Parental Alienation or Garden Variety Teenage Rebellion?

No matter how patient you are with your children, how consistent in your enforcement of rules, and how emotionally intelligent you are, you will probably experience conflict with your children during their adolescence. This is true even if you are married to your children’s other parent, and you and your spouse have been practicing healthy conflict management since before your children were born. Teenage rebellion hits parents twice as hard when the parents are divorced, and sometimes each parent blames the other one. If your ex gave you an earful about letting your child eat sweets because your child got a cavity in elementary school, imagine how your ex will react when your teen skips classes regularly and gets failing grades in high school. Imagine the blame you will get from your ex if your teen smokes weed or dates someone that your ex doesn’t like. Parental alienation, where one parent intentionally sabotages the children’s relationship with the other parent, can happen at any age, but it is especially painful with teens, because there is less time remaining to repair the relationship before the court-ordered parenting plan expires. If your ex-spouse is accusing you of turning your teen against your ex, contact a Boca Raton child custody lawyer.
Can the Court Punish You If Your Teen Does Not Get Along With Your Ex-Spouse?
Divorced parents should encourage their children to maintain a stable relationship with both parents. If one parent keeps the children away from the other parent or speaks negatively about the other spouse in front of the children, this can count against him or her in the court’s parenting plan decisions.
If you prevent your ex from exercising his parenting time, such as by scheduling social events for the children on days when the children should be with your ex, the court can hold you in contempt until you let your ex make up the missed parenting time days. When it is just a matter of having a negative attitude toward your ex and this rubbing off on your children, it is harder to prove and harder to legislate. In one court case, the court held the mother in contempt until she attended therapy and made enough progress that she was able to repair the children’s relationship with their father. She filed a motion to purge the contempt, since the order was vague and outside their control. There is no guarantee that children’s behavior will change as a direct result of their mother’s participation in therapy, even if she attends for years. The judges of the appeals court gave various concurring opinions about the slippery slope of courts ordering parents to attend therapy simply because of poor family dynamics, even though they agreed that there were situations where parents would clearly benefit from therapy.
Contact Schwartz | White About Divorce and Co-Parenting After Parental Alienation
A South Florida family law attorney can help you if you or your ex-spouse has a tense relationship with your children, despite your efforts to co-parent. Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.
Source:
scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12509458067292354437&q=divorce+drugs&hl=en&as_sdt=4,10&as_ylo=2014&as_yhi=2024