulated a child to resist or refuse a relationship with their other parent, there must be concrete evidence.

They also instruct that a protective parent limiting a child’s contact with a perpetrator of abuse or moving away from a perpetrator to secure their safety cannot amount to parental alienation.

Most importantly, they recommend that family courts should not find children have been “alienated” from a parent who has inflicted family violence, because, in those cases, the child’s rejection of their violent parent is justified, and the protective parent’s response is a legitimate form of child protection.

These practices occur regularly in our Family Court, where protective parents – usually mothers – are labelled “alienating”, and violent perpetrators – usually fathers – are awarded care of children with no regard to the impact their violence has on children’s welfare.

The council also expressed concern at the lack of weight being given to children’s voices in family courts, especially when children disclose family violence and express a preference to reside with their non-violent parent.

A ministerial inquiry here in Aotearoa, New Zealand, reached a similar finding about our Family Court five years ago.

These findings from the UK are needed reminders. Our courts increasingly conceptualise “parental alienation” as a form of psychological abuse equivalent to, or even worse than, actual family violence.

Of particular note, the UK council says family courts should not find that a parent has psychologically manipulated a child simply because the child resists or refuses contact with their other parent.

They instruct that family courts should not allow psychological experts to identify “parental alienation” and say it’s “inappropriate for experts to be asked to step into fact-finding or determination of alienating behaviours”.

In Aotearoa, however, the New Zealand Family Court allows psychologists to offer“expert” evidence that a child has been “alienated” as if they are rendering a psychiatric diagnosis when they are engaging in unreliable and unchallengeable fact-finding.

The guidance from the UK Family Justice Council is a welcome antidote to the epidemic of false findings of parental alienation in our family courts here, often at the urging of court psychologists and abusive parents seeking to blame their victims for the consequences of their abuse.

The myths and practices that the guidance seeks to dispel are unfortunately rampant in New Zealand, and we have a lot of work to do to reform our family court system’s unsafe, victim-blaming culture. Experts, including myself, have made these arguments to the court for decades, and our input has evoked dismissal, even hostility.