Intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors seeking safety and justice for themselves and their children through family court and other legal systems may instead encounter their partners’ misuse of court processes to further enact coercive control. To illuminate this harmful process, this study sought to create a measure of legal abuse. We developed a list of 27 potential items on the basis of consultation with 23 experts, qualitative interviews, and existing literature. After piloting these items, we administered them to a sample of 222 survivor-mothers who had been involved in family law proceedings. We then used both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Rasch analysis (RA) to create a final measure. Analyses yielded the 14-item Legal Abuse Scale (LAS). Factor analysis supported two subscales: Harm to Self/Motherhood (i.e., using the court to harm the survivor as a person and a mother) and Harm to Finances (i.e., using the court to harm the survivor financially). The LAS is a tool that will enable systematic assessment of legal abuse in family court and other legal proceedings, an expansion of research on this form of coercive control, and further development of policy and practice that recognizes and responds to it.

亲密伴侣暴力（IPV）幸存者通过家庭法庭和其他法律体系为自己和孩子寻求安全和正义，但可能会遇到伴侣滥用法庭程序以进一步实施强制控制的情况。为了阐明这一有害过程，本研究试图制定一种法律滥用措施。我们根据 23 位专家的咨询、定性访谈和现有文献，制定了 27 个潜在项目的清单。在试用这些项目后，我们对 222 名参与家庭法诉讼的幸存者母亲进行了抽样调查。然后，我们使用探索性因素分析 (EFA) 和拉希分析 (RA) 来创建最终衡量标准。分析得出了包含 14 项的法律滥用量表 (LAS)。因子分析支持两个子量表：对自我/母亲的伤害（即利用法院以个人和母亲的身份伤害幸存者）和对财务的伤害（即利用法庭在经济上伤害幸存者）。 LAS 是一个工具，可以对家庭法庭和其他法律程序中的法律滥用进行系统评估，扩大对这种形式的强制控制的研究，并进一步制定承认和应对这种形式的政策和实践。