Six Children, Ten Years of Alienation and a ₪440,000 Bill: Inside an Israeli Family Court Judgment
Eight children.
Two parents.
Eight related court cases.
Years of social workers, psychologists, court orders, treatment programs, a guardian ad litem, custody litigation, property litigation, child-support litigation and apparently enough family-court paperwork to deforest a respectable portion of the Mediterranean.
And after almost a decade of fighting, six of the eight children were no longer speaking to their father.
That is the family story behind B. v. B., Family Case 974-07-20, a judgment issued by the Petah Tikva Family Court on January 28, 2025.
Judge Nava Gadish ultimately concluded that the mother had caused severe parental alienation, breached duties imposed upon her by law, acted negligently toward the father, frustrated therapeutic efforts and contributed to the destruction of his relationships with six children.
The price tag?
₪440,000 in damages.
Plus ₪50,000 in legal costs, unless the mother chooses instead to finance a substantial family-therapy process.
It is difficult to imagine a more fitting ending to ten years of family warfare: after apparently exhausting nearly every other imaginable intervention, the legal system finally reached for a calculator.
A Family of Ten Becomes Two Camps
The parents married in 1999 and had eight children: five daughters and three sons, born between 1999 and 2013.
Around 2015, the marriage collapsed.
The family soon followed.
According to the judgment, the mother lived with the five daughters and youngest son.
The father lived with the two older sons.
And the children effectively divided into camps.
The judge described the result with painful simplicity: children who maintained a relationship with their mother would not maintain one with their father, and vice versa.
Nothing says “successful divorce” quite like turning eight siblings into a geopolitical map.
The parents generated eight related legal proceedings involving their children, child support and property.
The mother initially sought custody.
The father sought joint custody or custody himself, warning even then that what he described as “brainwashing and incitement” was already underway.
The Court appointed numerous professionals in what Judge Gadish repeatedly described as an effort to “save the family.”
It did not work.
By the time the judgment was issued, the father had lost contact with six of his eight children.
The Father Eventually Asked for Money
The father originally sued for ₪500,000.
His theory was straightforward: the mother had caused severe parental alienation and should compensate him for the resulting loss.
Before deciding whether anyone should start writing checks, however, the judge had to answer a more fundamental question:
Were the children legitimately rejecting their father because of his own behavior?
Or had their mother helped create and reinforce the rejection?
That distinction became the central issue in the case.
The Court expressly recognized that children can have perfectly legitimate reasons to reject a parent.
A child who has suffered serious violence or abuse does not become a victim of “parental alienation” simply because someone attaches the label.
But the judge concluded that this was not what had happened here.
2015: The Contact Problems Begin
In November 2015, a social worker urgently reported that the mother had stopped bringing the children to scheduled parenting time.
The mother’s explanation was that she did not trust the father.
She claimed that she had observed him entering a synagogue and leaving the children unsupervised.
The father said he had merely gone inside to get them water and that the children had remained under supervision.
The mother nevertheless demanded full supervision before she would bring the children again.
There was only one small problem.
That was not what the social worker had recommended.
The mother stopped bringing them anyway.
Thus began a pattern that would eventually consume years of professional intervention.
Experts: The Children Were Being Consumed by the Divorce
A 2016 parental-capacity evaluation at the Eyal Institute produced disturbing findings.
Regarding the eldest daughter, professionals described her alienation from her father as the product of inappropriate exposure and extreme involvement in her parents’ divorce battle.
Another daughter viewed the family, according to the evaluators, through an almost cartoonishly polarized lens:
Mom was perfect.
Dad was negative and dangerous.
The professionals described her as a victim of the family dynamic.
Another daughter, then only ten, refused even to enter a meeting with her father and said she feared him.
Yet she became visibly excited when presented with gifts from him and carefully read his greeting card.
An eight-year-old daughter had previously reacted with happiness and excitement when her father visited her school for her birthday.
But when professionals arranged a father-daughter interaction, she refused to enter and cried uncontrollably.
She later cried while reading the card he had left for her.
Professionals described her emotional state as involving both aversion and longing, together with difficulty coping with a family environment that denied her father’s paternal role.
The two youngest children?
At that point they were still fine with Dad.
They saw him happily.
No significant problem.
That detail would become important later.
The Experts Did Not Exactly Give Dad a Halo
The judgment did not portray the father as a faultless saint wandering innocently through family court.
Professionals criticized his avoidance, dependence and difficulty handling complex situations.
The mother and daughters described him at times lying on the floor, screaming, striking his head and sobbing.
Not exactly the image family therapists put on the cover of their brochures.
But the professionals also identified serious problems with the mother.
They described difficulty managing negative emotions and criticism, a tendency during conflict to reject criticism and blame others, problems with emotional regulation and impulsive reactions when overwhelmed.
In other words, nobody left the psychological evaluation carrying a trophy.
The legal question was not whether the father was perfect.
It was whether his imperfections justified six children effectively erasing him from their lives—and whether the mother had helped make that happen.
2017: Therapy Stops Because Mom Stops Participating
In 2017, after the family had been ordered into therapeutic processes, the mother announced that she would no longer participate in parent coordination.
She cited financial reasons.
The immediate result?
The therapeutic meetings between parents and children stopped.
Judge Gadish found that whether the mother did not understand what her decision would do or understood perfectly well and ignored it, the decision demonstrated poor parental insight.
The Court did not definitively say she acted maliciously.
It said something perhaps more damning:
Professionals warned her of the destructive consequences.
She stopped anyway.
And the decision gave further momentum to the children’s rejection of their father.
Another social worker later reported a clear impression of parental alienation.
Then the Younger Children Changed Too
Remember the younger children who in 2016 had been happy to see Dad?
By April 2019, those meetings had stopped too.
The mother called and reported that the children “adamantly refused” to go.
They were approximately seven and eight years old.
So within roughly three years, children who had shown no meaningful difficulty with their father had joined the same family pattern.
An unfortunate coincidence, perhaps.
The Court did not think so.
January 2020: Four Children at the Contact Center
By January 2020, the situation had become even more extreme.
Four children arrived with their mother for a meeting with their father at a contact center.
They refused to enter.
They “cried nonstop.”
The following week?
The mother did not bring them at all.
The social worker concluded that the mother needed to give the children her “blessing” to see their father.
She also criticized the mother for effectively communicating that extracurricular activities were more important than repairing the children’s relationship with their father.
It turns out that soccer practice, dance class and whatever else was on the calendar were apparently competing with a collapsing parent-child relationship.
The social worker had opinions about that priority system.
Even Hanukkah Needed a Guardian ad Litem
Attorney Zehava Sanders, the children’s guardian ad litem, repeatedly attempted to facilitate contact.
In December 2020 she personally offered to attend a Hanukkah candle-lighting gathering at the father’s home.
Think about that for a moment.
A family had reached the point where lighting Hanukkah candles with Dad required court-appointed legal supervision.
One daughter spent the evening sitting with her back toward him.
Still, there appeared to be some progress.
The Court hoped regular meetings could begin.
They stopped again.
The parties later agreed to suspend the financial litigation for six months in yet another attempt to rehabilitate the family.
Afterward, the father told the Court he had run out of strength waiting for circumstances to change.
The lawsuit resumed.
Dad’s Signature Was Welcome. Dad Was Not.
At another point, the daughters wanted to transfer schools.
They needed their father’s signature.
He eventually agreed and apparently hoped the required paperwork might provide a small opening for actual human contact.
Instead, one daughter faced the wall and refused to communicate with him.
After he signed, she managed a “thank you” without looking at him.
Another daughter, then nine, also sat with her back toward him.
She refused to look at him.
Her position was simple:
She just wanted him to sign.
The guardian ad litem later told the Court that the girls’ nearly identical behavior looked like “copy and paste.”
She described the case as involving “very, very severe parental alienation.”
She specifically said she did not use that phrase lightly.
During one meeting she personally observed, the daughter did not appear frightened, traumatized or under stress from her father’s presence.
She appeared angry and stubborn.
Those observations became significant because the daughters later alleged far more serious conduct by their father.
The Adult Daughters Wanted to Testify
Two of the daughters eventually became adults and asked to address the Court.
Judge Gadish initially tried to stop them.
Not because she did not want to hear inconvenient evidence, but because she believed becoming further entangled in their parents’ litigation would be harmful to their mental health.
They insisted.
The judge permitted it.
She intentionally kept their initial statements out of the transcript to protect them.
What she heard, she later wrote, reinforced her impression that both young women had undergone severe alienation and had effectively erased their father’s identity from their lives.
Because the statements were not transcribed, she correctly refused to rely upon them as evidence.
She then advised the mother not to call the daughters as witnesses.
The mother called them anyway.
Because apparently after years of experts warning that the children were dangerously involved in their parents’ litigation, putting them on the witness stand was the natural next chapter.
Their January 2024 testimony strengthened the judge’s existing conclusion.
A Ten-Year-Old Recording Suddenly Appears
One daughter testified that when she was approximately 13 years old she had secretly recorded her father to document the way he spoke to her.
But she had apparently not used those recordings:
when the events allegedly occurred;
with police;
with social workers;
during years of family therapy;
with the guardian ad litem;
with Eyal Institute evaluators; or
during previous attempts to restore the relationship.
Instead, according to her testimony, she kept them for roughly ten years before wanting to use them in the father’s damages lawsuit.
Judge Gadish did not find the story persuasive.
The Court wrote that there were essentially two possibilities.
Either a 13-year-old had secretly recorded her father and then preserved the material for a decade before using it.
Or the account had been created for the litigation.
The judge concluded that either possibility demonstrated an extraordinary and unhealthy level of involvement in the parental dispute and a profound repudiation of the father-daughter relationship.
The Daughters Accused Their Father of Abuse. The Judge Did Not Believe Them.
The daughters also described alleged violence and abusive treatment.
These were serious claims.
The Court considered them.
And rejected them.
Judge Gadish wrote that one daughter’s body language reinforced her conclusion that the testimony was unreliable and appeared coordinated with her sister and mother.
The daughters described incidents in which their mother supposedly knew their father behaved violently toward them but nevertheless insisted he accompany them for medical treatment.
The judge did not find the account credible.
One daughter said she had concealed abuse for years because she wanted to protect her father.
Yet she had never disclosed it to police, social workers, Eyal Institute professionals, the guardian ad litem or the many other professionals involved with the family.
Years later, she appeared in court to support her mother after her father sued for money.
The Court found those positions difficult to reconcile.
The daughter also claimed other people, including neighbors and her husband, had been exposed to the father’s conduct.
None testified.
The Court identified contradictions as well.
She claimed she invited her father to her wedding.
She admitted she never sent him an invitation.
She admitted she had no communication with him.
Judge Gadish did not believe the invitation story.
He Learned About His Daughter’s Engagement From People on the Street
Few portions of the judgment are as bleak as the wedding.
The father learned that his eldest daughter was engaged not from his daughter.
Not from his wife.
Not from a relative arranging reconciliation.
He learned it from people on the street.
He testified that he hoped the approaching wedding might finally cause something to crack in the wall between them.
Perhaps, he thought, his daughter would recognize that this was a major life event and reach out.
“The miracle didn’t happen,” he told the Court.
He received no invitation.
Asked why he did not simply appear at the wedding anyway, he answered that he would not wish that situation on anybody.
Judge Gadish believed him.
The mother and daughter claimed he had been invited but chose not to attend.
The judge did not believe them.
The Alleged Marriage-Sabotage Plot
The mother and daughter also claimed the father tried to damage his daughter’s reputation and interfere with her marriage prospects.
Evidence?
The judge found none.
No matchmaker testified.
No teacher testified.
No neighbor testified.
Nobody who supposedly heard the father disparage his daughter was produced.
The father testified that he had deliberately protected the girls from embarrassment and kept their family problems away from teachers, educators and others.
The Court believed him.
Judge Gadish also pointed out a fairly basic logical difficulty:
If Dad was supposedly trying to destroy the daughter’s marriage, why was the same daughter supposedly eager enough to invite him to the wedding?
The Court concluded that the mother’s versions instead strengthened the impression that she had spent years trying to erase the father from the children’s lives.
Judge Gadish summarized the result in four words:
She acted and succeeded.
And Then There Was the Grandchild
One adult daughter came to court carrying her newly born son.
The grandfather had apparently never seen the baby.
The Court asked her to show him his grandchild.
She refused.
The judgment treats that episode as yet another illustration of how thoroughly the relationship had been erased.
Divorce had now traveled successfully through three generations.
An impressive accomplishment, if the objective was maximum family destruction.
“Horrific” Meetings Without an Example of What Was Horrific
Another daughter described meetings with her father as “horrific.”
The problem, according to the judge, was that neither an explanation nor an example was supplied to support such an extreme description.
The judge concluded that the mother’s conduct had allowed the divide to grow even though this daughter had been only nine when the conflict began.
Again, the most telling evidence was the transformation of the youngest children.
In 2016, they happily saw their father.
By 2019, they refused.
The Court viewed that progression as important evidence of influence rather than independent, longstanding fear of the father.
The Diaper Allegation
Family litigation has a remarkable ability to turn even diapers into evidence.
The mother alleged that shortly after one son was born, the father had taken the baby to her workplace because he needed her to change the child’s diaper.
He denied it.
Judge Gadish did not believe the allegation.
The Court reasoned that the family had eight children, the mother worked and the father studied and necessarily spent substantial time caring for the children.
If he literally could not change a diaper, leaving him responsible for the children while she worked would have been rather difficult.
The courtroom survived this evidentiary crisis and moved on.
The Cake Controversy
The mother also claimed that the father had prevented the two sons living with him from accepting baked goods she sent.
The father denied it emphatically.
The boys ate the cakes, he said.
He even appreciated that she sent them.
He had preserved her notes, greetings and letters.
Judge Gadish believed him.
Apparently even baked goods had become combatants in this divorce.
The Court also rejected an allegation that the father once entered the former family home in the middle of the night, opened the children’s drawers and closets, removed personal items and woke them in alarm.
The judge noted that the allegation had not even appeared in the pleadings.
She did not believe it.
The Mother Could Influence the Children When She Wanted To
This became one of the Court’s most important conclusions.
Professionals repeatedly described the mother as a strong figure with significant influence over the children.
When she supported contact, contact could happen.
When she did not, it generally did not.
The Court pointed to the Hanukkah meeting and subsequent contacts as evidence.
The judge therefore rejected the idea that a young child’s refusal to meet a parent automatically ended the inquiry.
Children aged eight and ten do not ordinarily set the litigation strategy.
The other parent is expected to parent.
Judge Gadish concluded that the mother’s failure to exercise that authority either actively encouraged the rejection or demonstrated indifference toward it.
Sixteen Years Together—and Apparently Not One Happy Memory
The parents had lived together for approximately 16 years.
Yet two daughters could not tell the Court about a single positive experience with their father.
The judge found that implausible.
The most striking moment involved an old childhood letter.
One daughter had written her father an affectionate greeting when she was young.
It mentioned Sabbath stories and dancing together.
When she read it years later in court, she smiled.
For an instant, she acknowledged that the childhood memory returned.
Then she learned that her father had preserved the letter all those years.
Her reaction changed immediately.
Instead of interpreting a father saving his daughter’s childhood letters as sentimentality, she concluded that he had been building an evidence file for litigation more than a decade in the future.
A truly spectacular level of long-range legal planning, if true.
The judge did not buy it.
She said the reaction demonstrated that the daughter had reached the point of denying and erasing the relationship itself.
Her conclusion:
“That is precisely the definition of parental alienation.”
The Court’s Verdict on Responsibility
Judge Gadish found that the mother:
supported the daughters’ resistance to their father;
failed to cooperate with treatment;
disregarded the importance of restoring contact;
contributed to the alienation spreading to the younger children;
violated statutory parental duties; and
acted negligently toward the father.
The mother tried to show that the father was responsible.
The Court found she proved none of those allegations.
That did not mean Dad was perfect.
The judgment expressly acknowledged troubling and unusual behavior by him.
But imperfection is not the legal test.
The Court found no causal contribution sufficient to reduce the mother’s responsibility.
The father had generally cooperated with professionals.
He continued trying to reconnect.
He even sent a wedding present to a daughter whose engagement he had learned about from somebody on the street and whose wedding he was not invited to attend.
Judge Gadish concluded that he repeatedly encountered what she described as a fortified wall.
His contributory negligence:
Zero.
How Do You Put a Price on Six Children?
Eventually, family court had to perform the task courts perform when emotional damage cannot actually be repaired:
Put a number on it.
The judge asked how money could possibly measure a father losing six children.
One daughter did not invite him to her wedding.
Another would not let him look at his newborn grandchild.
Younger daughters sat in treatment sessions with their backs toward him.
And the estrangement lasted for years.
The Court acknowledged that no payment could eliminate the father’s pain.
It then calculated one anyway.
Because that is what damages law does.
₪20,000 Per Daughter Per Year
The Court reviewed other parental-alienation judgments indicating awards ranging from roughly ₪15,000 to ₪50,000 per year of alienation.
Judge Gadish used ₪20,000 per year for four daughters:
A.: ₪40,000
B.: ₪80,000
H.: ₪100,000
V.: ₪100,000
Subtotal:
₪320,000.
The Younger Children Cost More
The two younger children’s alienation began in 2019.
By then the family had already spent years in court.
Professionals had warned the parents.
Therapeutic intervention was underway.
The consequences should have been obvious.
Yet the alienation spread to them anyway.
The Court therefore assessed the younger children at ₪30,000 per child per year.
Each accounted for ₪60,000.
Together:
₪120,000.
Grand total:
₪440,000
The father had sued for ₪500,000.
The Court awarded ₪440,000.
And importantly, the judge did not include additional compensation for alienation continuing after the lawsuit was filed.
So despite the rather large number, the meter actually stopped early.
But Dad Owed More Than ₪250,000 in Child Support
Then came the sort of detail that ensures nobody leaves family court feeling too victorious.
According to the mother, the father had an enforcement debt of more than ₪250,000 in past child support.
The father argued that the mother’s conduct should relieve him of child-support obligations.
The judge said this lawsuit was not the correct proceeding in which to decide that question.
But she did order something important:
The father’s child-support debt would be offset against the ₪440,000 judgment.
So no, the mother was not necessarily expected to simply hand him a ₪440,000 check while a quarter-million-shekel support debt sat untouched somewhere else.
Family court is many things.
Simple is rarely one of them.
And Another ₪50,000 in Legal Costs
The mother was also ordered to pay ₪50,000 in legal costs because of the result, the length of the case and the manner in which the litigation had been conducted.
But Judge Gadish gave her an alternative.
Instead of paying those legal costs, the mother could participate in a serious therapeutic effort and ensure that all six children involved—including those who were already adults—participated too.
The father would also have to participate.
The judge expected that he would.
Minimum treatment:
15 sessions.
The mother would pay for treatment for the whole family.
If that happened, she would be excused from the ₪50,000 legal-cost award.
After nearly ten years of litigation, the Court’s final offer was therefore essentially:
You can pay the lawyers.
Or you can pay the therapists.
Perhaps somebody should have offered that menu in 2015.
The Real Cost Was Never ₪440,000
It is tempting to make the headline about the money.
Mother Ordered to Pay ₪440,000 for Parental Alienation.
And from an SEO perspective, yes, that is precisely what the headline should say.
But the number is the least extraordinary part of the judgment.
The real story is that eight children grew up inside a family conflict so severe that:
the family split into opposing parental camps;
professionals spent years attempting reunification;
young children who initially had healthy relationships with their father later refused to see him;
daughters sat facing walls rather than looking at him;
a father learned of his daughter’s engagement from strangers;
he missed her wedding;
a daughter refused to let him see his newborn grandchild;
childhood letters became courtroom evidence;
cakes became allegations;
therapy repeatedly collapsed;
adult children were eventually called to testify in their parents’ financial litigation; and
after all that, a judge had to calculate the emotional destruction child by child and year by year.
The mother was ordered to pay ₪440,000.
The father still had a child-support debt exceeding ₪250,000 to offset.
The family had spent approximately a decade in conflict.
Six children were estranged from one parent.
Two were allegedly estranged from the other, a question reserved for another lawsuit.
And the Court was still, at the end of a 31-page judgment, offering everyone another chance at therapy.
There may be no better summary of prolonged family litigation than that.
After years of parents fighting over who destroyed the family, the Court finally determined legal responsibility.
The family itself remained destroyed.
Case Information
Court: Petah Tikva Family Court
Case: Family Case 974-07-20, B. (Father) v. B. (Mother)
Judge: Nava Gadish
Decision Date: January 28, 2025
Claim: ₪500,000
Damages Awarded: ₪440,000
Additional Legal Costs: ₪50,000, subject to waiver if the family participates in the court-described therapeutic process
Number of Children: Eight
Children Estranged From Father: Six
Finding: Negligence and breach of statutory duty arising from parental alienation
Contributory Fault Attributed to Father: None
Publication: Judgment authorized for publication without identifying information
Frequently Asked Questions
How much did the Israeli court award for parental alienation?
The Petah Tikva Family Court awarded the father ₪440,000 in damages after finding that the mother’s conduct caused or materially produced the alienation of six children.
How many children were involved?
The parties had eight children. By the time of judgment, the father was estranged from six of them.
Did the court find that the father was abusive?
The daughters and mother made allegations concerning violence and abusive conduct. Judge Nava Gadish addressed those allegations and found that they had not been proven. The Court found no contributory fault by the father.
Did the court say every child who refuses to see a parent is alienated?
No. The judgment expressly recognized that estrangement may sometimes be justified, including where a child has experienced significant violence or abuse. The Court said parental alienation requires examination of whether the rejection is unjustified and whether the other parent caused or intensified it.
Why was the mother ordered to pay ₪440,000?
The judge considered the number of children involved, the length of the estrangement, interference with treatment, violations of court orders and the intensity of the children’s rejection of their father.
Did the father receive the entire ₪440,000 in cash?
Not necessarily. The Court ordered that the father’s existing child-support enforcement debt, which the mother said exceeded ₪250,000, be offset against the damages award.
What happened with the ₪50,000 legal-cost award?
The mother was ordered to pay ₪50,000 in costs. However, the Court stated that she could be relieved of that obligation if she financed and participated in a therapeutic process involving the father and the six children, consisting of at least 15 sessions.
Was the judgment public?
Yes. The Court expressly authorized publication of the judgment without identifying details.
Final Thought
The Court called the original objective “saving the family.”
Years later, it was calculating damages at ₪20,000 or ₪30,000 per child per year.
That may be the most cynical detail of all.
Not because the judge failed.
Not because the therapists failed.
But because by the time an intimate family relationship requires a judge, a guardian ad litem, multiple social workers, psychological assessments, eight related court files and a damages spreadsheet to determine who is allowed to love whom, the invoice is really just the epilogue.
