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Shawn Breyer
Malicious parent syndrome is using the children to punish the other parent.
This is when a parent harms or deprives their child to make the other parent look bad.
Related: Reasons a Judge Will Change Custody
When you’re in a divorce or custody battle, many things feel like malicious parent syndrome.
So, what is malicious parent syndrome?
Malicious parent syndrome is considered a condition.
It’s where one parent acts purposefully and vengefully towards the other surrounding a divorce.
Malicious parent syndrome must meet these criteria.
They must:
During a divorce, parents are usually very upset with each other.
And they see the children as leverage to “get back” ‘at the other parent.
Parental alienation gets used to lash out at the other parent for the divorce.
Parental alienation results in the child being distanced from the other parent.
This is a result of one parent psychologically manipulating the child against that parent.
This “distance” shows up in the child as:
This is commonly known as parental interference or custodial interference.
This is when a parent:
Sometimes, parents will do this when the other parent owes child support.
But keeping the child away from the other parent can backfire.
This can result in:
Lying to the children is a major factor in malicious parent syndrome.
Parents will lie to their children about the other parent.
This can include things like:
These are things we see happen all the time.
These malicious parent syndrome activities manipulate the children.
And it makes the children wrongfully dislike the other parent.
Malicious parent syndrome has not been deemed a mental disorder.
It is classified as a pattern of behaviors.
The judge wants to make sure that mental disorders are not causing this behavior.
If there are no mental disorders, then it’s deemed malicious parent syndrome.
You probably want to know specific examples of malicious parent syndrome.
That way you can tell if it’s legally happening to you.
Some examples of malicious parent syndrome are:
Related: Grounds for Full Custody of Child
The goal of malicious parent syndrome is to get back at the other parent.
This gets accomplished by deteriorating the relationship that the parent has with the child.
Short term, the effects of this on the children are:
Longer-term effects on children are:
There are so many legal consequences to malicious parent syndrome.
And each action has different types of legal consequences.
Here are some examples of situations and the consequences.
These legal consequences come with:
But, separate from this, there are also violations of civil law, like:
These types of civil violations violate court orders.
This is because custody and visitation are court orders.
When this happens, the courts are likely to:
Related: Moving Out of State With Child No Custody Agreement
If you are experiencing malicious parent syndrome:
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