When Evaluators Get It Wrong: False Positive IDs and Parental Alienation

Allegations that a parent has manipulated a child to turn against the other parent raise complex issues challenging child custody evaluators, expert witnesses, and courts. A key issue relates to false positive identifications of parental alienation-concluding that parental alienation exists in cases where it really does not. Such mistaken conclusions fuel concerns about the application of parental alienation in family law cases and contribute to skepticism about the concept. This article discusses mistaken conclusions that a child is alienated and that a parent has engaged in a campaign of alienating behavior. The article emphasizes that evaluators should thoroughly investigate reasonable alternative explanations of the children's and parents' behaviors, including attention to seven criteria that distinguish irrationally alienated children from children whose negative or rejecting behaviors do not constitute parental alienation. Evaluators should also investigate various reasons for a child's preference for one parent. Further, alienating behavior-seen in different degrees of intensity, frequency, and duration-can reflect different motivations. Evaluators, experts, and judges who do not attend to the nuances of alienating behaviors are likely to reach false conclusions about the significance of the behaviors and make recommendations that do not serve children's best interests. Finally, evaluators should attend to their overt and covert judgment biases and to the complexity of parental alienation issues in order to reduce the likelihood of faulty opinions that a child is alienated, or that a parent has engaged in alienating behaviors.