Colorado’s coercive control legislation is at a pivotal moment. HB26-1309 — a bill that could change how family courts handle domestic abuse cases — is scheduled for a Senate vote on May 11, 2026. You need to know what is in it, and what opposition is trying to do to stop it.
Family Court
Family court is one of the most contested and consequential arenas for survivors of narcissistic abuse and coercive control. It is also one of the least prepared to recognize what those survivors have experienced. Family courts determine parenting time, decision-making responsibilities, child support, and other post-separation arrangements — and they do so using frameworks that have historically been built around discrete incidents of physical violence rather than the sustained patterns of coercive control that characterize the most serious presentations of domestic abuse.
The gap is significant. Coercive control does not produce police reports. It produces anxiety, dissociation, self-doubt, and learned helplessness that can present — to an untrained judicial eye — as a high-conflict personality or parental alienation. Abusers who are skilled at impression management often perform credibility in courtrooms more convincingly than survivors who are experiencing the symptoms of complex PTSD.
Post-separation abuse frequently escalates in the family court context. Litigation is used as an instrument of control — what this platform calls lawfare. Parenting time is weaponized. False allegations are deployed. Children are positioned as messengers, informants, and leverage.
Research by Emma Katz has established that children are secondary victims of coercive control, not peripheral bystanders — and that the harm they experience extends far beyond any single violent incident. Family court outcomes that ignore coercive control harm children directly.
Legislative reform — including bills like Colorado’s HB26-1309 — is increasingly focused on changing the sequence and standard of evidence in family court to make coercive control legally visible. This tag collects all Narcissistic Abuse Rehab coverage of family court processes, reform efforts, and survivor navigation strategies.
Coercive control leaves no bruises — but it leaves other evidence. This guide covers what counts as proof, how to document it, and the law.
Through the enactment of Om’s Law, Utah is formally recognizing the urgent necessity of closing the knowledge gap regarding the true, multifaceted nature of intimate partner and family violence. In the post-#MeToo era, the response to women articulating the reality of men’s violence has been a systematic rollback of bodily autonomy and labor equity. The political climate has shifted so…
Coercive control survivor and advocate Julie Levine is battling a rare blood cancer and she needs our support.
Sandra L. Brown analyzes how the rejected theory of Parental Alienation Syndrome because big business in the family court system.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and divorce coach Amy Polacko joins us to unpack the alleged post-separation abuse of Catherine Kassenoff.
Legal experts Derek Jacques and Samantha Drum weigh in on how to prove narcissistic abuse in a court of law.
Attorney Derek Jacques, Esq. shares expert tips for parents navigating divorce and child custody cases with narcissistic co-parents.