Parental Alienation in Family Court: Attacking Expert Testimony

In child custody litigation, when a parent raises the possibility of child abuse, the accused parent may respond that the parent wo has raised the possibility of abuse is alienating the child in an effort to gain an unfair advantage in court. The parent accused of abuse may offer expert testimony on parental alienation. A voluminous and contentious social science literature exists on parental alienation. Family law attorneys often lack ready access to social science literature.

The purpose of this article is to give family law attorneys information from the parental alienation literature that can be used to cross-examine experts who testify on parental alienation.