Palm Beach County Divorce And Family Law Blog

This Saturday (April 25th) is Parental Alienation Awareness Day. Parental Alienation is a process whereby one parent (and his or her relatives and other allies) by his or her actions or communications undermines the love, affection, and relationship between their children and the targeted spouse. The process can occur during a disintegrating relationship, during a divorce, and after the divorce has concluded. The actions and words can be overt or subtle. The results can range from mild to extreme alienation (wherein the alienated children want nothing to do with the targeted parent and will strongly resist contact with the alienated parent). In such cases, no one can doubt the psychological pain and emotional distress suffered by the alienated parent.   Experienced family lawyers in Palm Beach County and divorce attorneys elsewhere recognize that in an extreme case of parental alienation, reunifying and normalizing the relationship between extremely alienated children and the targeted parent can be a difficult, if not an impossible task. In those cases, the alienated parents have had little recourse to other legal forums to collect damages. However, recently in New Jersey, a trial court judge found that a parent may have a claim for intentional infliction of mental distress against the alienating parent. Such cases in the past have been dismissed as invalid actions because "alienation of affections" had been abolished by almost every jurisdiction in the United States because it was an inappropriate "heart balm" legal theory. New Jersey judge found that the moving party's claim for emotional distress is separate and distinct form the abolished claim of alienation of affections. It is different because the moving party was alleging that the alienating parent/ defendant's alienating conduct has caused emotional distress. Therefore emotional distress, not alienation of affection, is the underlying cause of action. Lawyers in New Jersey and across the United States will be watching this case closely to determine if the alienated parent will ultimately prevail in the legal action. If so, then those unfortunate parents being confronted by severely alienated children may have another avenue to seek out justice against alienating parents. To read more about this new theory of recovery, please click here

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 11:53 am and is filed under Divorce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.