Karin Walker - Family Lawyer - How to leave a Narcissist - the Practical Podcast · Karin Walker

Arrangements for your children in the midst of narcissistic abuse - an interview with Nick Anderson of 1KBW

June 19, 2025·32 min·8 clips

Children are at the root here. Karen Walker sets up the episode as part of a practical legal series for people leaving a narcissist, where the fight over future arrangements can become the fight itself. Nicholas Anderson brings court-facing experience. His practice covers financial and private law children proceedings, child abduction, high court work, and cases reaching the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. The live issue is contact refusal. What happens when a child resists or refuses a relationship with one parent while the adults are already in a contested arrangement? Anderson's warning is plain: do not tuck difficult facts away by deciding they are not so bad. If abuse history or a child's own experience matters, it needs attention at the start. The December 2024 Family Justice Council report on alienating behavior is treated as guidance listeners should read carefully. It slows the room down. A child being unwilling to see a parent does not automatically mean alienation. The court needs more before it can start reaching that conclusion. Anderson walks through the three elements. First, the child must be reluctant, resisting, or refusing a relationship with the other parent. Second, that reluctance must not come from that parent's own conduct, including harmful conduct the child has experienced or witnessed. Domestic abuse is named directly, with examples such as a child seeing one parent being awful to the other, or one child being favored over another. Third, the parent accused of alienating behavior must have acted in a way that directly or indirectly led to the reluctance. The distinction matters because it protects the child from a rushed story. A child may have watched enough, felt enough, and decided contact is not wanted right now, at least not on those terms. The episode keeps coming back to evidence, early assessment, and lowering the risk around children arrangements.

As heard by us

A careful discussion of alienating behaviour, child resistance, and the Family Justice Council's December 2024 guidance.

Karen Walker and Nicholas Anderson keep the discussion grounded in the practical and legal questions that come with leaving a narcissist, especially when alienating behaviour enters the picture.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You need a steadier way to think about children, contact, and control when separation gets high-conflict and alienation is being argued.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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