Hi, I'm Janet mccullar. I'm the custody lawyer wrote this book. There's my name you can find me on the web at Janet mccullar.com and I am a Texas Attorney who is a board certified family law practitioner, which means I took some tests and got some references and became a specialist in family law in the state of Texas. I also am a fellow in the American Academy.To me a matrimonial lawyers, which is an organization of the nation's top fifteen hundred divorce and custody lawyers. I do mostly custody work and I recently wrote this book the custody lawyer to help parents who may be going through a custody dispute. I've got a lot of videos to talk about this and I hope that you will order my book. You can find it on Amazon. Thanks. So continuing in the series on Parental alienation today we're talking about how do you prove parental alienation? So the first thing that you'll see in Parental alienation Zyzz, there's an effort by the favored parent to limit contact between the unfavored parent or the parent who's being alienated and that can be phone calls that Are never returned text messages that aren't answered or the response is obviously not something that a child would respond with. So any effort to limit contact is one of the very first signs the child's never available. There can be a court order that says that contact has to be at a certain time and that's not happening. So that's one of the first things that you're going to see. Another thing that you see in alienation cases is they the parent who's favored will refuse to force the children to go and visit the non favored parent. So what does that look like in that situation? What we'll see is a parent who says something like I can't make my child get in the car or I can't make my child visit or The child doesn't want to see you and I I can't physically pick the child up and put them in the car anything where you can see a situation where if the child for example were sick and needed to go to the doctor. Would that parent be able to make the child go to see the doctor if the child said, I don't want to go to school today. Doesn't that parent have the ability to make the child go to school that day. Looking for those kind of scenarios where the parent is just not encouraging and supporting a positive relationship between the parent and the child. Another thing that we sometimes see is enmeshment between the favored parent and the child. So the relationship is Beyond close. I mean many parents. I have a son I adore but many parents go beyond that and they start to have a relationship with Child that starts to look like something like the the child is like a best friend to the parent or is caretaking the parent for example, if Mom is the person who's alienating and dad has a new girlfriend the child sees this extreme sadness and Mom about the relationship and so the child is trying to make Mom. Feel better about the relationship that starts to look like and nourishment in the relationship other things that we see is undermining the relationship. So we're looking at things like the parent refusing to give information about a child's activities refusing to put down the parent as an emergency contact on the school records. We're looking at things like, you know not Giving information about medical appointments Dental appointments extracurricular activities not sharing that kind of information. And so there's an undermining so that other parent does not have an ability to participate in the child's life also interfering in possession. So this can look like a parent comes to school early and pick the child up when they know dad is coming that day, or they know. Know that a parent's going to attend a medical appointments at the last minute. They change the appointment and so the parent misses out on a yearly checkup. Those are the kind of things that can undermine a parents relationship with their child. The other thing is they can have bad-mouthing. So the parent is talking to the child and saying negative things about the other parent not Speaking highly of the other parent not encouraging that child to have a good relationship with their other parent. And so that's another thing that we look at is the parent who's alienating confiding too much in the child. Does the child know too many too much information about the parents divorce for example, does the child know that maybe in a parent had an affair or that there's other information? Learn about child support payments and things like that that children should be protected from children usually aren't divorce. They're not going to know the details of of what happened between the parents that caused the divorce most parents want to protect their children from that but in alienating situations, the child is often brought in and given that kind of information. Another thing that we see in these cases is where a parent will portray. A the other parent as a danger to the child or that they live in an unsafe neighborhood which statistically might not even be close to accurate. But anything to sort of undermine the child's sense of safety in the care of their other parent the the alienating parent wants to undermine that so how do you prove these kind of things you may recognize and can be checking off boxes. Even as I've been going through describing these things. So how do you prove them in court? Well, first of all, what I say to people is that when we're in court we have to show and not just tell and so what that means is that we have to have some kind of tangible way of showing the court that these things are can happen. And that doesn't mean that you have to have video recordings or tape recordings. All those can be good if they're allowable where you live we don't have to have that. Kind of level of proof. Sometimes it's just enough to be able to describe the situation with great detail and what I mean by that is it's one thing if I say that while the parent is alienating and it's another thing if my client is testifying and saying things like, you know on this day the alienating parent limited my contact by not answering you. No the phone when I called to talk to the child and this has happened on 50 occasions. So we start keeping detailed records of things like that tracking information providing the attorney with text messages to the child records that show the telephone calls have been placed emails that have been sent and gone unanswered all of those things start to look like documents going to the school and getting copies of the enrollment records that show the parent isn't On there as a emergency contact. Those are the store to things that we start Gathering. The other thing that I talk to people about is can you send an email that says to the alienating parent? I tried to call today at our court order time of six and no call was returned and either the parent will respond to it with some excuse which starts building. A pattern that shows a strange menteur alienation or they don't respond at all and they ignore it and either way you've got some helpful information that you can use to persuade a judge that you're having alienation in your case other ways that we do it if there's bad-mouthing and so forth There are rules in court about what can be said by other people. So there's a rule called hearsay so you can't We talked about what your child has said to you except under certain limited circumstances, but that doesn't mean that you don't want to provide your attorney with all the information that you can about the statements that the child has made to you. And sometimes those can be followed up to document by sending a follow-up text message. Like I had a telephone conversation with you today, and you refused to come and see me on Friday and And and so I just want to make sure that I understood that accurately starting to do things to document so that you can show the judge and not just tell the judge about what's happening. The other thing too is sometimes working with a counselor will definitely help as well going in meeting with a counselor talking to them about the things that you're seeing with the child and then you're now creating another person who can come in and and testify in court about The situation with the family keeping track of communications documenting calendars showing, you know, keeping records of things that are appearing on social media. All of these things can start to build up quite a lot of evidence that we can show to the court in almost every custody case. It's a he said she said or he-said he-said she-said she-said between the parents. And the judge is looking at The credibility if you're able to come in and you're able to give example after example of the type of behavior that you're describing is alienating the judge can draw their own conclusion about what is happening in that situation and can see for themselves that the parent is alienating. It's just like if you're dealing with a parent who's angry if you Come in and say oh the parent was so angry and they were bullying me that's not as descriptive as breaking it down to what the behavior look like and really giving details about what was happening. So just to recap some of the things that we look at for alienation limiting contact refusing to force children to visit the other parent enmeshment with a parent undermining the other parent interfering in the relationship or the visitation with the other parent bad-mouthing confiding in their child about things that really are not appropriate for a child to know or portraying the other parent as dangerous are some great things to look at if you're dealing with a situation where there's parental alienation or in strange moment involved. Thanks so much for listening today. I hope that you will check me out. at The custody lawyer. I'm Janet mccullar. You can find me at Janet mccullar.com. You can book a consultation with me you and your attorney can book a consultation with me. I'd love to help you out with your custody issues and I can do that from anywhere in the world. And so I hope you'll book an appointment lots of resources on the website. Thanks for listening.
Continuing in the series on parental alienation, today we're talking about, how do you prove parental alienation. The first thing that you'll see in parental alienation is there's an effort by the favored parent to limit contact between the unfavored parent, or the parent who's being alienated. That can be phone calls that are never returned, text messages that aren't answered, or the response is obviously not something that a child would respond with. Any effort to limit contact is one of the very first signs. The child's never available. There can be a court order that says that contact has to be at a certain time, and that's not happening, so that's one of the first things that you're going to see. Another thing that you see in alienation cases is the parent who is favored will refuse to force the children to go and visit the non-favored parent. What does that look like? In that situation, what we'll see is a parent who says something like, "I can't make my child get in the car, or I can't make my child visit, or the child doesn't want to see you, and I, I can't physically pick the child up and put them in the car." Anything where you can see a situation where if the child for example, were sick, and needed to go to the doctor, would that parent be able to make the child go to see the doctor? If the child said, "I don't want to go to school today," doesn't that parent have the ability to make the child go to school that day? Looking for those kind of scenarios where the parent is just not encouraging, and supporting a positive relationship between the parent and the child. Another thing that we sometimes see is enmeshment between the favored parent and the child, so the relationship is beyond close. Get even MORE great info, buy the book NOW! You will undoubtedly glean from Janet’s 26 years of experience as “The Custody Lawyer” with every show revealing hard facts on; Visitation, Alienation, Child Support and how to best help your kids as they transition into a new normal. Listen and find out how “we have a passion for families in crisis” has become our moniker, you’ll want to share, “The Custody Lawyer Podcast” with anyone you know going through this difficult journey. About Janet McCullar Janet is a nationally respected trial attorney known for her skill and success in the courtroom. Janet has represented clients in hundreds of complex divorce and custody cases. Despite her skill as a litigator, Janet’s cases are routinely resolved amicably whenever possible to save the client the time, cost and pain involved in litigation. If litigation cannot be avoided, you need the services of a respected and skilled litigator. Janet is Board Certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. She was also selected to be a Fellow in the prestigious American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, an organization of the nation’s top divorce attorneys. Janet is a frequent author and speaker on divorce and custody issues. Away from the office, Janet is a mother of three children. Janet has a passion for physical fitness, reading, the arts, traveling, and community service. In recent years, Janet has enjoyed learning to sail. 