Jonathan Breeden: Parental Alienation, and What a Court Can Do

Most divorces are over in six to eight months. The ones Jonathan Breeden is still trying years later, one of them since 2012, are the cases where a parent decided the children were leverage.

Jonathan Breeden is a family law attorney in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, where he has practiced for 25 years and runs a firm with nine other attorneys and three offices, handling family law and wills. He wrote a plain-language guide, "Divorce Law in North Carolina: What You Need to Know," and hosts a community podcast. He describes himself as a reformed bulldog: still willing to fight when he has to, but convinced that resolving a case is almost always better for everyone, especially the kids.

In this conversation, Jonathan and Lisa focus on a problem that dominates their audiences' lives: a co-parent turning the children against the other parent. He puts the frequency in perspective (it is real, but less common than it can feel from inside it), names the two earliest warning signs, and explains what a court can and cannot do, including North Carolina's free, lawyer-free custody mediation. He is blunt that trying to win a child to your side is a losing move, because the child is half the other parent and only gets two.

They also get concrete about the rest: how to surface a "no rules" household through open-ended questions, why a revolving door of new partners damages a child's ability to trust, what actually clears the high bar of "egregious" for supervised visitation, and why counseling, not good intentions, is what keeps abuse from repeating in the next generation. Jonathan closes on building a high-conflict parenting plan that leaves no wiggle room, and on the control pattern underneath these cases: attention, good or bad, is the reward, so the strongest response is often no reaction at all.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The two earliest signs a co-parent is turning the kids against you
• Why criticizing your co-parent lands on your child, not on your ex
• How courts handle a violated custody order, and where mediation fits
• What to ask when a child says "I want to live with the parent who has no rules"
• Why the revolving door of new partners hurts kids, and how long to wait
• What "egregious" actually means before a court orders supervised visitation
• Why counseling, not willpower, is what stops the cycle from repeating
• What a high-conflict parenting plan must spell out, down to every holiday

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 A recovering "bulldog" attorney, and what clients really want
3:00 How common alienation actually is
9:00 Why kids resent the alienating parent later
13:00 The first signs: 90 days of no contact, and borrowed words
15:00 What an attorney does, and free court mediation in North Carolina
17:00 When a child says "dad lets me do what I want"
21:00 Rules, structure, and the revolving door of new partners
25:00 Kids dragged into litigation, and what "egregious" really means
29:00 Anger management, and why counseling breaks the cycle
33:00 The high-conflict parenting plan, and not taking the bait

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Jonathan Breeden at Breeden Law Office (free NC divorce guide): https://www.breedenfirm.com/
🔗 Breeden Law Office on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breedenlawoffice/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.