A long history of majority parenting goes a long way toward a family court outcome. Especially if the allegations began long after the separation. Evidently they began when she wanted to move away with both children and that was her tactic. It's a common one, many here have faced convincing ex-spouses who are accomplished manipulators and, as my lawyer said once, "could pass a lie detector test". Bill Eddy, who along with Randi Kreger wrote our best handbook
Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, described the disordered persons as emotionally convincing as they posture as victims and targets (projecting their behaviors onto the reasonably normal spouses) to others who blindly become their Negative Advocates.
It's possible that, unless he adopted the older boy, he has no legal right to claim him as a son. State laws may allow exceptions, that's for a lawyer to expound upon. A blood connection means a lot to the courts and many laws. What makes it more complicated is that (1) he was majority time parent for years and (2) courts generally are reluctant to separate siblings. However, they are half siblings so that is a positive factor for you, the court may not feel the boys must stay together.
Also, it would be in his best interests to make the point, with documentation if possible,that her extreme efforts and allegations only began after she started another relationship and wished to move elsewhere. Otherwise the professionals may conclude or assume she would only do this if there really was some factual basis to the allegations. He needs to convince them she's focused more on herself, her perceptions and her motivations than about the children or their welfare. Also, an
in-depth Custody Evaluation by a VERY experienced professional would probably be needed to sort this out. (My CE was an experienced child psychologist and I recall one time when our session was over he went to a local university to give a lecture. He wasn't a lawyer, he wasn't someone who had a few weeks or months of training.)
Long term lies and pressuring can result in alienation and even children lying to the professionals. They ought to be very aware of that possibility even if it isn't an every day issue that they encounter. One of the up and coming concepts described by Dr Craig A. Childress (
www.drcachildress.org/) is that alienation of this sort is a form of
child abuse, a grasp of understanding that is only recently gaining traction in professional circles. Another professional and lecturer is Richard Warshak (
www.warshak.com/) and author of
Divorce Poison. When it gets to an extreme it is not something to be pooh-poohed by DHS, CPS or the courts. Can you investigate this approach to determine whether it will help your son strengthen his case? We have discussed Childress in various threads here, you can use the Search funtion on the menu bar above.
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