Recently, I said (rather flippantly) that if I had it to do over again, I would have done things differently after my divorce. I would have moved far from my ex, not allowed (or encouraged) contact with the father, and basically done everything possible to exorcise him from his child's life.
Apparently, I'm not the only person to think of this and, in fact, someone has done exactly that. In frustration, the father has sued for alienation of the children's affection.
In a suit that could create a new marital tort in New Jersey, a noncustodial father is suing his children's mother for alienation of their affection for him, which he says should allow him recovery of psychological damages.
There is no legal precedent in New Jersey for an alienation-of-affection suit by one parent against the other, but New Jersey has allowed other interspousal tort actions, such as for physical abuse, and plaintiff's lawyer Steven Resnick says the facts of his case warrant such treatment.
"We've tried other remedies and are asking to set a precedent," says Resnick, a partner with Budd Larner in Short Hills, N.J.
He says his client filed suit in the Law Division on Oct. 26 because, after 14 months of litigation, he's frustrated with the usual matrimonial venue, the Chancery Division's Family Part.
"There's no serious mechanism for punishment in the family court," says Resnick. "Nobody takes alienation of a parent's affections seriously, and no one asks what kind of damage this does to the children."
The suit, Segal v. Lynch, was lodged by millionaire-developer Moses Segal, originally from Toronto, who came to New Jersey in pursuit of his girlfriend and common-law wife Cynthia Lynch, with whom he separated in 2001.
The separation caused headlines in the Canadian press, after the Ontario Court of Appeals awarded $8.3 million in property to Lynch, reportedly a small part of Segal's $100 million empire. Altogether, Lynch got $12 million, said Resnick.
Segal alleges that in June 2006, Lynch relocated to New Jersey's Morris County, changed her phone number, blocked e-mails and cut off all contact with their two children, Emily, 13, and William, 9.
A private detective located Lynch in Millington, N.J., and Segal filed suit in Morris County to resume visitation. Resnick says he also sought an enforcement of litigants' rights order, because Lynch allegedly twice attempted to change her child's last name from Segal to Lynch.
But in the Law Division suit just filed, he says the damage was done; that he no longer has the relationship with his children he had previously. He is suing for negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress and asks for compensatory and punitive damages.
It's a novel argument, which is a nice way of saying there's no way he can win. But it does highlight a huge problem in the family law system. There's simply no mechanism that recognizes or handles the various ways adults can torture each other through their children. Our legal system is designed for there to be a winner and a loser, not for two people to have to work together after the suit. It's nearly impossible to work with someone after you've watched their attorney turn everyday events into heinous crimes and accuse you of every sort of malfeasance under the sun.
A tort for alienation of children's affection would be interesting. I noticed a marked change in my daughter's behavior to us, for instance, after she went to live with her father. Do I know that he intentionally did something to change her behavior to us? No, but I'm not sure that anything deliberate needs to happen for children to get the message that one parent is preferred. Children are master manipulators and pick up adults' signals easily.
The tragedy, of course, is the distortion of family life for the children. Adults frequently don't think about what all the plot twists in the family soap opera do to their kids, but from the adult kids of divorce I've talked to, those consequences are difficult and long-lasting.
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