Welcome to The Broken Bench

The Broken Bench is a community platform designed for families experiencing challenges with the US family court system. It provides a space where members can receive support from others facing similar issues, share information and resources, learn about navigating the family court system, and collaborate to advocate for systemic change.

The Broken Bench's core belief is that most men are good. As I write this, I am thinking of all the tremendously good men in my life: the three men I have given birth to, my father, and my male friends and colleagues. Men are not the problem. The problem lies with toxic individuals and a broken family court system. While these issues can sometimes happen in reverse, the disparity of women falling victim to family court abuse is alarming and is our focus.

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In cases where one parent seeks supervised visitation or sole custody, these cases should be decided by a jury trial, not by a single individual or a small group who can make dangerous decisions due to bias, unethical payoffs, or personal experiences/trauma. Currently, Guardians Ad Litem, Custody Evaluators, and other court-appointed child advocates are being accused of lying, fabricating evidence, and creating false accounts to gain information. This happens every day at an alarming rate. Parents dealing with this have nowhere to turn for help, leaving them vulnerable and defenseless. Tragically, children victimized by these crimes are sometimes placed in the sole custody of the parent they accused of sexual or physical abuse.

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Data affirms that women who allege abuse—particularly child abuse—by a father are at significant risk (over 1 in 4) of losing custody to the alleged abuser. This rate applies even when fathers do not claim alienation to defeat the abuse claim. Even when courts find that fathers have abused the children or the mother, they award them custody 14% of the time. In cases with credited child physical abuse claims, fathers win custody 19% of the time. Notably, when mothers report mixed types of child abuse (sexual and physical), their custody losses skyrocket from under 30% to 50%. Mothers have 2.5 times the odds of losing custody when alleging both forms of child abuse compared to child sexual abuse alone.

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Family court and abuse professionals have long been polarized over the use of parental alienation claims to discredit a mother alleging that the father has been abusive or is unsafe for the children. This paper reports the findings from an empirical study of ten years of U.S. cases involving abuse and alienation claims. The findings confirm that mothers’ claims of abuse, especially child physical or sexual abuse, increase their risk of losing custody, and that fathers’ cross-claims of alienation virtually double that risk. Alienation’s impact is gender-specific; fathers alleging mothers are abusive are not similarly undermined when mothers cross-claim alienation. In non-abuse cases, however, the data suggest that alienation has a more gender-neutral impact. These nuanced findings may help abuse and alienation professionals find some common ground -

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Cases were coded for partner abuse (DV), child physical abuse (CA), and child sexual abuse (CSA), as well as mixed forms of abuse, i.e., DV + CA or CSA (DVCh) and CA + CSA (CACSA).

Rates at which courts credited mothers’ abuse claims when fathers claimed alienation, by type of abuse:

DV: 37% (28/76)

CPA: 18% (4/22)

CSA: 2% (1/51)

DVCh: 31% (17/55)

CACSA: 5% (1/18) 

Mothers’ custody losses when fathers claim alienation by type of abuse alleged by the mother:

DV: 35% (20/57)

CPA: 59% (10/17)

CSA: 54% (19/35)

DVCh: 58% (25/43)

CACSA: 64% (7/11)

Any: 50% (81/163) 

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When courts credit the alienation claim, rates of maternal custody losses increase more drastically:

DV: 60% (15/25)

CPA: 59% (10/17)

CSA: 68% (13/19)

DVCh: 79% (19/24)

CACSA: 100% (6/6)

Any: 73% (60/82)