Michele Locke: What Celebrity Custody Cases Teach Us About Alienation

Ask your child what happened at the other parent's house and you have already told them something. Attorney Michele Locke has one question she asks her own kids when they come back, and it is whether they had fun. Nothing else. Open every call with are you okay, are you safe, and a child learns that the other house is a place where they might not be.

Michele Locke is a Texas family law attorney in her twenty-third year of practice, whose caseload is mostly high conflict, including a two-week jury trial on an alienation case. She hosts her own divorce-law podcast, she is divorced, and she is co-parenting three boys, which means she speaks about this from both sides of the desk. She has been a guest on this show before.

The conversation opens on a heavily reported celebrity custody case, which Michele treats as a case study rather than a verdict, and she is deliberate about what anyone outside a family can actually know. What she reads is the public record: an incident on a plane, separate federal and state investigations that produced no charges, allegations maintained across years of litigation, a court order requiring one parent to hand over the children's phone number, and a child legally dropping a parent's surname. She and Lisa also discuss why all six children rejecting the same parent simultaneously is worth noticing, since one targeted child rejecting a parent while the siblings do not would be the more credible version of events.

The rest is mechanism and remedy. Michele explains why she argues the behavior rather than the label in a courtroom, and why she withdraws from a case if she finds a client on either side has lied, including about abuse. She and Lisa go through how parents set each other up to be the bad guy by agreeing to an event on the other parent's time, and why becoming the liaison with other families puts you in the middle. She explains why a child aligns with the parent hurting them, since even children removed from a home for abuse want to go back, and how being punished for enjoying the other house makes compartmentalizing a survival skill. They cover what that costs in adulthood, the ambiguous grief a rejected parent carries with no closure available to them, and how her advice shifts with a child's age: fight while they are young, give a teenager room, and keep sending the birthday message that asks for nothing in return.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a child's rejection is a data point to analyze rather than proof of alienation
• Why Michele argues the behavior in court instead of arguing over the label
• What "are you okay, are you safe?" teaches a child, and the only question to ask instead
• How parents set each other up to be the bad guy over parties and events
• Why a child aligns with the parent who is hurting them, and what contingent love does
• What alienated children carry into adulthood, and what breaking the cycle takes
• Why the advice changes with a child's age, and what she tells parents of teenagers
• Stepping back versus giving up, and what a no-pressure message actually looks like

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why a celebrity custody case is worth studying, and the two extremes
5:00 Arguing the behavior instead of the label in court
7:00 False allegations, and the uphill battle for a wrongly accused parent
9:00 "Are you safe?" versus "did you have fun?", and setting the other parent up
13:00 Losing control after divorce, and a name change as a signal
17:00 The plane incident, two investigations, and no charges filed
22:00 Six children rejecting at once, and why it's a data point
25:00 Why a child aligns with the parent hurting them, and learns to compartmentalize
30:00 What alienated kids carry into adulthood, and the grief on the other side
33:00 Advice by age, and stepping back without giving up

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

🎧 More with Michele Locke on this podcast
Ep 271: A Former Judge on Conduct in Family Court

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.