You Need More Than an Expert

I frequently receive email requests for expert witnesses in a given case, in a given town. The basis of the request is that if one has the right expert, the case is done. This is simply not the case. While having the right expert is an essential part of any case, it is only part of the puzzle.

Most targeted parents in PA cases have literally boxes of evidence in the form of emails, letters, recordings, etc. However, what most fail to grasp is that even the most voluminous box of the best evidence is basically worthless unless it is properly assembled so as to assist in the telling of the story of your case to the Court (Judge). It is the story that moves the Judge, not the boxes of evidence. The boxes of evidence operates more like the set in a play. It contributes to the story, but does not tell it.

The telling of the story in a way that causes the particular Judge who hears it to become moved to act in ways to take the children in question out of the situation they are in, is the goal. The evidence is the flour, eggs and milk, and the story is the recipe. Therefore, the construction of the story, the selection of specific examples with an eye to the specific audience of the Judge, is absolutely critical. In my experience, this is grossly misunderstood or under weighted in the preparation of Family Law cases involving Parental Alienation.

Getting Others to Understand Parental Alienation

I have just created a new course designed to get those who do not understand parental alienation, to begin to get it. This course was previously entitled "Parental Alienation: A Primer." I re-titled it because I got enough feedback to the effect that this title was not very clear or helpful. I appreciate the feedback!

Anyway, this course is conversational in nature and I believe very digestible for those who are just outside the circle of personal experience with parental alienation. This course explains why there is a tendency to overly criticize the targeted parent, and how this is a symptom of not really understanding the phenomenon.

I hope that this is helpful.

The link for the course is to the right of this page.

Misinformation Regarding Parental Alienation

I recently received a comment from a viewer regarding a video that I had posted. The comment said that PA and PAS was junk science and that protective parents had been accused of alienating their children from the otherwise abusive spouse wrongly. Sadly, I am sure that this has happened. However, as is repeatedly made clear in the literature, Parental Alienation should never be considered when real abuse does in fact exist. This is one key method to ruling it out. It is only to be considered when the allegations of abuse are false. Let me repeat that: Parental Alienation should only be considered when the allegations of abuse are false. When real abuse exists, parental alienation does not.

Therefore, when this sort of criticism arises, it suggests that the phenomenon of one parent influencing a child to become alienated from the other parent is somehow bogus, as though this never occurs. I believe that it is important to state that virtually all legitimate published expert opinion which is based on a great deal of literature and research, clearly recognizes that the phenomenon of parental alienation does in fact exist. One parent, under the right circumstances, can indeed influence a child to think badly about and eventually even reject that other parent. No reputable source would disagree with this. Therefore because of the fact that allegations of parental alienation may be falsely and illegitimately made, is not justification for eliminating the entire argument. Such an argument would be tantamount to saying that because some children have been erroneously diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, that ADHD does not exist.

New Course for Newbies and Neophytes

I have just completed a new audio course that describes the dynamics of Parental Alienation.

One of the things that occurs almost universally, is the phenomenon of the Targeted Parent having those in their lives who do not really "get it." I believe that all will agree that this phenomenon is so powerful and bizarre that those that have not seen it up close may have a hard time really understanding what is occurring. Therefore I have created a new audio course that is very conversational in nature, and I believe easy on the palate of understanding. I have made it as digestible as I know how, using elements of the other courses but putting them in a not too overwhelming format.

I believe likely candidates could be family members, lawyers, guardians, mental health professionals who have not had much traffic with these issues, as well as school teachers who become entangled in these cases. I believe that this course hits the mark, and as always, I look forward to your feedback.

I have entitled this course, "Parental Alienation: A Primer"

I wish you all well.

A Word About Cost

One of the most pernicious problems associated with dealing with Parental Alienation in the courtroom is cost. These cases can be very expensive. An attorney’s success is premised on him or her being well prepared, which requires significant time and money. Experts are often part of the mix, which also represents added expenses. It is therefore reasonable to question the necessity of hiring an additional person to the team in the form of a consultant, when there is already so much expense.

However, in cases involving Parental Alienation, the experienced consultant – properly having both extensive clinical and professional experience with Parental alienation, as well as considerable time in the courtroom – can actually reduce cost. A common example can perhaps make this clear. As noted above, Expert witnesses are often required in these cases. When an experienced consultant is not involved, this typically takes the form of the attorney finding and hiring the expert, usually from a pool of forensic experts in the given community. If the local experts do not have adequate experience in Parental Alienation, then the attorney is faced with trying to find such an expert who can then be imported for the purpose of litigation. Depending on the attorney’s network of such experts, his or her degree of understanding of the issues, and his or her time in finding such an expert, the expert is eventually found. Once this occurs, the attorney educates the expert about the case and then sends them voluminous documents about the case for their review. Having served in this capacity, I can attest that the preparation required to be able to testify in such a matter can and often is a great many hours of reading over documents that may or may not be germane to the issue. This review and preparation time consists of the expert organizing, reviewing and sifting through all of the documentation in an effort to prepare for testimony. This process can and often takes many hours and typically costs thousands of dollars. This is, of course, even before any conclusions and opinions are hatched. Once this happens, then the expert and the attorney will spend significant time in consultation with each other for strategic and preparatory purposes. This can also take hours and thousands of dollars.

This process is however different with a consultant on board. First, the consultant would take responsibility for finding the best and most viable expert - either locally or not – based on the issues involved. This selection process involves matching the expert to the issue being argued, which should not fall onto the attorney, who could not be expected to know such subtle differences. Even the best prepared attorney should not be expected to be able to perform this function. With the consultant on board, the attorney expends none of their billable time on such a search, yet ends up with a more thoroughly researched choice of experts. Secondly, the consultant would have already reviewed and boiled down the issues and the specific documents that would be necessary for the expert to review and would be able to present it to them in their “own language.” Less time is therefore spent getting the expert up to speed since they do not have to start from scratch. The case is presented to him or her by the consultant who has already pre-digested it. The preparatory time for the expert is therefore significantly reduced to sometimes a fraction of what would have been the case were the consultant not involved.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know: Welcome to Family Court

You don’t know what you don’t know. Let me repeat that. You don’t know what you don’t know. At first glance, this would appear to be a truism, or an obvious statement. However, while it is obviously true, it far from obvious. In fact, as we move through the minutes and hours of our days, we encounter countless ambiguous or unclear situations and circumstances. In an effort to understand the many ambiguous piles around us, we sort them and stack them into orderly piles by making specific assumptions about their meanings, so as to make them sensible to us. This is an automatic cognitive reflex for us humans and we do it thousands of times daily. In the process of doing this, the assumptions that we use become the building blocks of the edifices that we construct that then forms our reality. We use these assumptions to bridge the spaces that we do not know, thereby creating a level of greater comfort for ourselves. We do this so quickly and seamlessly that it is mostly beyond our own notice. It makes us feel better, perhaps more in control.

For example, if one assumes that the court system, by its design and operation, has a way of revealing the truth of a given situation, this assumption would orient how one goes into court. One would go into court with the belief that simply being candid and honest is sufficient to the revealing of the truth. This assumption, after all, is very much supported by taking the oath to tell the truth, the rules of evidence, and other judicial inventions. The machinery of this is, after all, supposed to grind out the truth. Perhaps the reader, by virtue of having found and read this, has a reaction to this position at this moment.

However, if the assumption that the court system, and its operation is supposed to operate in this fashion, but that it, in fact does not, then one would approach the courtroom with a very different orientation. One would be much more cautious and vigilant to understand exactly how it did work, as opposed to how it is supposed to work. Under this circumstance, one might well look to one’s lawyer to be a guide to explain just how it does work. This certainly sounds reasonable. However, such a position would be based on the assumption that the lawyer actually did understand the true workings of the court, was willing to share them with you, and actually did so. These are all things that you simply do not know.

The late, brilliant and albeit eccentric British psychiatrist, R.D. Laing wrote, “The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.” By this, he meant that it is only when we truly realize and accept that we cannot actually know what we cannot see, that we can begin to remove the blinders that this creates. This paradox of embracing the blindness in order to gain sight, is of crucial importance. Yet this insight comes with a price. It is characterized by tireless skepticism and testing. It is themed by such questions as, “what do you base that on?”, and “why?” This state of mind is uncomfortable, difficult to maintain and exhausting, especially in times of stress, like during a divorce. Due to all of this difficulty we humans are therefore easily seduced by untested assumptions that promise a wealth of certainty, yet may well end up being the next Ponzi scheme. We are suckers for this. We are human.

But enough of Philosophy 101. What does this have to do with Family Court, parental alienation, and looking to the court intervene to return your child to you? Everything. The Family Court System is a very specific environment whose true rules of operation are unstated and are, in fact, quite contrary to those which are stated. For example, one often hears the remark that you can or cannot “prove” parental alienation in court, as if this question was critical to being successful in court with parental alienation. In actual fact, the ability or inability to “prove” the presence of parental alienation in a specific family case is very much secondary to the issue of getting the court to “believe” that parental alienation is present. What we very often find is that what one can or cannot prove in family court is quite different than what one can get a very human Judge to “believe.” The rules of evidence and the evidence code do more or less rule the issue of proof, but the subjective impact of causing the audience (the Judge) to believe your story is more the province of emotion, presentation, and even theater. These are, in fact, the principles – emotion, presentation, and theatrics - that predict outcome in Family Law cases where parental alienation is present. Not the law.

Perhaps surprisingly, competent Family Law attorneys very often do not understand this. They believe that outcome is predicted by the “rules” and the application of the law to the facts of the case. If this, in fact, should be so in a given case, it is due to the fact that the legal case happened to agree with the emotional presentation that successfully made the Judge “a believer.” We see over and over that when these two levels disagree – that is when the legalistic level disagrees with the emotionally related “story” - that the subjective emotional level trumps the legal one. Family Law cases involving parental alienation provide abundant example of this. Oddly, the lawyers are often as surprised by unwanted outcome as are their clients. Sadly familiar examples abound. Visitation between parent and child are regularly interrupted when doing so is completely at variance with the conditions that are to be met by the law. Orders of Protection are routinely given when there is no evidence of threat or event a hint at one. Custody is often changed when the burden of “change of circumstance” has been in no way met or even addressed. Visitation Orders are ignored by the very court that issued them for no legal reason whatsoever. False abuse allegations are rarely if ever prosecuted in spite of statutory language that requires prosecution. The list goes on.

The significant fact here is that these anomalies are not anomalies at all. They are the predictable outcome of a “sub- logic” that exists beneath the level of the law, has nothing to do with the law, and is often at odds with the law. Welcome to Family Court.

Why Do I Need Consultative Services with My Parental Alienation Case?

Some may wonder: Why is it helpful to have a consultant in addition to my attorney in a
case involving parental alienation? There are several reasons. A few are listed below.

First, cases involving parental alienation virtually always find the targeted parent being falsely vilified in some manner. Experience has taught that if this is not properly dealt with, these false allegations never tend to “go away.” When handled properly, these false allegations can actually work on your behalf. The way that is done is not standard operating procedure within Family Law. These issues require an approach that may seem even unwise to your attorney, so you, as a client would be hard pressed to have such a conversation with your attorney. This is best handled by a consultant with expertise in parental alienation. I have found that once this occurs, the attorney realizes that such consultative input can be of significant value. I had one attorney refer to my role as consultant as the “secret weapon” in the case.

Second, since the targeted parent finds themselves in the disadvantaged position of having to constantly defend themselves against various false allegations, a significant amount of preparation in warranted in identifying these critical points and developing strategies or countermeasures for their defeat. This is almost never done adequately. Rather, it is typically done in a more knee-jerk fashion, if it at all. To insure that this is done properly, a strategy worksheet is developed which identifies these specific issues, and then develops specific strategies that are ready and waiting for use. For example, let us imagine that there have been abuse reports filed falsely, and that concern exists that these reports (regardless of their findings) will be used to cast an atmosphere of doubt and concern about you as a parent. In such a case, the countermeasures might include detailed investigation into the specifics of the reports, their sequence, and history, to create an understanding of the pattern of vilification that they create. Another countermeasure might be to consider an independent Psychological Evaluation which is focused on the specific allegations contained in the abuse reports, with an eye to reveal how out of character such behaviors would be. A third countermeasure might be to look for other patterns of misrepresentation engaged in by the other/alienating parent that would reveal this tendency to misrepresent events as a strategy to hoodwink the court. When these three strategies are prepared for and developed, a positive outcome is much more likely. However, given the busy schedules of most attorneys, the development of these strategies is typically considered a luxury, when in fact, they actually are more of a necessity for success. The specific role of the consultant is to provide just this layer of preparation and pre-warning into the litigation process.

Thirdly, you do not know what you do not know. When entering into the environment of Family Court, one relies on the advice and guidance of one’s lawyer to shepard one through the process. One must recall that Family Lawyers are Lawyers and not mental health professionals. Attorneys often make strategic decisions within a case and present the result of their decision to their client, precluding the client from the decision making process. For example, let us suppose that a custody dispute is under way and that parental alienation is present. Depending on the area, and personal preferences of the lawyer, it might be suggested that a Guardian be appointed vs. a Custody Evaluator to help the court in determining what is best for the child. In cases with parental alienation, the wrong choice on this question can seriously sabotage the case, however the reasons for this may be completely outside the expertise of the otherwise competent family lawyer. In these instances, the involvement of an experienced consultant can be invaluable. There are many other examples where otherwise insignificant or pedestrian choices, which would make little difference if the case did not include parental alienation, would be devastating in a case with parental alienation.

Fourth, in cases involving parental alienation, therapists, evaluators, and guardians are not created equal. While the vast majority of these professionals would attest some level of familiarity with parental alienation, experience has shown that the vast majority of these professionals do not truly “get it.” This is routinely devastating to these cases, with these therapist, evaluators, and guardians, becoming a voice in the chorus of the alienation, rather than the voice exposing it. One task that can be performed by the consultant is to research, interview and evaluate who truly does and who does not “get it.” This is not something that an attorney can be expected to be able to do, but it is of vital importance. It is not something that the client can do as well, however for other reasons. This task is something that the experience consultant can do with confidence.

While other areas of law (criminal, civil litigation) utilize consultants with great frequency, such is not the case in Family Law. Experience has taught however that when parental alienation is present in a case, such expertise is extremely valuable. Cases involving this problem are quite specialized and have an entire body of information that, if used properly, can have extremely beneficial effects on case outcome. Such utilization however, requires preparation, an overall case strategy and specific tactical