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parental-alienation

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General Disclaimer: Nothing presented constitutes legal advice and the McKenzie Friend UK Network is not a legal entity or in anyway claims to be a 'legal resource'. The resource guide is supported by McKenzie Friends and Litigants in person for Litigants in Person in Family Court. McKenzie Friends provide layperson support as an informed friend under the Family Court Practice Guidance of 2010. All information is published under the spirit of that guidance. For any corrections of the information, please contact the McKenzie Friend UK Network
 
Parental Alienation
 
 
 
The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane P considered the issue of a court appointed expert and the issue of parental alienation in in  Re C (Parental Alienation: Instruction of Expert)  [2023] EWHC 345 (Fam)

The President acknowledged at paragraph 2:

‘It is not the purpose of this judgment to go further into the topic of alienation. Most Family judges have, for some time, regarded the label of ‘parental alienation’, and the suggestion that there may be a diagnosable syndrome of that name, as being unhelpful. What is important, as with domestic abuse, is the particular behaviour that is found to have taken place within the individual family before the court, and the impact that that behaviour may have had on the relationship of a child with either or both of his/her parents. In this regard, the identification of ‘alienating behaviour’ should be the court’s focus, rather than any quest to determine whether the label ‘parental alienation’ can be applied’

 
 
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For parental alienation to occur, there needs to be a situation where a child is refusing, resisting or reluctant to engage with a parent, and the resident parent has engaged in behaviour that has impacted on the child and led to the child’s refusal, resistance, or reluctance to engage in a relationship with the other parent, as per the observations of Sir Andrew McFarlane P in Re C (‘Parental Alienation’; Instruction of Expert)[2023] EWHC 345 (Fam).
 

 

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