The father sentenced to pay $30,000 to his ex-partner for “parental alienation” won his case before the Court of Appeal, which overturned the judgment finding him responsible. Quebec’s highest court emphasizes that such civil liability actions relating to the exercise of parental authority will only succeed in “exceptional and unequivocal” situations.
We must avoid civil liability becoming an instrument “in order to police, or even regulate, the art of being a parent”, writes the Court under the pen of Judge Benoît Moore, who thus seeks to regulate, or even limit, the recourse for fault of parental alienation.
In 2022, a judge ordered the father to pay this sum in damages, considering that he had contributed to destroying the relationship that his ex-partner had with his son. Judge Élise Poisson, of the Superior Court, ruled that the father had fueled the boy’s resentment towards his mother and that he “created a conflict of loyalty leading to the severing of ties” between them.
The man had contested this financial claim from the child’s mother: he considered that she was the only one responsible for the situation, in particular because of the rigid framework that she imposed at home.
Once ordered to pay $30,000, he appealed the decision of Judge Poisson, who had probably awarded damages for parental alienation for the first time in Quebec.
The case is important, and its interest goes well beyond that of the parents in question, insists Judge Moore: “It raises complex societal issues of primary importance, calling into question the delicate question of the place and role of the law of civil responsibility in family relations. »
In its judgment, the Court of Appeal recalls that even if “children are the first victims of a dysfunctional family dynamic”, Quebec law does not rule out a parent’s civil liability recourse against the ‘other. Such recourse is, however, “condemned to be exceptional and reserved only for dead-end situations”.
To succeed, there must be a fault committed, wrote the Court, specifying that the burden of proof to find an at-fault parent is “very high” and will often require expertise – absent in the present case.
Such a fault will manifest itself by “generally numerous and systematic gestures and remarks occurring over time and from which we can see the existence of a strategy aimed, without justified reason, at affecting the child’s perception of the child. “other parent, thus leading, on an a priori permanent basis, to a breakdown of any relationship”, defines the Court.
Once fault has been established, it must be demonstrated that this fault of the parent “to the exclusion of any other reason” caused the breakup. In short, such actions for damages will only succeed in very rare cases, warns the Court.
Which is not a bad thing, she continues: “Civil liability action, as we have seen, is far from being the ideal remedy for a dysfunctional family dynamic, because it will very often have the effect of not to improve it, but to make it worse. »
In the case of this family, the evidence submitted was incorrectly evaluated by Judge Poisson, rules the Court, who does not see any fault committed by the father.