https://www.divorcemag.com/blog/false-allegations-in-custody-cases
I believe that parents know that courts generally favor shared parenting and that, without some proven heinous act, the courts will probably grant shared parenting since it makes sense that a child should have the involvement of both parents in his or her life, if possible. Fortunately, where the allegations are serious, our experience is that, when the client can hang in long enough, false allegations are finally proven to be false.
But what about the children?
Even when an allegation is eventually proven false, often times years or months of litigation have occurred. Usually the children have been told one or both versions of “what is going on,” or even sometimes coerced to be involved in the making of false allegations. The emotional abuse to a child involved in this type of litigation based upon false statements often times irreparably changes the course of a child’s life.
Think about an impressionable child who is falsely made to see a parent being portrayed as a monster. to the point where the child believes it, or at least to the point where it is “not okay” to love that parent any longer.
Who would do this to their own child, or to any child? Who wakes up and decides that the parent that was perfectly acceptable yesterday, is a monster today, and that, to gain some advantage or satisfy some selfish desire, it is okay to go on a mission to destroy the other parent, alienating them by saying that parent is suddenly a child molesting, drug addict, who beats their child?
What about the parent who engages in these tactics, and what about the child? Is this not abuse of its own kind—perhaps of the worst kind? What kind of parent finds these tactics reasonable? How many parents are losing custody of their children, losing decision-making abilities, losing the right to access records based on fabrications?
Even if the attempted fabrication is revealed, how many parents will gain full or joint custody but have a potentially unsalvageable relationship with a child who is emotionally broken or so damaged that he or she doesn’t want to be with that parent anyway?
