October 16, 2024 • Elisa Reiter, Daniel Pollack and Virginia E. Griffin, Esq.
Do Children’s Attorneys Give a Child a Voice?
How much weight should judges continue to give to court-appointed counsel, who have historically served as giving children a voice in the courtroom?
August 5, 2024 • Virginia E. Griffin, Esq. and Daniel Pollack
Calif. Schools Prohibited From Notifying Parents of Child’s Gender Identity: Legal Questions Remain
Historically, when issues have arisen regarding a child’s education, health, or mental health, the expectation has been that school state officials are to notify parents or legal guardians of those issues. For example, if a child is hurt on campus, has a medical issue, is being bullied, or has missed a class, the parent/guardian is advised. On July 15, California’s legislators became the first state to adopt a bill intended to protect the privacy rights of school-age children across the state.
July 15, 2024 • Texas Lawyer Magazine
GDA Quotation: “CPS Workers are Exhausted — and it’s Affecting the Legal Rights of Children”
Virginia E. Griffin, California: ”Child Protection Service investigators who are emotionally exhausted can unwittingly disrupt a child’s relationship with a loving parent by missing the issue of covert abuse. In these rare cases, children can be removed from a fit parent and given to an abusive one. Legal rights of children and families are then negatively affected. For example, I have seen cases (during high conflict family law custody disputes), where one parent sabotages the relationship with the other parent, to hurt that other parent. In these cases, the “bad actor” parents coach their child(ren) into making false allegations of abuse (when no abuse actually occurred).”
March 27, 2024 • William Bernet & Amy J. L. Baker
Comments regarding “Looking beyond the Sorting Hat: Deconstructing the ‘Five Factor Model’ of Alienation,” by Garber and Simon
ABSTRACT: Some aspects of family law have become contentious and polarized, such as when children resist or refuse a relationship with a parent. There are several possible causes of contact refusal, one of which is parental alienation. Garber and Simon recently published an article highly critical of the Five-Factor Model (FFM), a method for identifying parental alienation. They promote the Ecological Model (EM), a method for assessing the possible causes of contact refusal. It is our contention that the article by Garber and Simon is flawed because they misunder- stand the FFM. Moreover, it is illogical to compare the EM with the FFM and say one of them is superior. It is illogical because these two distinct constructs have different scopes of interest, i.e., the broad differential diagnosis of contact refusal in the EM vs. the narrow list of criteria for the identification of parental alienation in the FFM. Even though Garber and Simon acknowl- edge the value of the FFM several times, they create controversy and polarization with a gigantic straw person argument: they are assigning a task to the FFM that is not part of its job description – to identify all the potential causes of contact refusal – and then they complain that the FFM has poor job performance.
March 6, 2024 • Robert Emery
Is the Emperor Naked? Questioning the Alienation Hypothesis
ABSTRACT: This commentary agrees with the conclusions of Garber and Simon (this issue): and other proponents of parental alienation oversimplify family dynamics in divorce and offer only weak evidence in support of their hypothesis. The author’s recent studies (with Rowen) indicate that, normatively, one parent’s denigration of the other (1) is tied to children feeling less close to the parent who denigrates more (denigration boomerangs rather than alienates); (2) denigration almost always is recipro- cal; and (3) divorced parents, especially those involved in litiga- tion, underestimate their own denigration and overestimate their partner’s denigration relative to children’s reports. Inspecting individual cases identified 1 case in 1,642 where a child reported feeling closer to the parent who denigrated more. The burden of proof in science falls on proponents of any hypothesis. This burden has not been met in regard to the alienation hypothesis.
February 17, 2024 • Virginia E. Griffin, Esq.
Building a Better Way: A Lawyer’s Response to Benjamin D. Garber and Robert A. Simon
ABSTRACT: One of the most complex dilemmas in family courts today is the issue of the conflicted family system that presents itself when a child appears to be strongly aligned with one parent and resistant to having a relationship with the other. ln the interest of understanding and serving these children, family law professionals best serve children (and family systems) when the professionals themselves do not become polarized and jeopardize the best interests of the children involved. The Garber and Simon (2024) article seems to be a wholesale condemnation of the Five Factor Model, ("FFM"), the model under review thereln. However, the authors' analysis seems to resurrect the FFM in their conclusion because they state that the FFM is a "step in the direction toward standardizing family law professionals' assess- ment processes" and could be incorporated into the Ecological Model. The purpose of this article is to consider the critique of the FFM from the perspective of a legal professional working with conflicted family systems. Garber and Simon's article can help advance the best interests of children when the result is collaboration among family law professionals.
February 12, 2024 • Benjamin D. Garber & Robert Simon
Moving Toward Consensus: Joining Bernet and Baker, Emery, and Griffin to Better Understand the Dynamics of Parent-Child Contact Problems (PCCP)
ABSTRACT: The editors of Family Transitions have bravely and graciously invited this dialogue in an effort to clarify the state of the thinking and the science concerned with understanding and responding to the needs of the child who is aligned with Parent A and resists or refuses contact with Parent B1 This article responds to the considered and insightful contributions of Griffin (2024), Emery (2024), and Bernet and Baker (2024). Many points of consensus are highlighted, most notably agreements that (1) the child’s position within her conflicted family system is routinely associated with multiple, convergent contemporary and historical relationship pressures, (2) understanding a child’s position within her conflicted family system requires consideration of the full spectrum of a child’s relationship ecology in a manner consistent with a rubric propounded by Garber (2024), and (3) the Five Factor Model (Bernet & Greenhill, 2022) can only attempt to answer the question “is alienation afoot?” subsidiary to a broader inquiry into the full ecology of the child’s experience.
October 3, 2023 • Benjamin D. Garber & Robert A. Simon
Looking Beyond the Sorting Hat: Deconstructing the “Five Factor Model” of Alienation
ABSTRACT: One of the most common dilemmas encountered in today’s family courts is the child who is strongly aligned with Parent A and rejects parent B. In the interest of supporting these children’s opportunity to enjoy a healthy relationship with both of their caregivers, one can work to determine which parent is to blame or what combination of parent behavior, relationship dynamics, and practical circumstances result in this outcome. The Five Factor Model (FFM) does the former, promoting a stepwise approach to “diagnosing” parental alienation. This paper demonstrates that for all of its appeal, the FFM is deeply flawed and promotes a binary (good guy/bad guy) approach that readily exacerbates family tensions. We reject the FFM and advocate instead for a balanced conceptualization of the child’s larger relationship ecology. A rubric guiding this ecological approach (Garber, in press 2023) is recommended.