Law and Children

In 1998 this column¹ focused on In re Marriage of Marshall,² a then recent and highly publicized Illinois case in which the trial judge sent a 12-year-old girl, Heidi, to a juvenile detention center shackled in leg irons, and “grounded” her 8-year-old sister, Rachel, for refusing to visit with their father. I wrote then that the trial court’s decision was based on a “troubling idea. It reflects a view that a court can order a child to have a relationship with a parent over the child’s fears or objections rather than viewing a damaged parent-child relationship as having to be repaired and nurtured over time.” The 1998 column identified some therapeutic and educational interventions that might have helped the court and the Marshall family deal with Heidi and Rachel’s “alienation” from their father.

This column revisits the issue of child alienation 12 years later. Allegations that one parent has alienated the child from the other parent continue to be made repeatedly in New York cases and cases elsewhere.³ The challenges that alienated children like Heidi and Rachel pose for the family court system have not, however, gotten any easier over the years. Among them are: