Finding experts: Brian Ludmer

In a recent blog post, Karen Woodall features the globe-trotting but Toronto-based family lawyer, Brian Ludmer. You can hear him and his careful, experienced thinking in two in-depth radio blog discussions recorded in January 2012 – a radio blog discussion with Brian,  Jill Egizii and Judge Michele Lowrance which was continued two weeks later.

Jill is an Alienated mother and Michele is an experienced family court judge. Not a surprise, then, that the discussion covers a lot of ground so well!

Brian successfully solved his own estrangement with his own children. He practices with high conflict cases. He co-authored with Amy Baker and Michael Bone, the book: The High Conflict Custody Battle. He is an attorney, and skilled in understanding and developing strategies for managing Parental Alienation (PA).

In the interview, Brian answers some great questions about why people resist the idea of Parental Alienation, how courts and professionals do and don’t do their job, and what you do to find and breed professionals with the right knowledge and skill set when the rare PA expert – like Brian – is not around when you want them.

Setting standards

In her same blog, Karen also proposes challenging questions to determine who is expert enough to work with PA families. At the moment, only she in the UK could, I think, answer her own questions well. If that’s not true, let us know. We all need to know if we’ve missed anyone out!

Maybe there’s a place for Britain to find a way to import guest expertise as Karen is doing with Brian – immigrants with a very special needed skill to offer! –  to fill in the work and uphold those standards.

And we, the professions in the UK, also need to keep pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps too.

In the radio blog the lack of experts is a noted problem even in North America.  Brian Ludmer talks more of how you manage without that expertise that happens even there. So what he says is worth taking on board here in Britain too.

More of Brian

In the second discussion, questions included what you tell your step-children about PA and how do you get your support when you suddenly find you’ve been Alienated? All three of the discussants underline the importance of doing everything to ensure your distant child knows you’re still in their life … even though they’ve been part of pushing you away.

They discuss too the surprising but very ancient law in Japan, based on sole custody after divorce with the one parent making all the decisions about the child’s life. There is minimal contact expected with the other parent and no come-back if even the brief visitation agreement is broken. So we, in the rest of the world, can count our blessings!

Nick Child, Edinburgh