A newly released webinar featuring Canadian family law attorney Brian Ludmer is now available to watch online. Recorded in connection with the 2025 Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG) Conference in Toronto, the presentation explores the legal, psychological, and evidentiary complexities surrounding parental alienation cases in modern family law proceedings.
Watch the video capturing Brian Ludmer’s presentation titled Proving Your Case in Court, in Therapy, to Assessors and to Child Protection Authorities.
The slide-and-lecture-based webinar session draws upon Brian Ludmer’s more than thirty years of experience handling high-conflict custody disputes and parental alienation matters in Canada. Throughout the presentation, he explores the many reasons why these cases are frequently misunderstood, as well as why some traditional approaches fail to produce meaningful outcomes for children and families.
At the start of the webinar, Ludmer discusses the historical development of parental alienation within the Canadian legal system, including a landmark 1991 Quebec court decision in which Justice John Howard Gomery characterized severe parental alienation as a form of emotional harm requiring intervention. Ludmer further explains why that decision remains strikingly relevant in 2026 and how many of the same institutional obstacles identified decades ago continue to this day.
A major focus of the webinar is addressing practical difficulties involved in establishing parental alienation as a fact before courts, therapists, assessors, and child protection authorities. Here, Ludmer outlines how vague or shifting allegations can serve to complicate proceedings, as well as delay intervention and shift attention away from the underlying family dynamic.
Other subjects Brian Ludmer addresses in the webinar include:
- The importance of identifying the primary causes within individual family conflicts, rather than automatically treating all custody matters as situations where blame is equally shared between both parents.
- How certain forms of conventional child counselling may unintentionally reinforce parental alienation dynamics when therapists or practitioners lack specialized training or experience in the area.
- The distinction between a child’s stated wishes and the broader contextual influences that may shape those statements, including parental pressure, coaching, or prolonged exposure to high-conflict family environments.
- The impact that long-term and potentially traumatic family conflict can have on children’s perceptions, behaviour, and testimony during custody proceedings.
- Ongoing efforts within the legal and mental health communities to establish more standardized approaches for handling parental alienation cases, including how clearer professional practice standards may help improve consistency and reliability in assessments and legal decision-making.
- How more effective and specialized approaches may also help reduce unnecessary delays within the family law and child protection systems.
- The importance of putting memory science into the proper context when using it in family law proceedings, including correcting the misconception that traumatic memories can remain completely suppressed for long periods before later being recalled in perfect detail.
- How courts and practitioners must learn to distinguish between a child’s literal statements and the “authentic child” beneath them, especially in situations where parental pressure, manipulation, or alienation dynamics may be influencing the child’s expressed views.
In closing out the webinar, Ludmer states that there is a lot more work to be done in the area of parental alienation and how it is treated by the law and various professionals, government agencies, and the courts, but emphasizes that ongoing efforts are worth it “for the sake of our children.”
About Brian Ludmer
Brian Ludmer is a Canadian lawyer with more than three decades of professional experience practicing family and business law. He is the founder of the Toronto-based firm Ludmer Law and is widely recognized for his work in high-conflict custody litigation and parental alienation cases, both within Canada and internationally.
Outside of his legal practice, Brian Ludmer has made substantial contributions to public policy discussions surrounding shared parenting and family law reform. He co-founded the organization Lawyers for Shared Parenting and holds advisory roles on the boards of the International Support Network for Alienated Families and the Parental Alienation Awareness Organization. He is also one of the co-authors of The High-Conflict Custody Battle: Protect Yourself and Your Kids from a Toxic Divorce, False Accusations, and Parental Alienation, and in the past, has helped draft proposed legislation involving family law, such as Canada’s Bill C-560, which proposed a presumption of equal shared parenting nationwide following legal separation or divorce.
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