The Quebec Court of Appeal overturned a decision that ordered a father to pay $30,000 in damages for parental alienation but held that parents can be held liable during the course of the exercise of parental authority under civil law, a recourse however that will only succeed in “exceptional and unequivocal” situations.
The long-awaited decision, widely lauded by family law experts, held that the Quebec legislator has not ruled out the possibility of civil liability in matters dealing with parental authority, but its threshold must be high to prevent civil liability from becoming an “instrument for policing, or even regulating, the art of parenting,” said Quebec Appeal Court Justice Benoît Moore in Droit de la famille — 24915, 2024 QCCA 767.