10d • General discussion
Facts on family court
The Irreparable Cost: What Prolonged Family Court Litigation and Alienation Do to Parents and Children
There is a lie embedded deep in the family court system, and it is one of the most destructive lies a society can tell itself.
The lie is that time is neutral.
That separation is temporary.
That children and parents can simply “reconnect” once the court process ends.
That lie collapses the moment you look at what prolonged litigation abuse and alienation trauma actually do to human beings.
Because by the time access is restored—if it ever is—the people meeting each other again are no longer the people who were separated.
They are shells.
What happens to the parent
The parent who enters family court fighting to protect their child does not come out intact.
They are dragged through years of uncertainty, false allegations, procedural abuse, financial depletion, and psychological warfare masquerading as due process. Every filing becomes a threat. Every delay becomes another month without their child. Every hearing carries the weight of existential loss.
Over time, this does not just “stress” a parent.
It changes them.
• Their nervous system becomes locked in survival.
• Sleep deteriorates.
• Cognition slows.
• Joy disappears.
• Their identity collapses around loss.
They stop being the parent their child remembers—not because they chose to, but because the system dismantled them piece by piece.
The playful parent becomes guarded.
The regulated parent becomes dysregulated.
The confident parent becomes hollowed out.
Not from lack of love—but from too much sustained pain without relief.
By the time access is restored, the parent is often:
• Physically ill
• Financially ruined
• Emotionally blunted
• Afraid to say the wrong thing
• Terrified of losing the child again
The parent the child once knew no longer exists—not because they failed, but because they were psychologically tortured under color of law.
What happens to the child
The child’s injury is quieter—but deeper.
Children do not experience alienation as a legal event. They experience it as abandonment, threat, and betrayal, regardless of the story they are told.
Their developing brain is forced to reconcile an impossible reality:
• “I love my parent.”
• “I am told that parent is dangerous.”
• “I am not allowed to speak openly.”
• “My survival depends on compliance.”
This fractures the child internally.
To survive, the child must disconnect from their own perceptions, memories, and emotional truth. They learn to suppress grief. They learn to mistrust their instincts. They learn that love is conditional and unsafe.
Over time, the child becomes:
• Emotionally numb or volatile
• Detached from their own body
• Hypervigilant or shut down
• Disconnected from empathy
• Unable to form secure attachment
They are not just “changed.”
They are reorganized around trauma.
By the time access is restored, the child the parent remembers—the child who laughed freely, trusted deeply, and loved openly—is gone.
What remains is a child carrying:
• Confusion
• Anger
• Shame
• Loyalty binds
• Fear of closeness
• Fear of truth
Not because they don’t love the parent—but because loving openly once cost them safety.
The moment of reunion that no one talks about
Family court sells reunification as an endpoint.
It is not.
Reunion after prolonged alienation is often one of the most painful moments for both parent and child—not because they don’t want each other, but because they no longer recognize each other.
The parent expects the child they lost.
The child meets a parent who is traumatized, cautious, and changed.
The child expects the parent they remember.
They meet someone grieving, depleted, and afraid.
Both are desperate to connect.
Both are terrified.
And both silently realize something devastating:
The system stole years that can never be recovered.
This is not a communication issue.
It is not a misunderstanding.
It is not something therapy alone can “fix.”
This is irreparable harm.
Why this damage is permanent in many cases
The family court system treats time as if it were elastic.
Neuroscience does not.
Critical windows of development close.
Attachment templates harden.
Trauma responses become trait-like.
Years of enforced separation during childhood cannot be undone by a court order restoring access. The nervous system does not reset because a judge says it should.
By the time access is returned:
• The parent has been psychologically and economically destroyed.
• The child has been developmentally injured.
• The relationship has been permanently altered.
What remains is often grief—not just for the lost years, but for the versions of each other that will never return.
The cost no one counts
Family court tallies cases closed, orders enforced, dollars collected.
It does not count:
• The parent who can no longer feel joy
• The child who can no longer trust love
• The lifelong health consequences
• The intergenerational trauma set in motion
It does not count the cost of turning living, loving humans into survivors.
But society pays that cost anyway—in mental health crises, addiction, broken families, violence, disengagement, and despair.
The truth we must face
Prolonged family court litigation and alienation do not preserve families.
They destroy them slowly enough to look legal.
And by the time the system allows parents and children back into each other’s lives, it is often not a reunion.
It is a meeting between two people who were once everything to each other—and are now strangers, bound by grief, trauma, and the irreversible loss of time.
That is the real price of this system
Carey Ann George
Trauma Expert & Independent Investigator On Family Court Corruption & Failures
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Facts on family court
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