Parental Alienation in Hanover Child Custody Cases in Westborough

In many parental alienation cases, aggrieved ex-partners punish the other parent by emotionally or physically separating them from their kids. Fathers may manipulate children into believing their mothers do not care for them properly, or mothers might refuse a father’s right to reasonable visitation by making the children believe their father was abusive and controlling. Whether you’re the person you are supposed to be co-parenting with is taking these harmful actions because they seek a leg up during litigation, wants to hurt you, or wishes to have control over you, a dedicated family lawyercould raise a parental alienation claim in your Hanover child custody case. With over 35 combined years of exclusive family law experience, our experienced child custody attorneys are prepared to handle various scenarios involving the different levels of parental alienation and take legal action if the other parent is impacting your ability to see your children.

What Is Parental Alienation?

Building a healthy parent-child relationship requires co-parents to support each other’s access to their children and encourage the children to love each parent regardless of the parent’s relationship ending. This support may include facilitating weekly video calls, encouraging the children to spend time with the other parent, and ensuring both parents stay involved in the major decisions over the child’s life. Parental alienation occurs when one parent acts in a manner to interfere with the children’s relationship with the other parent. At a low level, these types of actions may be done without malice; for example, if there are little negative comments made to the children, “God, you’re so much like your mother – you cannot listen to anything” or “Go talk to your father, he doesn’t pay enough in child support to actually support you.” Those habits tend to advance as both the person saying them and the children start to internalize them.

At a high level of alienation, the child may actually believe the negative things that have been told to them by the custodial parent to the point the child blatantly refuses to see the parent. When it gets to this point, it is very hard to address because the child’s beliefs about the other parent have to first be remedied and then a new relationship must be built. Hard does not mean impossible, but if you’re in a situation where you believe your child’s other parent is interfering with your relationship, it is better to act early.

While Massachusetts General Law Chapter 208, §31 states that courts should typically assume that it is in the child’s best interests for both parents to have equal legal and physical custodial rights, this is not true in parental abuse and misconduct cases. There have been a number of judges who are looking at this direct interference at the same level of physical abuse and removing children from the home of the parent purposefully manipulating the children. A Hanover attorney can help parents who have been unlawfully alienated from their children request, modify, or enforce a child custody order.