Parental alienation is widely recognized as a form of emotional abuse that affects millions of children worldwide, yet family courts actively enforce it. Instead of stepping in to protect the parent-child relationship, they restrict, delay, and monitor interactions in ways that deepen the damage.
What should be a legal system focused on justice and reunification instead becomes a tool that alienating parents use to keep children away.
This is court-ordered parental alienation, and it’s one of the biggest failures of the family court system.
How courts enable and enforce alienation
Instead of helping repair fractured relationships, judges and court-appointed professionals often legitimize and reinforce the alienation by turning a Child’s resistance into a justification for restriction.
If a child resists visits, instead of recognizing this as a sign of manipulation, the court accepts it as their genuine preference.
Instead of enforcing parenting time, courts reward the alienating parent by reducing or eliminating contact. The alienated parent must prove they deserve time with their own child, something no other fit parent has to do. Imagine if a child refused to go to school. Would the court let them stay home because it’s their “preference”? No. But when a child refuses to see a parent, the court suddenly values their opinion.
Many times court impose supervised or therapeutic visitation for No justifiable reason. Courts often force alienated parents into supervised visitation or reunification therapy, treating them like a danger when they’ve done nothing wrong. Meanwhile, the alienating parent gets full control over the child’s daily life without supervision or scrutiny.
Instead of correcting the child’s manipulated beliefs, supervised visits validate the alienation by making it seem like the alienated parent is unsafe. A parent who has never been abusive or neglectful should not have to “prove” themselves in monitored visits while the parent who manipulated the child gets off free.
Dragging out the process to strengthen the alienation, the longer the court system delays reunification, the more time the alienating parent has to reinforce the rejection. Judges allow months, sometimes years, to pass without meaningful progress, making it harder for the child to reconnect.
Even when therapy is ordered, it is often used as a stall tactic rather than a solution, with therapists reinforcing the idea that “the child must be ready.”
Time is the biggest weapon of an alienating parent, and courts give them all the time they need to make the rejection permanent.
Restricting parental contact instead of enforcing it, courts limit communication, telling parents they can only text, call, or see their child in pre-approved ways.
Children learn that the alienated parent has no real authority in their life, only the court does. Meanwhile, the alienating parent faces zero consequences for blocking calls, interfering with visits, or refusing to co-parent.
Why should a parent need permission to send their own child a message? Courts make alienated parents fight for basic parental rights while the alienator faces no accountability. Telling alienated parents to “Be patient” while doing nothing to fix the damage. Courts act as if alienation will magically resolve itself with time and therapy instead of intervention. They tell parents to “wait for the child to come around” while allowing the alienator to continue influencing them. By the time the court is ready to take action, the child’s bond with the alienated parent is often permanently severed.
Courts don’t give abusive parents years to stop abusing. So why do they give alienators years to continue manipulating? The Courts Are Not Neutral, they are active participants in the alienation.
When a judge refuses to enforce a court order for parenting time, when a GAL ignores clear signs of manipulation, when a therapist validates the alienation instead of undoing it, the system itself is enabling child abuse.
Parental alienation does not happen just because of one parent’s actions, it is reinforced and legitimized by a legal system that refuses to hold alienators accountable.
What Needs to Change?
If family courts truly cared about children’s best interests, they would, enforce court orders for parenting time the same way they enforce child support. Hold alienating parents accountable for obstructing visits or manipulating the child. Ensure reunification therapy actually works to restore the relationship, not just prolong the alienation. Stop treating alienated parents as the problem and start recognizing them as victims of court-facilitated child abuse.
Until courts stop rewarding alienation, they are no different from the alienating parent themselves, enabling abuse, destroying relationships, and failing the very children they claim to protect.
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