When “Fairness” Becomes a Weapon: What Dr Emma Katz’s New Work Teaches Us About Coercive Control

Credit and source

This article was prompted by new work from Dr Emma Katz, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Edge Hill University and a leading researcher on coercive control and its effects on children and young people.

Her article, How Coercive Controllers Distort Obligations and Fairness in Relationships, introduces two resources for her Substack readers:

• the Healthy vs. Abusive Relationships Flag; and
• the Relationship Reasonableness Test.

Those are Dr Katz’s own resources and this JSH Law article does not reproduce them.

Instead, I want to explore the Family Court question her work raises:

How can apparently ordinary language about fairness and obligations conceal an asymmetric pattern of coercive control — and how can the court avoid mistaking resistance to that pattern for evidence that both parties are equally responsible?

The issue in one paragraph

Healthy relationships contain obligations and boundaries. The difficulty is not that one partner ever asks something of another.

The problem arises where the relationship operates through systematically unequal rules: one person acquires rights without corresponding responsibilities, while the other acquires responsibilities without equivalent freedom.

If that asymmetry is removed from the account, the victim’s eventual objections, distress, anger or refusal may appear more unreasonable than the controlling system which produced them.

Seven things to understand first

1. Not every unfair relationship is coercive control.
People can be selfish, inconsistent, inconsiderate or difficult without the legal or behavioural threshold for domestic abuse necessarily being met.

2. Disagreement is not abuse by itself.
Partners and separated parents can have genuine differences about money, children, communication and boundaries.

3. The pattern matters.
Coercive control is often understood through repetition, asymmetry, restriction, intimidation and cumulative impact.

4. Function matters as much as wording.
A seemingly reasonable request can have a controlling function depending upon the wider context.

5. Resistance is not automatically reciprocal abuse.
Anger, refusal or boundary-setting must be interpreted in context rather than mechanically treated as equivalent conduct.

6. The Family Court still determines the facts.
No checklist or framework replaces evidence, due process or judicial findings.

7. Dr Katz’s tools are analytical resources, not legal tests.
The governing legal framework remains the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the Family Procedure Rules, PD12J and the relevant case law.

What Dr Emma Katz is identifying

Katz’s new article starts from an apparently simple question:

What do people reasonably owe one another in an intimate relationship?

There are ordinary expectations.

People may reasonably expect:

• consideration;
• some degree of honesty;
• respect for agreed responsibilities;
• respect for boundaries;
• and regard for the needs of children and other family members.

But abusive dynamics can distort those concepts.

The perpetrator can present excessive demands as:

“reasonable expectations”.

Restriction becomes:

“respect”.

Surveillance becomes:

“communication”.

Economic control becomes:

“being responsible with money”.

Isolation becomes:

“putting the family first”.

Interference with autonomy becomes:

“what partners do for each other”.

And when the victim refuses:

they can be recast as selfish, unreasonable, unstable or controlling.

That inversion is the part Family Court professionals need to be especially alert to.

The difficulty is that abusive rules can resemble ordinary relationship expectations

Some coercive demands are immediately recognisable.

Others are not.

Consider:

“Let me know when you get there.”

That can be an ordinary expression of care.

Now imagine that it actually means:

“You must continually account for your location, who you are with and when you will return, and there will be consequences if you do not.”

The words may barely change.

The system around them does.

Or:

“We should discuss large purchases.”

Reasonable in many relationships.

But what if one partner spends freely while requiring the other to justify groceries?

Again, the proposition itself may sound reasonable.

The asymmetry changes its function.

That is why coercive control cannot reliably be analysed by extracting isolated statements from the relationship and asking whether each sentence sounds reasonable.

Look at the rules in both directions

This is where Katz’s focus on obligations and fairness becomes especially useful.

Instead of asking only:

“Was this demand reasonable?”

ask:

“Did the same rule apply to both people?”

For example:

The question is not simply whether an apparently reasonable rule existed.

It is whether the rule operated as a reciprocal expectation or a mechanism of power.

Freedom for me. Obligations for you.

One of the clearest signs of distorted fairness is where one person claims both:

maximum freedom for themselves

and:

maximum responsibility from the other person.

For example:

• I can go out without explanation, but you must tell me where you are.
• I can make financial decisions alone, but you must ask before spending.
• I can change arrangements at short notice, but your lateness proves you are unreliable.
• I can refuse communication, but your failure to reply immediately is hostile.
• I can criticise your parenting, but questioning mine is an attack.
• I can set boundaries, but yours are punishment.

Any individual example may have an innocent explanation.

The evidential question is whether there is a repeated architecture of entitlement and restriction.

That is much closer to the coercive-control inquiry.

Then the victim begins to resist

And this is where an evidential distortion can occur.

Imagine somebody has spent years:

• explaining;
• appeasing;
• responding;
• trying not to provoke conflict;
• giving information;
• accepting criticism;
• and modifying their behaviour.

Then they stop.

They refuse to answer an intrusive question.

They say no.

They block repeated messages.

They become angry.

They stop facilitating something they regard as unsafe.

They insist upon written communication.

They seek a court order.

Viewed from that point onwards, the most visible conduct may now belong to the resisting person.

They are the one saying:

“No.”

“Stop contacting me.”

“I won’t agree.”

“You cannot come here.”

If the history which produced those responses disappears, resistance can be misread as hostility.

Behaviour cannot always be understood by looking only at who appears most oppositional at the end of the story.

The danger of false symmetry

This does not mean every claim of “reactive behaviour” should be accepted.

Victims can behave badly.

Both parties can contribute to conflict.

Mutual abusive behaviour can exist.

People can also exaggerate or mischaracterise the other’s conduct.

That is why evidence matters.

But apparent reciprocity should be tested rather than assumed.

If Party A sends abusive messages and Party B sends abusive messages, counting messages alone may produce:

abuse on both sides.

A deeper analysis might ask:

• What preceded each message?
• Who was seeking to control whose conduct?
• Was one party trying to enforce compliance?
• Was the other trying to create distance?
• What happened when a boundary was asserted?
• Who had greater practical control over money, housing, children or information?
• Did the conduct restrict the other’s autonomy?
• Was the behaviour repeated?
• What was its cumulative effect?

Equality of incident count does not necessarily mean equality of power or function.

This is one reason “high conflict” can be an inadequate description

“High conflict” describes what a relationship may look like.

It does not necessarily explain why it looks that way.

Two people can certainly engage in genuinely reciprocal and entrenched conflict.

But if one person is exercising coercive control and the other is resisting it, describing the situation simply as:

“two parents who cannot communicate”

risks creating false symmetry.

The same problem arises with phrases such as:

• “mutual hostility”;
• “toxic communication”;
• “parental conflict”;
• “both parties need to move on”;
• and “they are as bad as each other”.

Those descriptions may sometimes be accurate.

But before using them, the court or professional should have asked whether the behaviours actually perform equivalent functions.

This matters enormously in the Family Court

Private children proceedings can create a perfect environment for disputes about obligation and fairness.

Who should communicate?

How quickly?

Who should share school information?

Who should make appointments?

Who should transport the child?

Who can change arrangements?

How flexible should each parent be?

When is a boundary reasonable?

When does it become obstruction?

When is persistence legitimate parenting?

When does it become harassment or continued control?

Those questions rarely have sensible answers without context.

And the court must be particularly careful where one party’s account of “fairness” effectively means:

the other parent complying with rules that the first parent does not themselves accept.

PD12J requires exactly this kind of contextual analysis

The current Practice Direction 12J expressly recognises controlling and coercive behaviour as a pattern issue.

It defines controlling behaviour as acts designed to make a person subordinate or dependent, including through:

• isolation;
• exploitation of resources or capacities;
• depriving someone of independence, resistance or escape;
• and regulating everyday behaviour.

Where fact-finding is necessary, paragraph 19 now expressly permits evidence schedules or tables containing:

specific events and examples of a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour so that the judge can consider the alleged abuse holistically rather than focusing on incidents alone.

That is exactly the point.

A demand may look reasonable.

A rule may look reasonable.

A parent’s eventual resistance may look unreasonable.

The court needs enough of the pattern to understand what each behaviour was actually doing.

Re C reinforces the point: coercive control is cumulative

The Court of Appeal has just revisited this issue in Re C (Child Arrangements Orders; Domestic Abuse; Child Focused Court) [2026] EWCA Civ 1216.

Sir Stephen Cobb emphasised that the established case law on domestic abuse continues to apply with full force under the new Child Focused Court model.

The judgment returned to Hayden J’s explanation in F v M that coercion generally requires recognition of a pattern of acts and that controlling behaviour is concerned with conduct which renders another person subordinate and corrodes personal autonomy.

The impact must be assessed:

cumulatively and rarely in isolation.

That matters here.

Because distorted obligation is rarely proved by one rule.

It is demonstrated through the system of rules.

Children can become part of the obligation system

This is where Dr Katz’s wider body of research is particularly important.

Her work has consistently examined how coercive control affects children directly, including post-separation.

Children may become:

• messengers;
• sources of information;
• monitors;
• leverage;
• the reason given for intrusive demands;
• or the means through which control continues after separation.

A demand might therefore be framed:

“I have a right to know because I am the child’s parent.”

Sometimes that is entirely legitimate.

Parents do have responsibilities and need information.

But the court may need to distinguish legitimate parental involvement from behaviour which uses parenting as a route to continue controlling the former partner.

PD12J expressly requires the court, where domestic abuse is established, to consider whether the proceedings themselves are being used to continue abuse.

A claimed parental “right” can sometimes conceal an imposed obligation

Consider the statement:

“I am entitled to know everything happening with my child.”

At one level, a parent with parental responsibility may legitimately expect important information.

But now ask:

• What information is actually being requested?
• How frequently?
• Is it genuinely about the child?
• Is the information already available directly from school or healthcare providers?
• Does the request require the other parent continually to account for their own movements?
• Is refusal met with threats, repeated contact or litigation?
• Does the same parent provide equivalent information themselves?

The language of parental responsibility should not automatically immunise the function of the behaviour from scrutiny.

How do you evidence distorted obligations?

The strongest evidence is rarely:

“He had double standards.”

That is a conclusion.

The court needs the architecture underneath it.

A useful evidential structure is:

That moves the analysis from:

“This felt unfair.”

to:

“This was the repeated rule, this is the source evidence, this is how it operated asymmetrically, and this is its alleged effect.”

One of the best questions may be the counterfactual

When a behaviour is being presented as an ordinary relationship or parenting expectation, ask:

What happened when the same rule was applied back to the person imposing it?

This can be very revealing.

If the stated principle is:

“Parents must share important information”,

what happened when that person was asked to share information?

If the principle is:

“We must respect each other’s boundaries”,

what happened when the other person created one?

If the principle is:

“Neither parent should make unilateral decisions”,

what happened when the person making that complaint wanted to make one?

A genuinely held principle tends to survive reversal.

A mechanism of control may not.

A JSH Law fairness-distortion audit

Inspired by the evidential question raised by Dr Katz’s work — but separate from her own Relationship Reasonableness Test — I would ask the following when analysing Family Court evidence.

This is not a diagnostic instrument.

It is not a legal test.

And it does not prove coercive control.

Its purpose is simply to stop the apparently reasonable language of obligation from preventing a proper examination of how the rule actually functioned.

Then apply the JSH Law Six-Question Check

Once a possible pattern has been identified, apply the JSH Law Six-Question Check.

Could AI help identify these double standards?

Potentially, yes.

This is another area where AI may be useful for evidence organisation.

Across several years of communications, AI could help identify:

• repeated demands;
• recurring rules;
• who was expected to provide information;
• who actually provided it;
• repeated accusations of unfairness;
• what happened following refusal;
• changes before and after separation;
• and possible asymmetries worthy of human review.

For example, technology might identify that one person repeatedly demanded notice of schedule changes while themselves making repeated last-minute alterations.

That could be an evidential lead.

It would not establish coercive control.

The original communications would still need to be checked.

Context would still matter.

Alternative explanations would still need to be considered.

And the Family Court would still determine what, if anything, was proved.

AI can help expose an apparent double standard. It cannot decide why that double standard existed.

Beware the AI prompt that already contains the verdict

Do not ask:

“Find all the ways my ex used unfair rules to coercively control me.”

That invites confirmation.

A safer instruction would be closer to:

“Identify recurring expectations or rules communicated by either party. Compare whether those expectations appear to have been applied reciprocally. Identify source messages, contrary examples and periods where the proposed pattern does not occur.”

Then a human can ask what those patterns mean.

This is particularly important in domestic-abuse evidence because a persuasive-looking pattern generated from a biased instruction can easily become self-reinforcing.

Trying to evidence a pattern of coercive control?

JSH Law provides defined-scope support with organising and analysing evidence for litigants in person in private children proceedings.

This can include:

• message and email chronologies;
• evidence-source mapping;
• coercive-control pattern analysis;
• identifying repeated and asymmetric behaviours;
• testing contradictions and alternative explanations;
• domestic-abuse schedules;
• witness and position statement preparation support;
• Cafcass and Child Impact Report analysis;
• bundle preparation support;
• and hearing preparation.

The aim is not to label every unfair interaction as coercive control. It is to identify the evidence from which the court can properly understand the alleged pattern, its context and its impact.

Book a consultation

Fairness language can become particularly powerful after separation

After separation, intimate-partner control may lose some of its former routes.

The parties no longer share a home.

Daily movements may become harder to monitor.

Finances may begin to separate.

The former partner has greater physical independence.

But new routes appear.

Children.

Handover.

School information.

Medical decisions.

Schedules.

Messages.

Solicitors.

Professionals.

And litigation itself.

This does not mean every disagreement about those subjects is post-separation abuse.

Most separated parents will genuinely need to negotiate them.

But where coercive control existed previously, professionals should be alert to whether ordinary co-parenting obligations have become the new language through which control continues.

The welfare question is not “Who sounds more reasonable?”

This may be the practical Family Court lesson I take most strongly from Dr Katz’s article.

Presentation matters.

One party may appear:

• calm;
• conciliatory;
• measured;
• focused on “fairness”;
• and willing to invoke conventional expectations about co-parenting.

The other may appear:

• angry;
• defensive;
• fearful;
• rigid;
• exhausted;
• or deeply distrustful.

Neither presentation proves anything by itself.

A calm person can be entirely reasonable.

An angry person can be abusive.

Equally, polished reasonableness is not proof of benign behaviour and emotional distress is not proof of unreliability.

The Family Court has to get behind presentation.

What happened?

What pattern is alleged?

What is the source?

What alternatives exist?

What has been proved?

And what does it mean for the child?

Fairness cannot be assessed without power

I think Dr Emma Katz’s new article identifies something deceptively simple and very important.

We all rely upon ideas of fairness to understand relationships.

People should keep reasonable commitments.

People should respect one another.

People should contribute.

People should communicate.

People should respect boundaries.

None of that is controversial.

The problem begins when those concepts are manipulated so that:

one person’s freedom becomes a right,

while:

the other person’s freedom becomes a breach of obligation.

Then the language of fairness itself can conceal unfairness.

For Family Court professionals, that means we cannot assess reasonableness only by looking at the rule somebody says should have applied.

We have to look at:

• who created the rule;
• who was expected to obey it;
• whether it operated reciprocally;
• what happened when it was resisted;
• whether it formed part of a repeated pattern;
• what function it performed;
• and what impact it had.

That does not prejudge the allegation.

It improves the question.

Do not ask only whether the rule sounded reasonable.

Ask who had to live by it.

That is the part of Dr Katz’s analysis I think family justice should pay very close attention to.

Related JSH Law analysis

• Seeing the Pattern: What the Major Coercive-Control Frameworks Can — and Cannot — Tell the Family Court
• From Incidents to Trajectories: Coercive-Control Evidence and Behavioural Patterns
• “The Obligations Are Unchanged”: What Re C Really Says About Domestic Abuse in Child Focused Courts
• Can AI Prove Coercive Control? No — But It Can Help the Court See the Pattern
• The JSH Law Six-Question Check

Sources and further reading

• Dr Emma Katz — How Coercive Controllers Distort Obligations and Fairness in Relationships
• Edge Hill University — Dr Emma Katz research profile
• Practice Direction 12J — Child Arrangements and Domestic Abuse and Harm
• Re C (Child Arrangements Orders; Domestic Abuse; Child Focused Court) [2026] EWCA Civ 1216
• Home Office — Controlling or Coercive Behaviour Statutory Guidance
• Domestic Abuse Act 2021 — Statutory Guidance