By KATHARINE WEBSTER, InDepthNH.org
Divorced parents and step-parents recounted personal horror stories Tuesday during testimony on a Republican-sponsored bill that makes “parental alienation” as important as child abuse in family court cases involving divorce and child custody.
House Bill 1323 defines parental alienation as “a pattern of behavior, conduct, or speech that would damage the relationship of the child and a parent, resulting in the child’s fear, negative perception, rejection, or hostility toward their other parent,” including making disparaging remarks, “manipulating” or “coercing” the child and interfering with the other parent’s custodial time.
The bill would require family court judges to consider parental alienation claims. It also says judges can order changes to child custody arrangements or a parent’s right to participate in decisions about the child if they determine that parental alienation has harmed the child.
The bill’s primary sponsor and vice chair of the House Children and Family Law Committee, Rep. Kimberly Rice, R-Hudson, said she is passionate about the bill after seeing the effects of parental alienation.
“When a child is subjected to parental alienation, the harm is immediate and lasting,” Rice said. “A child is pressured to reject a loving parent, taught that affection is conditional and forced to carry adult conflict they did not create. This produces anxiety, guilt, fear of abandonment and long-term damage to a child’s sense of trust and identity.”
According to the bill, parental alienation “shall not include protective actions taken in good faith based on reasonable belief of abuse or neglect.”
But opponents of the measure said that judges and attorneys already use the legal concept of parental alienation to defend against allegations that they are abusive.
Several fathers who said they had been alienated from their children testified that the family courts always side with mothers, who use accusations of abuse to alienate them from their children.
Former state Rep. Cody Belanger, R-Epping, teared up as he testified in support of the bill.
“In family court, we often hear the phrase, ‘the best interests of the child,’” Belanger said. “Very rarely is it ever defined. In my view, and supported by decades of child development research, the best interests of the child include a meaningful relationship with both parents.”
This is not about political parties, he said. “This is not about men and women versus each other. This is about children being used as leverage in adult disputes and a system that is not adequately equipped or trained to recognize it. Family courts too often operate on unproven allegations.”
Mary Krueger, an attorney with New Hampshire Legal Assistance who is the supervising attorney for the nonprofit’s domestic violence advocacy project, disagrees.
Although parental alienation is a problem, researchers have found that in states that require judges to consider parental alienation claims, the concept is often used as a defense by parents who have been credibly accused of abuse.
Researchers have found that, “If there’s an abuser perpetrating domestic violence, child abuse (and) child sexual abuse, parental alienation is often alleged by that abuser in order to counteract those abuse allegations, and even in cases where courts have found that there’s been abuse … when parental alienation is alleged by the abuser, the court minimizes that abuse,” Krueger said.
“We’re concerned that if this bill were to pass as written, it could create harmful and potentially dangerous circumstances for children, and also increase the litigiousness of family law, divorce and parenting cases,” she said.
Krueger also said there’s no reliable way to determine when a child’s alienation from one of their parents is caused by that parent’s own behavior and when it’s caused by the other parent disparaging them.
Jenna McIntire said New Hampshire’s family courts are already considering “parental alienation” claims.
“The family court system and many attorneys … are weaponizing ‘parental alienation’ in court” against “protective parents” who report abuse, McIntire said.
But several fathers testified they had been deprived of contact with their children based on false abuse claims.
Thomas McCarthy said he had been in family court since 2009 and the court ignored evidence in his favor.
“This is nothing to do with domestic violence,” McCarthy said. “This has to do with equal, shared parenting time.” Claims of child abuse and neglect in family court are “nothing but hearsay,” he added. “You can just make an accusation.”
Several committee members said they had personally suffered the damaging effects of parental alienation committed by their former spouses during and after divorce and child custody proceedings.
But some Democratic representatives questioned whether legislating that judges must “accept” testimony and evidence about parental alienation under law was going too far, because the term was ill-defined.
“What one person thinks is a disparaging remark, like, ‘Oh, your dad didn’t pay child support this month so we can’t afford to do lessons,’ or whatever, or ‘Your mom filed for divorce,’” the other parent might consider a truthful answer to a legitimate question, said Rep. Alicia Gregg, D-Concord. “How do we tighten up that definition?”
Rep. Albert “Buzz” Scherr, D-Portsmouth, a professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, also said he was concerned that truthful conversations between a parent and child could be defined as parental alienation — which could violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
“My concern is … (that) managing parental relationships by statute is difficult to do,” Scherr said. “As I read this, there is potentially negative consequences to a parent saying something to their child.”
Rice said if a child asks about a divorce, the parent can answer, but should follow up by saying, “We’ll all get through this.”
“If I could make a bill that said, ‘Parents need to grow up and do what’s best for their children,’ that would be the first bill I ever filed,” Rice said.