If you are in family court with an abusive partner, or abusive ex-partner, and there are children involved, you will want to know what this article reveals. Here is how your children can be leveraged to carry out a perpetrator's agenda in family court.
Laying the Foundation to Maintain Control over the Family
Let's say the perpetrator establishes that he wants to ask the court for sole custody of your minor children whom he has also abused, either directly or indirectly. In many cases this so-called asking may happen even if the perpetrator is not a candidate for custody.
Now once the pleading is before the court, and typically for a long time (could be years), the chase is on—even though a so-called custody battle is technically not underway.
What is underway is a mission to create a scenario to establish that the perpetrator (whether or not a candidate for custody by law) is indeed an eligible person for custody because:
a) this parent is the only parent left b) the other parent is crazy or is a felon c) this parent is a victim of parental alienation syndrome ...or, any combination of the above.
Most typically, we see counsel seeking to establish items b & c in combination, as this makes for a more substantial case. And further, this strategy is often a best first measure to carry out a perpetrator's mission of eliminating the protective parent from their children's lives.
Crazing Making Legal Psychiatric Ploys
Now if after psychiatric evaluations, there is no evidence that the mother (the gender most often in this position) is "crazy" because the evaluating psychiatrist cannot—or will not—find any psychiatric pathology, then the rush is on to find—or create—"the craziness" in the children.
The strategy here is that if we can't show that the mother is crazy, we'll establish that the children are either crazy or going crazy under her care. This is how children become casualties in an abuser's use of the court to control and batter their victims.
Now making a child crazy can take days, months or years. And if there are two or more children involved, making more than one child psychologically unstable makes for even a stronger case, even if you are the recognized psychological parent of your children.
If you have witnessed this legal psychiatric ploy in your divorce proceeding or a glimpse of it coming, learn to block it and protect your children and yourself before the ploy spirals out of control.
We hear of battered women falling through the cracks of the system as much as those securing safety through the system. It is clear that those who fall through the cracks typically are in proceedings with a batter fortified with aggressive counsel, or being victimized by counsel, and in some cases both.
Thus, as long as divorce law is about one party annihilating another, mindless of the interest of children and family as a whole, then economically disadvantaged survivors of domestic abuse are subject to system failures.
Is Family Court the Proper Place to Seek Remedy for Domestic Violence?
It is also true that part of the dilemma is that divorce court is actually not the proper jurisdiction to secure remedy for domestic abuse. In divorce court in which there is a "no fault" presumption, responsibility for the marital dissolution is spread across the marriage.
The implication of this is that the perpetrator is given an umbrella to hide under and a way to deflect assuming responsibility for the battering behavior. Further and more equally serious, the victim is expected to shoulder aspects of the battering relationship that technically do not belong to her/him. And even worse is the ongoing legal permission to re-victimize the victim through legal judicial and psychiatric ploys.
How Can Legal Domestic Abuse Be Legal?
You know that abuse is about control. Well, so is litigation. Two parties in a legal action are essentially fighting for control, and the perpetrator thrives in this arena.
Now when there's a gross disparity of income between the parties and when the perpetrator controls the family purse strings, which is often the case in these relationships/situations, then the litigation can really be controlled because he who pays will most likely drive the litigation.
This party can taunt, torment and terrorize his/her opposition with legal stalking, financial starve out tactics and with the threat of custody litigation. Abusers know nothing will devastate their victims as much as seeing their children endangered. So they use the threat of obtaining custody to extract agreements to their liking. And this can go on indefinitely.
So instead of looking to change the family court system, or expect the family court to serve you differently, see it for what it is and seek to employ other strategies in conjunction with family court to arrest the domestic abuse and secure safety for yourself and your children.
Dr Jeanne King Phd has sinced written about articles on various topics from Divorce and Infidelity, Legal Matters and Writing. For information on how to block legal psychiatric ploys used to yank children from protective parents, visit . Dr. Jeann. Dr Jeanne King Phd's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.