Child support payments and parental alienation

A common strategy in these false accusations is to apply for a restraining order. Family Violence Orders (FVOs) are a common strategy for the purposes of generating parental alienation. Such orders are easily obtainable and they can be used to alienate an innocent parent from their children. The residential parent only has to defame the other parent without the slightest need of proof. Such accusations completely tear apart entire families, all on the word of one person and with no need of evidence. As noted by Dr Adam Blanch, a family counsellor and provisional psychologist working in Melbourne,

The more a single parent can restrict the other parent's access to the children the more financial support they receive from the alienated parent and the government, and a restraining order even when based on allegations that have been unsubstantiated is a great weapon in the fight for primary custody and restricted access.

Since the amount of payment is proportional to the time of visitation, the alienation strategy is undoubtedly linked to financial reward in the form of child-support payments. Contrary to popular belief, support payments have nothing to do with parental neglect or abandonment. Since the entirely alienated parent is forced to pay 100 per cent of support, this scheme undeniably provides a perverse and sinister incentive for complete alienation of the non-residential parent. In sum, the parent who maliciously provokes such alienation will be fully entitled by law to obtain a financial reward through a deeply flawed system that ultimately rewards their behaviour.

To conclude, support payments have been transformed into a perverse incentive to unilateral divorce and parental alienation. And so it is important to consider that maliciously separating an innocent parent from his or her children so as to obtain undue financial advantage constitutes an extremely serious form of child abuse and neglect. Perpetrators of false allegations for the purposes of obtaining undue financial gain should not go unpunished, as is so often the situation now. Once it is possible to testify beyond reasonable doubt that no abuse has actually occurred, such false accusations should be approached as a serious form of child abuse and give rise to the loss of custody to the parent who has made such false accusations.