The Project started as a small community grassroots endeavor in Billings in 2021 to bring about thoughtful and impactful reform to address growing concerns about family and domestic violence due to gaps in our current laws & lack of necessary training in Yellowstone County.

After nearly 4 years the project has expanded across the entire state and reviewed hundreds of cases uncovering significant patterns in MT family law courts. Specifically when there is presence of domestic abuse and Parental Alienation (PA) allegations are brought forth in defense.

On average these types of cases remain in active litigation for a minimum of 4 years, with others sitting for a decade in the courts. Many are left in a perpetual reunification therapy without clear end goals, stripping safe parents of the right to care for their children and relegated to “supervised visits” for years.

These custody matters come with a shocking price tag, between $75,000-$150,000 for each party, including attorney fees and court appointed professional service fees, including GAL, Parent Coordinator, Co-Parenting Counselor, “Parenting Enforcer”, Parenting Plan Evaluator.

Our research revealed that the underlying causes are :

Lack of application of expert witness standards allows unqualified individuals to misrepresent themselves and pseudo diagnosis (Parental Alienation, PA) to affect custody outcomes for a price.

Lack of application of statutory evidence standards and current industry standards allowing a pseudo concept and unsound theory to dictate a parents rights, and places children at risk.

Lack of family violence prevention education, undermining justice for children and parents in family law.

Shortcomings in our best interest code allowing evidence of abuse these children suffer to be ignored, and victims to go unprotected.

Allowing the current common law practice of delegating judicial authority over children and parents to private “professionals”, which risks placing a child in an abusive home, especially when allegations of PA are made in defense of family violence.

When judges delegate their judicial authority to family court professionals, this allows for gross misconduct, restriction of protected fundamental rights, and in some cases, violations of the law by court-appointed professionals, including the crime of custodial and parental interference. It also places the court in the position of relying on unqualified experts and unsound science. In every PA case reviewed, judges abandon evidence standards and accept PA proponents as experts without facts or qualifications to make any diagnosis.

All of these decisions come to the same predictable outcome of life-long harm of our children. As parental rights are stripped away, court-appointed professionals gain full, unsupervised control over the parent-child relationship with little or no accountability to the courts. Once the safe parent is branded with PA and this pseudo diagnosis is applied to their custody case, medical and therapeutic decisions are made outside of parental input, access to information about the child is denied, and the child is isolated from their primary care attachment.