Abuse Doesn’t End When the Relationship Does

What Family Court Needs to Understand About Post-Separation Abuse

Most people still believe domestic violence ends when the victim leaves. But for many of us, that’s when the real battle begins.

Domestic violence is not just physical. It’s coercive control. It's psychological warfare dressed in calm voices and court documents. It's emotional sabotage, financial manipulation, and the slow erosion of a parent’s authority and self-worth. When the relationship ends, the abuse doesn’t stop, it evolves. This is called post-separation abuse, and for many survivors, it’s even more insidious than what came before.

I’ve lived this.

I left a man who emotionally and psychologically abused me for years. A man whose polished credentials and professional status now serve as armor. He hides behind his calm demeanor while weaponizing the legal system to discredit me, drain me, and destabilize the life I’ve worked so hard to build for my children. Every email, every court hearing, every “concern” he raises is part of a pattern, one that’s common in high-conflict custody cases and tragically misunderstood by family courts.

What Does Post-Separation Abuse Look Like?

It looks like a parent who claims they are "co-parenting" while bombarding you with accusatory emails, undermining every parenting decision you make, and ignoring your child’s need for rest, stability, or emotional support.

It looks like counter-parenting where one parent imposes opposing rules and values just to create confusion or division. It looks like a child asking why their feelings aren't taken seriously by the other parent, or why their voice disappears in rooms full of adults who claim to know what’s best.

It looks like alienation allegations used to silence legitimate concerns. When children feel unsafe or emotionally abandoned by one parent and seek connection with the other. The abusive parent calls it “manipulation” instead of asking why their child might be pulling away. These claims aren’t about the child. They’re about punishing the safe parent.

It looks like legal abuse constant motions, false claims, delay tactics, and drawn-out litigation used not for justice, but for exhaustion. The courtroom becomes another arena for power, where the abuser's goal isn’t resolution it’s control.

It looks like financial sabotage, especially when the abuser convinces the court that the victim should pay them support despite years of control, despite the imbalance of power, despite the fact that they walked away with more money, more time, and more credibility than they deserve.

And most of all, it looks like a system that allows all of it.

The Children Are Not Protected by Silence

One of the most devastating truths about post-separation abuse is that it doesn’t just target the survivor, it targets the children. Our kids become pawns. They’re exposed to emotional whiplash, confusion, fear, and chronic instability. These are not benign side effects. They are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) the kind that shape brain development, stress responses, and long-term mental health.

Judges, mediators, therapists, and custody evaluators must stop viewing these cases through a “high-conflict” lens. This isn’t mutual dysfunction. It’s a prolonged campaign of coercive control.

The CDC’s ACE Study should be required reading in every family courtroom. Because until we stop treating the safe parent like a co-conspirator in conflict, we are complicit in the harm.

Why I’m Speaking Out

I’m not writing this because I enjoy rehashing pain. I’m writing this because it’s time people understood that abuse doesn’t always leave bruises and that the courtroom can become just another place for it to thrive.

I am one of many. A mother who left for her kids, only to find herself fighting a quieter, more sophisticated kind of war. But I’m not quiet anymore. Through I Object, I’m building a space for people like me people whose stories don’t fit neatly into the justice system’s outdated scripts.

If you’ve been dismissed, disrespected, or done dirty, this is your space to say: I Object.

Because silence isn’t safety. And staying calm in the face of cruelty isn’t peace, it’s survival.