Parental Alienation

HPSAUCE

Hi all, I'm wondering if anyone has any experience of this and can offer some guidance if you've had a positive outcome via the courts. My husband is the victim of this and his ex-wife has stopped him having any access or contact whatsoever with his kids for 7 months and counting, citing various unfounded reasons and involving social services etc who all agree there is no valid reasoning and they are trying to reinstate contact, though she is dragging her heels and very much not helping. Whilst that is now a process we have to endure via the slow and disorganised court system, I'm keen to know whether anyone has any advice/ wording/ knowledge of this and can offer us the benefit of sharing your experiences and how you achieved a positive outcome. Overall despite the upset we have for it all, its the children that suffer the most and they are both clearly already very damaged by this (in the eyes of the social worker) so we're keen to ensure our next court appearance is productive. Thanks 

sassyblue

Haven’t the court even organised supervised visits in the meantime? Or Skype calls? Some contact is better than none.

ZaSa1418

How old are the kids? Do you have evidence of what the social workers are saying? 
Does he have a court order and she is breaking it or are you looking at going to court for the first time? 

tacpot12

Your husband will need to attempt mediation, and will get a certificate from the mediator that he will need before he can go to court. He might as well be trying to arrange this now; I would guess that mediators have the means to mediate remotely during the pandemic, although it may be less effective.

He should also have a look at this Get help with child arrangements - Get help with child arrangements (justice.gov.uk)

Ultimately, the best way to resolve these sorts of issues is to make peace with the intransigent parent. Sometimes their family can be helpful, other times it might be that money talks. If you husband can up his child maintenance if she complies, and drop it back to the CMS calculation of the maintenance due when she does not, it might help her see the benefit of cooperating. If you can't get the parent to co-operate, then the slow Courts system is the only resort. 

MalMonroe

Aren't there any solicitors involved? Or, as someone else has suggested, mediators? That's what happened when I was divorced and sorting out child custody/visitation. 

My husband left me for someone else and I was really upset and hurt and did not want him to have any access to our children. However, my own solicitor pointed out that the only ones who would suffer would be the children. Sometimes during such times, people aren't able to think straight or see the bigger picture. The children won't thank their mother in years to come for treating them as pawns. 

As long as your husband keeps his cool and is patient, things will work out. Even if his ex is unreasonable, she will be directed by the court system - which I didn't find to be either slow or disorganised.  Sometimes judges will allow children to speak for themselves and say that they want to see the absent parent, or not. 

I really didn't want my children mixing with my ex's new partner and they didn't want to visit when she was there either but she was a fixture and they had to get used to it. They suffered because of it. His new wife didn't have the ability to share her new husband's time and was so jealous of our children that they were utterly miserable every time they visited. She always had to be there, they never had their dad to themselves. 

And after a few years that marriage ended too and our children had been through hell and high water for nothing. 

Children are living beings and they may or may not be distressed about not seeing their dad but can't they phone, or skype or something similar? Surely his ex can't stop that happening, especially if the children want it. 

Seven months is no time at all and I think things will settle if they are not forced. It might be a good idea for someone to ask the children exactly what they want to do. They will certainly be a lot happier if their parents can be civil to each other, rather than argumentative. In my experience, anyway.

mason's_mum

Some interesting points above.
From my point of view I'm in a similar position to you but nowhere near as bad. 
My partner used to pick the children up from school for tea every Tuesday evening, and collect them every other Friday and drop them back home on a Sunday, but the ex had said they wanted to play with their friends on a Friday evening, and don't want to come anymore, and since COVID has insisted the arrangement continued as she says the children want to do online classes with her on a Saturday morning, so he can't collect them until 1pm. 
He queried this and she basically got them on Facetime and said to them "Tell Daddy that you want to stay with me on a Friday night now and come to his on a Saturday instead". How is an 8yo supposed to respond to that type of leading question?!
Several weeks later, one evening my stepdaughter was cuddled up to us, watching TV and said "it's not fair that we only get one sleepover at Daddy's now, it's not enough time" 
Children tend to say whatever they think will get them the best response at the time, and want to keep everyone happy. They usually love both parents (unless they have been poisoned against one) and are unlikely to say something that will hurt either of them.

MalMonroe said:

Children are living beings and they may or may not be distressed about not seeing their dad but can't they phone, or skype or something similar? Surely his ex can't stop that happening, especially if the children want it. 

this is an interesting one - my stepson is now old enough to have a mobile and he will happily text his dad when he's on the bus to/from school but will never text when at home. he also doesn't answer calls, I suspect he's been told not to, as since then, my partner has been told only to call on Mum's phone so she can monitor what's being said.

Anyway, we are now going back to court in April to try and get the Friday nights reinstated, and we plan to move closer to them so we can have their friends over to play at ours on a Friday night if it's that causing the problem!
I Wish you luck with your case - keep us posted with how it goes.

elsien

Sibling’s ex used to remove the children’s phones as they walked in the door and would not allow them to answer the landline. Sadly, some parents can and do prevent phone/virtual contact.