August 27, 2025 • 8PM ET

When children's parents don't live together, there are many challenges that the children have to face. One of which is the school situation. Attorney Brian Ludmer discusses this with us. Also, author/educator Patti Howell gives tips for handling school in families where parents do not live together. Brian Ludmer is a Canadian attorney whose practice focuses on cases involving high conflict divorce, denial of access and parental alienation. Brian works as special counsel with US and Canadian and foreign attorneys and mental health professionals in the field of high conflict divorce and parental alienation. Brian has co-authored a book (The High Conflict Custody Battle) with Dr. Amy Baker and Dr. Michael Bone on related issues, which can be found on Amazon, Indigo and other online book retailers. He is also a business and securities law attorney with over 32 years of experience and many years of experience with cross-border mergers, IPOs and securities transactions. Brian uses this knowledge on his high net worth family law cases Brian is dedicated to sharing what he has learned from all of his clients and cases, and from his own personal experience, with professionals and targeted parents across North America. Brian is a frequent speaker in multiple media sources and has spoken for ISNAF in 2011 and 2013, and for PAAO, the Children’s Rights Council, the Canadian Equal Parenting Coalition, Family Access frequently in its webinars and gave two papers at its 2019 Conference in Kentucky. Brian gave papers at the 2017 PASG Conference in Washington, at the 2018 EAPAP inaugural conference in London UK, and at the 2019 PASG Conference in Philadelphia and has also given presentations for other organizations across Canada and the United States focused on high conflict divorce and grandparents rights. In 2014 Brian participated with many of the leading North American mental health experts in parental alienation at a Colloquium sponsored by ISNAF, the consensus statement from which will be published to help guide diagnosis and therapy and other interventions over the next decade. Brian has also been speaking to the Ontario Canada hospital network on PA Diagnosis and Therapy. Brian is a founding member of Lawyers for Shared Parenting, and drafted much of Bill C-560, a 2014 proposal to amend Canada’s Divorce Act to introduce a rebuttable presumption of equal shared parenting. Brian was an invited witness to the Canadian House of Commons (2018) and Senate (2019) Committee hearings on Bill C-78, amendments to Canada’s Divorce legislation that take effect in July 2020. Brian is the legal editor of the PASG bi-monthly newsletter Brian has been successful in advancing the law and understanding of the dynamic through his tireless efforts on behalf of his clients and has been counsel or co-counsel on several of the leading cases in this area across Canada. The jurisprudence on several of Brian’s cases have made meaningful advances in the legal remedies Courts are directed to use in denial of access and parental alienation cases.

September 3, 2025 • 8PM ET

High conflict occurs many times when parents are separated and divorced. In this segment, Dr. Mary Alvarez shares the developmental consequences to children in high conflict situations, such as those created in parental alienation cases. Plus, Lisa Rothfus tells a powerful story called, “The Boy at the Car,” which relates to Dr. Alvarez’s topic. Mary Alvarez, PhD, a licensed psychologist for more than twenty-five years in Texas, has both a forensic and a clinical practice and she specializes in evaluating and treating high conflict families. As a result of her forensic work in family law as a custody evaluator, Dr. Alvarez has evaluated and witnessed the devastating psychological effects on children whose parents are involved in chronic high conflict, including parental alienation. Dr. Alvarez recognized the need to focus on prevention and early intervention of parental alienation, so she co-developed a set of programs, Resetting the Family, to evaluate and intervene as soon as possible with high conflict parents and families that include mild and moderate parental alienation as part of the conflict. Dr. Alvarez is involved in several research projects with university colleagues concerning parental alienation and she is the second author for a book chapter concerning the psychological split continuum that children who exhibit mild, moderate, or severe alienation show. Lisa Rothfus is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has worked with families and children in private practice for over 35 years. She earned her Master’s degree in Social Work from Simmons School of Social Work in Boston, Massachusetts. She interned at two Harvard teaching hospitals and completed post-master’s training in Structural Family Therapy at Cambridge Family Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. She specializes in counseling families transitioning through all stages of divorce and high conflict family situations. She assesses and treats families affected by parental alienation, and offers mild, moderate, and severe reunification therapy. She has been appointed by the courts in numerous Texas counties to assess and provide counseling for families experiencing alienation or estrangement issues. She has also worked as a Guardian Ad Litem, Mediator, and Parent Facilitator/Coordinator in the Texas courts. Lisa has been appointed as a Reunification Therapist for families outside of Texas if a child resides in the state. She offers a 4-day Intensive Reunification Program out of Austin, Texas, for severely alienated parents who have been awarded custody by the court of their alienated child. This program requires a “no contact order” and is a combination of structural family therapy, psychoeducational information, experiential therapy, and includes an extensive aftercare protocol for the alienating parent.

September 10, 2025 • 8PM ET

This episode gives insight to 2 parents who are estranged from their adult children and alienated from their grandchildren. Elaine Cobb also shares more into her story that has never been told before. Elaine Simmonds and her husband Glen have been married 52 years and have 2 adult sons, one speaks to them, one does not. Their oldest son is 50 years old and has refused to communicate with his father and Elaine since he was 38. He has alienated his 2 children, ages 14 and 16, from them for the last 12 years. Jeff Morgan is an army veteran, former missionary, and concerned citizen who has seen how divorce, the family court system, government policies, and indifference and malaise of individuals throughout society have contributed to weakening and destruction of families and children. For more than a decade, he has been actively working with numerous people and organizations to advocate for changes and reforms that will help strengthen marriages and preserve families.

September 17, 2025 • 8PM ET

Attorney Ashish Joshi joins Families Divided TV this week to talk about defending someone who has been falsely accused of parental alienation. He also gives advice on selecting the right attorney for a parental alienation case. Ashish Joshi, owner and managing partner of the firm, serves as the lead counsel in high-stakes, complex disputes and litigation matters. Mr. Joshi has counseled and/or represented clients in state and federal courts across the United States and internationally, including in India, United Kingdom, Canada, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, British Virgin Islands, and China. Mr. Joshi has been admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, State Bars of New York, Michigan, District of Columbia, and Gujarat, India. Mr. Joshi’s focus lies at the intersection of forensic sciences, human rights, and complex disputes in situations involving severe parental alienation and psychological maltreatment of children, false allegations of child abuse, recovery of abducted children and/or hidden assets in foreign jurisdictions and multi-jurisdictional disputes. He has served as lead counsel in some of the most significant matters in these specialized areas of law. His cases have covered a wide spectrum, from international cases involving theft of trade secrets to highly contentious celebrity divorce cases involving millions of dollars of marital estate, from cases involving severe parental alienation and holding children hostage to cases of false allegations of sexual abuse, from a case involving the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction to a World Bank project mired in litigation in a foreign jurisdiction amidst allegations of local corruption, from cases alleging Medicare and healthcare fraud, insider trading, RICO and money laundering to alien smuggling and child pornography. Mr. Joshi and his team have represented clients around the country and internationally. A prolific author, Mr. Joshi has published a number of articles and co-authored books on several legal topics including parental alienation, criminal defense, commercial litigation, international litigation, and trial practice. He has made several presentations for continuing legal education programs hosted by the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and various state and local bar associations. Mr. Joshi is privileged to serve as the Editor in Chief for Litigation, the journal of the American Bar Association’s Section of Litigation and on the Advisory Board for Champion, the journal published by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Mr. Joshi also served on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers based in Washington, D.C.

September 24, 2025 • 8PM ET

In this episode of Families Divided, Dr. Carol Golly talks with Dr. Colleen Murray about the psychology of the alienated child. Dr. Carol Golly has a special interest in parent and grandparent alienation. She is a founding board member of Alienated Grandparents Anonymous, Inc. (AGA) and completed her doctoral work on grandparent alienation in 2019. She has 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist for children, adolescents, and families. cagolly@yahoo.com Dr. Murray is a Licensed Practicing Counselor and owner of Victor’s Crown Christian Counseling Center in Saint Robert, Missouri where she specializes in working with families experiencing high-conflict divorce and parental alienation. Dr. Murray is also an adjunct professor at Drury University. Dr. Murray is also an expert witness and regularly testifies in high-conflict divorce and parental alienation cases; and she teaches at continuing education conferences for family law attorneys and judges.