George’s Law: Parental Alienation Domestic Violence Act
The Issue
Parental alienation is domestic violence, and it's time the law said so.
Deliberately cutting a parent and child off from each other is severe psychological abuse. It happens to young children turned against or kept from a loving parent. It happens to elderly parents isolated from their own children, sometimes on their deathbed. The methods are the same: false abuse reports, lies, hiding where the person is, blocking calls and visits, and threats. The harm is the same: a bond between parent and child is deliberately destroyed.
Cutting someone off from the person they love most is one of the cruelest forms of psychological abuse there is. The bond between a parent and a child is the first and deepest one we have, whether that child is five or fifty-five. Anyone who uses a child or an elderly parent as a weapon against the people who love them is committing domestic violence.
Yet no federal law specifically addresses this abuse.
George's Law is a proposed federal bill that would:
- Recognize parental alienation and elder alienation equally as forms of domestic violence
- Make it a crime to make false abuse reports, hide a child or elder, or block contact in order to keep a family apart, and to lie to a family about an elder's health, hospitalization, or death
- Make it a federal crime, with prison sentences of up to 20 years when a child or elder suffers serious harm, and up to life when a child, parent, or elder dies
- Impose fines of up to $500,000 per offense, and require offenders to pay restitution for therapy, legal fees, and lost income, and give families the right to sue
- Help families restore contact, including by supporting state laws that let adult children petition a court to see an isolated parent
- Apply equally to mothers, fathers, caregivers, and anyone else who commits these acts
- Fully protect anyone who reports suspected abuse in good faith
The law is named for my father, George Randall Haller. We were cut off from each other for the last 334 days of his life, and I was not told the truth about his passing. I learned the real date of his death only when I received his death certificate. No law protected him, and no law protected me.
By signing, you ask Congress to make parental and elder alienation a crime, recognize it as domestic violence, and pass George's Law, so that no child, parent, or elder loses the time they have left together.
My father's death should not be in vain. Please sign and share.
— Shani Bayne Haller
87
The Issue
Parental alienation is domestic violence, and it's time the law said so.
Deliberately cutting a parent and child off from each other is severe psychological abuse. It happens to young children turned against or kept from a loving parent. It happens to elderly parents isolated from their own children, sometimes on their deathbed. The methods are the same: false abuse reports, lies, hiding where the person is, blocking calls and visits, and threats. The harm is the same: a bond between parent and child is deliberately destroyed.
Cutting someone off from the person they love most is one of the cruelest forms of psychological abuse there is. The bond between a parent and a child is the first and deepest one we have, whether that child is five or fifty-five. Anyone who uses a child or an elderly parent as a weapon against the people who love them is committing domestic violence.
Yet no federal law specifically addresses this abuse.
George's Law is a proposed federal bill that would:
- Recognize parental alienation and elder alienation equally as forms of domestic violence
- Make it a crime to make false abuse reports, hide a child or elder, or block contact in order to keep a family apart, and to lie to a family about an elder's health, hospitalization, or death
- Make it a federal crime, with prison sentences of up to 20 years when a child or elder suffers serious harm, and up to life when a child, parent, or elder dies
- Impose fines of up to $500,000 per offense, and require offenders to pay restitution for therapy, legal fees, and lost income, and give families the right to sue
- Help families restore contact, including by supporting state laws that let adult children petition a court to see an isolated parent
- Apply equally to mothers, fathers, caregivers, and anyone else who commits these acts
- Fully protect anyone who reports suspected abuse in good faith
The law is named for my father, George Randall Haller. We were cut off from each other for the last 334 days of his life, and I was not told the truth about his passing. I learned the real date of his death only when I received his death certificate. No law protected him, and no law protected me.
By signing, you ask Congress to make parental and elder alienation a crime, recognize it as domestic violence, and pass George's Law, so that no child, parent, or elder loses the time they have left together.
My father's death should not be in vain. Please sign and share.
— Shani Bayne Haller
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Petition created on October 2, 2026