Declaration of Alienation After Family Court Trial

After an 18 day trial, the judge in this case did not change the primary care/residence of the children, age 17 and 14 only because of their ages. Otherwise,  after reading this case, and if the children were younger, the judge may well have ordered a change of residence and care from the mother to the father.

Cousins v. Healey, 2025 ONSC 5512 (CanLII), <https://canlii.ca/t/kfmwv>

The judge’s reasoning was that at ages of 17 and 14, it is very difficult to force children at that age to do something which they don’t want to. However, the judge made a declaration of alienation against the mother for her poor behaviour and having turned the children against the father.

The judge made this declaration to drive home the point that the mother was at fault and also to let the children know that when they are older the truth behind the case, and the father had tried his best to win the affection and care of the children. He also awarded costs against the mother.

Regarding the issue of alienation and particular, the judge adopted the definitions/statements from other cases while stating that :

“[Alienation]… is a descriptive term that refers to a process where there is a systematic devaluation, minimization, discreditation of the role of, typically the other parent in a parental dyad. One parent systematically, through a variety of physical, emotional, verbal, contextual, relational set of maneuvers systematically reduces the value, love, commitment, relationship, involvement of the other parent by minimizing, criticizing, and devaluing that parent's role. It can involve children having their sense of history being "re-written" by a parent's redefinition of history, reframing things, repetitively talking about things. It can involve sometimes very subtle and sometimes not so subtle suasion, coercion, direction, misrepresentation, and so on…

So parental alienation is a process, an interactional process where systematically one parent's role in, for the children is eroded over the course of time.”

Based on the evidence trial, the judge indicated that the mother’s alienating actions were a cause of the children’s total rejection of a relationship with the father. The judge also blamed the father, partly for being absent during the children’s growing years, but found that the mother had exploited those absences against the father. 

The Judge felt that in the initial years of the children’s lives, the father either failed to push back, or did it weakly against the mother. He seemed to accept the mother’s control. Covid also did not help because of the slowness of the progress of the litigation. Unfortunately by then, the children viewed the father as an interloper in their lives and their views were shaped by the mother’s unwillingness to take any responsibility, and it became too late, despite all the interventions to date, including undertaking any reunification efforts.

Analysis:

Clients often allege alienation against the other party. Alienation is now an accepted and proven concept in family law. This case is an example. The only reason that the primary care did not change was because of the advanced ages of the children. Otherwise, I have no doubt that the primary care would have shifted as in some other cases.

This is also the reason why the judge issued a declaration of alienation because the judge could not or was unable to order a change of primary care of the children.

One lesson from this case is that when the alienating action begins, it may be important to start the litigation process sooner rather than later because one always feels that one doesn’t want a confrontation, and so it may be good to wait. But not in these types of cases. The sooner and quicker one acts and brings a motion in court, I think it is a better option.

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