How to Take Winning Depositions in Cases Involving Parental Alienation (Part 1)

Parental alienation is a highly counterintuitive area. Family law professionals—judges, lawyers, children’s representatives, guardian’s ad litem, custody evaluators — are often confounded when dealing with PA cases. Seemingly good measures that may have worked in other family law cases do not work in an alienation situation. For instance, as one domestic relations judge realized: Giving a “speech” from the bench to “get through” to an alienating parent does not result in an epiphany or help the situation. Nor will sending off the kids to “therapy.” But such therapies are known to be ineffective. Not only that, they are known to be potentially harmful – they “validate” an alienated child’s distorted view of the world, encourage the child to express grievances, and give the child some “control” or choice while advising the rejected parent to “listen, empathize, validate, and apologize (or even to ‘find something to apologize for’).” Traditional therapy is contraindicated and typically makes things worse. Even when provided under court order, such therapies are of little benefit.

In addition, some jurisdictions — e.g., Colorado and California — have recently passed legislation that limits the court’s options when it comes to ordering reunification counseling. What are the options when one is faced with legislative or other restraints on reunification options? What interventions work?

It all begins by ensuring that the fact finder — whether a trial judge or a forensic custody evaluator — reaches a finding of PA. Without such finding, a claim of PA is simply a theory in search of facts.

In this 2-part presentation, the attendees will learn about basics of the PA theory, how family courts across the United States have defined the term, what evidence have the courts found persuasive when making findings of PA, and how to put together an effective case of PA in litigation. It all begins with the process of discovery and taking strategic and effective depositions.

This course is co-sponsored with myLawCLE.

Key topics to be discussed:

• Fundamentals of PA
• How Family Courts have defined PA and what they have found to be persuasive evidence
• Relevant and recent legal cases
• Addressing mis and dis-information on PA in litigation
• Discovery process in PA cases
• Depositions

Closed-captioning available