Journal article
Fourteen years of the ‘parental alienation Act’ in Brazil: negative impacts on the child custody decision-making process, children’s best interests, and women’s rights
- Abstract:
- Brazil was, and remains, the first country to legally recognise and penalise acts classified as “parental alienation”. The enactment and application of this Act have been widely criticised in Brazil due to its adverse effects on the decision-making process and its potential risks to children’s best interests and women’s rights. This article explores how “parental alienation” became a legal concept in Brazil and examines its impact on the family justice system, as well as on the rights of children and women. Additionally, we present findings from a decision-making experiment conducted with 45 legal professionals – including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, psychologists, and social workers – in Brazil and England. The results reveal that legal actors influenced by “parental alienation” assumptions tended to overlook the inherent uncertainty and complexity of cases, ultimately impairing the decision-making process and compromising the best interests of children.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.6MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/09649069.2026.2614855
Authors
- Publisher:
- Taylor & Francis
- Journal:
- Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law More from this journal
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 3-29
- Publication date:
- 2026-01-21
- Acceptance date:
- 2026-01-14
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1469-9621
- ISSN:
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0964-9069
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2360541
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2360541
- Deposit date:
-
2026-01-16
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Mendes and Ormerod
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any med-ium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this articlehas been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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