For Better, Worse, Or Divorce Podcast

For our second episode in our “Hollywood & Family Law” series, Brian Walters, Jake Gilbreath, and the firm’s Marketing Director, Katy Justice, discuss Shanna Moakler’s accusation of parental alienation against her ex-husband Travis Barker and his new wife Kourtney Kardashian. Jake and Brian discuss parental alienation in family law cases and their experience handling these types of cases.

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Brian Walters: Okay, thanks for tuning into the For Better, Worse, or Divorce Podcast, where we provide you tips and insights on how to navigate divorce and child custody situations here in Texas. I’m Brian Walters, and I’m today joined by Jake Gilbreath, as well as the firm’s Marketing Director, Katy Justice. Again, for our second episode in our quarterly series on pop culture celebrity news, and how it fits into family law cases.

For this episode, we’ll be talking about recent news where Shanna Moakler accused her ex-husband Travis Barker of parental alienation, after he started dating Kourtney Kardashian. Parental alienation is a common term for potential new clients calling the firm, so we thought it would be good to break down this particular situation and our experience in handling similar situations to what these famous people are going through. Katy, you want to take it away from there with some of the basics? 

Katy Justice: I’ll be referencing articles from USA Today, People, and E! Online. A little bit backstory, Moakler and Barker divorced in 2008, after four years of marriage. They have two children together, Alabama and Landon. Barker is now married to Kourtney Kardashian, after dating since 2018. They married in 2022, and welcomed a son, Rocky this past November.

In a recent interview, Moakler said when Travis got with Kourtney, there was some parental alienation going on there. “Travis, even when we weren’t together, always wanted to be a super dad, I’m the best parent, I am the thing in that.” And she was like, “Bro, you’re the winner here, you have all the money, you have all of this.” Moakler said that her children were enamored with the Kardashian family’s celebrity status when Barker and Kardashian began dating. 

Another quote from Moakler said, “I think there was a lot of glitter and fame, and they watched them on TV, and now their dad is dating one, and they’re going to be on the show. And I think they get all caught up in that. Which young kids would do. They are buying them gifts, going to events, meeting Kanye, and all this big stuff.” Moakler stated that she had to remove herself from the situation, and let her kids come back to her when they’re ready.

Brian Walters: We hear this, obviously not the exact same facts specifically. When we initially talk to people it’s generally portrayed to us that there’s a deliberate effort to exclude one parent from the children by the other parent. I think that depends a little bit on the age and specific of the kids, and specifics of the situation. What do you hear when you talk to people about this, Jake?

Jake Gilbreath: I guess my first reaction is that it’s a spectrum. People call in and if there’s a problem with the parent/child relationship, it sounds like this individual Moakler is saying that there is a problem with the relationship. A lot of times we’re looking for the cause. It could be something benign. Well, I guess it’s never benign because the effects are a big deal. But it could be that a child is just getting older and they’re not necessarily as bonded with the parent as they were when they were a little child. Teenagers, for those who have teenagers. My kids are younger than teen years, but I deal with clients that have teenagers and there’s a natural estrangement that just happens as part of a child developing as they get older. 

It could be that. It could be something that we call alignment, or the mental health professionals call alignment. I know we talked about this some on the podcast before. It’s where a child just starts to gravitate towards one parent over the other. It could be that the parent is doing something specifically to try to influence the child. It could be just because of the family dynamic or blended family issues  that a child just gravitates towards one parent over the other. 

This situation sounds a little bit different than what we often see with blended families. Sometimes you have a new spouse, a new daily relationship comes in, and the child, particularly an older child, may reject the new addition to the family. Especially if there’s half-brothers, half-sisters, or step brothers and sisters come into the picture. It can be a lot for a child to deal with, a changing family dynamic and sometimes the natural inclination for a child is to want to remove themselves from what’s new. As opposed to this situation with Moakler, where it sounds like the child is gravitating towards the new blended family. 

Then on the extreme end of the spectrum, you have parental alienation. Like Moakler sounds like she’s accusing the other side of. We see that, and we see that a lot. Like we’ve talked about on other episodes, parental alienation itself is a spectrum, to where you can have mild alienation, moderate, and then obviously your extreme cases. None of it’s acceptable behavior on a parent who’s alienating a child. All of it requires both therapeutic and intervention from the court system to fix it. 

Brian, I’ll ask your take, but I think a lot of the intake is trying to figure out what’s going on with the relationship. When a potential client is calling in, and they’re having problems with the relationship with the child, what’s going on with the relationship? Then start delving into what’s causing it. Brian and I have been doing this long enough where we can get a pretty good sense just in the consultation of what could be causing it. Then a lot of times there’s further evaluation done through the court system. It will be with mental health professionals, custody evaluations, guardian ad litems, or amicus attorneys. All stuff that we’ve talked about in other podcasts. However, that initial consultation is starting to scratch the surface of what’s going on and then how can we fix the situation? 

Brian Walters: I agree. Again, I think the timing aspect is important. It seems here that this has been going on for a while for these folks. The mom took an unusual approach to it, she said, “I’m going to basically not fight you on it. I’m going to step back and wait for the kids to come back to me.” It sounds like they did. I’m just reading between the lines on it, and things are okay now. These kids are adults at this point, they’re 18 and 20.

That’s an option for some folks. Try to wait it out and see what happens. It’s a pretty risky option I would say because if there is true parental alienation, I don’t know if it’s going to get any better. I doubt it’s going to get better if you just step back. In fact, it can probably be used by the alienating parent to say, “See, your mom doesn’t care. See, she didn’t really love you,” or those kinds of things. Then you’re out of the picture longterm. Once the kids turn 18 and 20, like these two kids, there’s nothing the court system can do for you anymore, it’s too late.

It seems like that strategy worked for her, but that’s a difficult one to do as a parent. I think just as a parent, because you love your kids, and you want to see them. It’s also risky because you’re worried they’re going to hit 18 and never hear from them again. I wouldn’t want that to happen as a parent.

Jake Gilbreath: I have seen people take that approach a few times. It’s after a pretty serious consultation with a child’s therapist and then of course with their own personal therapist. We’re not mental health professionals, but my experience is the degree that you’re fighting may be directed by the child’s therapist, the family therapist, or your individual therapist. But just completely stepping back and stepping away, that’s a hard choice. I’m sure there are situations where therapeutically that makes sense, but it can unfortunately backfire.

As a parent, it may just feel like that’s your only option. “I just can’t win this battle, I keep on fighting it. It makes it worse, the alienating parent uses everything I do against me.”  People often call our office because they feel like the court system is rigged against them and they feel like it’s helpless. They may have been to court multiple times and it’s not getting better. They don’t feel like the judge or the guardian is hearing them. It sounds a little cheesy, but frankly people sometimes call our office as a last resort because they just haven’t gotten anywhere. Even years sometimes. It’s been years, and people are calling us. 

Back to that initial consult, sometimes you’re telling people, “I understand that it’s been years, and it’s frustrating, and you don’t feel like you’ve made progress, but we’re going to take a different approach through our firm, and take another go at it.” I’ve seen that work. Every situation is different, but sometimes switching up the therapy team, the lawyers involved, or the guardian involved, is just the solution that’s needed. Sometimes just giving up and walking away is the right thing and sometimes it works out, but I would have a serious consultation with the therapist first. Certainly with an experienced family lawyer also to make sure you’ve explored all your options first. 

Katy Justice: I have a question about this. A lot of the potential new clients calling our firm, it’s not so much in this scenario, but parental alienation is a really common term that potentially new clients throw around. A lot of times it’s coming like bad-mouthing from the other side, like they think the other parent is convincing the child not to go with them. It sounds like Moakler is not doing herself any favors in this scenario by talking to the press about her relationship with her kids and what’s going on. That’s going to come back to them. Especially if the kids are 18 and 20, which they are in this case. Do you have any advice on communication, and how to breach that topic without going to the press? Or talking to the kids negatively, talking to other family members, or anything that is going to get back to the kids? 

Jake Gilbreath: I would say generally speaking keep it away from the kids. Obviously, it’s a different world that these people live in and their lives are lived in the press and in the public eye. Some of our clients like to live their lives in the public eye through social media or through other various ways of involving anybody they can think of in their family drama. Every case is different but anything you can do to keep the children out of the conflict is better. It never helps your case posting about it on the internet, on social media, creating your website about your case, or the various different things that we’ve seen people put on the internet. It’s just never helpful. It never works out. It probably feels good at the moment and then it ends up being used against you in a case.

People need to remember, particularly in parental alienation cases you really are under an even more of a microscope than you typically are in the litigation scene. Going through a divorce or a child custody case your life is already under a microscope. When you’re dealing with parental alienation, on both sides, everybody is looking at absolutely everything that you do to try to see where it plays into the narrative of why we’re seeing the situation that we see with the kids.

If you have an alienated parent whose relationship with their child is damaged, they are under the microscope. A lot of times you’ll see a situation where if they make one wrong move everybody throws their hands up and goes, “Well, that’s why you don’t have a relationship with your kids, because you did this minor thing wrong. Sorry, we can’t help you,” and we all just give up.

On the flip side, if you’re the parent that’s being accused of alienating the child and everybody’s frustrated with the situation. You make one wrong move everybody throws their hands up and goes, “See, it’s all your fault. You’re the one that’s causing this.” It disproportionately lands on your feet.

Staying out of the public sphere and keeping it away from the kids is really the best thing that you can do. You are under a microscope of going through litigation, but particularly with parental alienation involved.

Brian Walters: I agree. Let’s talk about some of the things that you’ve touched on. Let’s talk about the challenges of proving parental alienation in a courtroom. I would start by saying initially when you walk into the courtroom there’s probably some problems in both houses. We’re not here just because of one side. So if you do feel like, hey, I’m just trying to parent and be a good parent. And the other side is just alienating them out of anger, revenge, or in this particular case because there’s a shiny object that the person has married. How do you start to overcome that assumption or presumption?

Jake Gilbreath: I think it starts back to what we said just a few minutes ago, which is that there needs to be some intervention. It is extremely rare that the option is just do nothing. Alienation tends to get worse because essentially if you don’t do anything you’re teaching the alienating parent that the strategy is working. It’s not like they’re going to just stop after having achieved their goals. A true alienator’s goal is for you to have no relationship for your children, and for your children to hate you. They won’t stop until they achieve that. Then even when they achieve that they won’t stop, the true alienators. 

Doing nothing is never an option. As far as what actually gets done in the court system, it is a spectrum. Like we’ve talked about in other podcasts and just like we were talking about a few minutes ago. On the extreme, the really, really extreme cases of parental alienation, the literature really is clear that the alienating parent, the parent that’s doing the alienating, should be cut off from the child. The child should be removed from that parent and placed with the alienated parent, so they can work on repairing the relationship. Then, of course, everybody needs to be in some type of mental health counseling. Those are the extreme.

On the less extreme, that may be what you feel needs to happen immediately. That’s a hard bargain to get to that level of extreme intervention right off the bat with a judge. It’s happened, we’ve certainly had those cases and we’ve certainly had that happen in cases where we’ve advocated for it. Sometimes it’s a slower process, and it can be a frustrating process. 

At a minimum for intervention that starts with therapeutic intervention with family therapy and individual therapy. A lot of times I tell clients to prove parental alienation, even though we know in our heart of hearts it’s happening in the other household, but it’s very difficult to prove. To get to where we can get court attention on it we need to start with therapeutic intervention with a family therapist and individual therapy for everybody. If you get a good team of  mental health professionals involved their job would be to sniff out the alienation. They will also start proposing or advocating for more court intervention, more therapeutic intervention, or whatever it looks like.

I’m always telling people it’s a spectrum. Who knows what we’ll be able to do if we dig into the case. We may be able to prove more than we think we’re going to, we may not be able to. But everybody is going to agree that there needs to be some therapeutic intervention on the case. If there’s a problem with the relationship between a parent and a child, whether it’s caused by parental alienation, estrangement, or a child just likes the shiny new thing in the other household, the answer is all the same, which is therapeutic intervention.

A lot of times we’ll see cases where that therapy team gets involved. Then once they sink their teeth into it they start sniffing out the parental alienation, and start recommending more interventions, either therapeutically, or through the court system.

One last thing to add to that, a lot of times courts appoint what’s called a guardian ad litem, or amicus attorney to help with that investigation. They make recommendations for the court, for both therapeutic intervention and court orders to try to fix the situation. 

It’s going to be a spectrum. It may be a slower burn depending on the situation, or it may not be. We get parental alienation cases where you’re in court within the month advocating for those extreme interventions. Just like a medical procedure, it’s a spectrum. There may be less invasive approaches to start off with before you go the full blown major surgery, by analogy. Every single case is different. Now we’ve said it four or five times in this podcast, the answer is rarely do nothing. The answer certainly is almost never don’t have a lawyer just sit there and take it and hoping maybe it’ll get better on its own. 

Brian Walters: Yeah, I agree. Well, that’s all we have for today. And this was our second episode in our ongoing pop culture series, so be on the lookout for more episodes like this. If there’s a topic you’d like to discuss, just email us at podcast@waltersgilbreath.com. We welcome all feedback. I’m Brian Walters, joined by Jake Gilbreath and Katy Justice. Thanks for listening.

For information about the topics covered in today’s episode, and more, you can visit our website at waltersgilbreath.com. Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode of For Better, Worse, or Divorce, where we post new episodes every first and third Wednesday. Do you have a topic you want discussed, or a question for our hosts? Email us at podcast@waltersgilbreath.com. Thanks for listening. Until next time.