New reporting from InvestigateWest finds it’s difficult for parents in Washington to challenge flawed reports concerning guardians ad litem, the court-appointed guardians assigned to children in custody cases, who decide where their children will stay temporarily. If parents do challenge these professionals, they risk hurting their case to regain custody of their children.
In Washington, with little oversight and inadequate state-mandated training for guardians, parents are seldom able to hold guardians ad litem accountable for inaccurate or biased investigations. In some situations, children have been placed by these guardians in homes with abusive adults, and some parents have even lost custody of their children to abusers.
Kelsey Turner, a reporter with InvestigateWest, joins us to discuss her findings, including a few Washington cases that have shaped the call to reform standards for this role.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross, in for Dave Miller. The guardian ad litem program is supposed to be an extra layer of protection for children who are going through custody disputes. The court appoints a guardian to advocate for the children in some cases, including deciding where they will live temporarily. In Washington state, there’s little oversight of the guardian ad litem program and that has led to cases where children have been further traumatized with little chance of accountability – that’s according to new reporting by InvestigateWest.
Reporter Kelsey Turner published this story recently, and she joins us now. Kelsey, welcome to Think Out Loud.
Kelsey Turner: Hi, thanks so much.
Norcross: You start, in your piece, with a mother named Stephanie Maya and her experience with the guardian ad litem assigned to a custody case for her 3-year-old son. Can you tell us that story, please?
Turner: Yeah, so Stephanie had been involved in a custody battle for her young toddler son and she had recently escaped an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend. There were criminal charges pending. So basically, he had been arrested for assaulting her. They went to court over this custody issue and a guardian ad litem was assigned to the case. And the point of the guardian ad litem was to look into these different allegations by both of the parents about issues of domestic violence, substance use, mental health and things like that, any issues that could impact the safety of the child.
So this guardian ad litem had spoken to Stephanie and also to her ex-boyfriend, and wrote a report. But instead of emphasizing the domestic violence allegations against the ex-partner, the guardians ad litem report instead portrayed Stephanie more as the potential domestic abuser. She had drawn from this spreadsheet that Stephanie’s ex-boyfriend had provided to the guardian ad litem saying that Stephanie had domestic violence offenses of her own and [inaudible] criminal history of domestic violence, which was not true at all. But the guardian ad litem hadn’t verified it and had basically reported it in her report as facts. This ends up just having a large influence on custody outcomes for parents like Stephanie. These reports are given to the court and have a lot of influence in court. Judges often weigh them heavily and they might just not be accurate.
Norcross: What did Stephanie do about that?
Turner: She ended up filing a complaint against this guardian ad litem who is an attorney, actually, in Thurston County. So she filed a complaint first and it was actually dismissed by the Superior Court. And then her attorney filed another complaint and that complaint was taken seriously. So they then investigated it, and found that the guardian ad litem had violated a few of their codes of conduct and basically had a biased investigation where she had written the report essentially from the perspective of her ex-boyfriend, instead of verifying the facts. So they did have that complaint founded, which in itself is pretty rare.
Norcross: Yeah, it’s pretty rare. So I guess I hear you saying that the courts assume that these guardians ad litem are operating in good faith and are telling the truth, and can be very hard to prove otherwise?
Turner: Yeah, it is quite hard to prove otherwise. And part of the issue with guardians ad litem is that there aren’t any standardized qualifications for who can serve as a guardian ad litem, but they are often attorneys or social workers. And in these small law communities, especially if, like in this case, the guardian ad litem is a well-known family law attorney, they have a lot of respect of the court. And parents in these cases are often having their credibility questioned. So it’s hard for a parent to say, “no, I’m right, believe me,” when the court kind of defaults to trusting the guardian ad litem. So it’s a really big uphill battle.
Norcross: What are the responsibilities of a guardian ad litem? What kind of choices can they make regarding a custody case?
Turner: So they are supposed to represent the best interests of the children in custody cases and they’ll be appointed to investigate issues like substance use, domestic violence, mental health and…
Norcross: They’re not brought in every case.
Turner: They’re not brought in every case. Some counties do appoint them quite often in any of these high-conflict cases. Others don’t rely on it as much. But they write these reports to the court that the judge then is the ultimate decision maker, so the judge might end up not really relying on the report so much. But oftentimes the reports do have a lot of weight in court.
Norcross: What kind of training requirements are in place in Washington for someone to have this role?
Turner: It does vary by county. Statewide, the mandate is that there’s a training curriculum that’s three-and-a-half days long. So each guardian ad litem has to go through that before they can be approved by the court to serve as a GAL in that county. Some counties have requirements for ongoing training, but basically there’s nothing more statewide than that three-and-a-half day program.
Norcross: Has anybody at the state said anything about this patchwork? That the counties said that there are different requirements in different counties and maybe ways to standardize that?
Turner: Yeah, there are some discussions going on in the legislature. There was a work session held back in December where they spoke a little bit about these issues and had some folks presenting about these issues. There hasn’t been anything done about it yet. Legislators do say that they plan to do something about it eventually, but yeah, there’s a lot of discretion up to the local courts. Part of that is just how the Washington court system works. So it’s a lot to tackle.
Norcross: If parents have any issues with the decisions made by guardians ad litem, what kind of avenues are available for them for raising those complaints?
Turner: The only avenue is through the same superior court where their case is located…
Norcross: The same superior court that appointed the guardian ad litem in the first place?
Turner: Exactly. Yeah, which a lot of parents have a lot of doubt that that will actually be taken seriously, because pretty much the main avenue is for them to bring it up in court. So they’ll bring it up to the judge and say what their issues are with the guardian ad litem report, but that can be super dangerous because it could be interpreted as the parent is just complaining, or they’re causing conflict, or they’re being uncooperative with this co-parenting relationship. So that can come back to be worse for parents or just deter them from speaking up in the first place.
Norcross: Kelsey, there’s another story from a father in Clark County, Washington. His name is Leslie. Can you tell me what happened to him?
Turner: Leslie also had an issue with the guardian ad litem where someone was appointed to his case …. He spoke with her and then basically was questioning her investigation because she was relying very heavily on information provided by a previous ex-girlfriend of his. And that relationship had also been pretty fraught. So he was pretty much saying like, hey, that information from her isn’t accurate and called her on the phone. On that phone call she made a threat to her, which ended up being founded in this allegation of saying, I’ll take you to the wall if you bring your concerns to the court, basically…
Norcross: Wow!
Turner: And following that, she called two of his workplace supervisors. What he alleged was that she was sharing medical information without his consent and also just very private details about his custody case to his workplace supervisors without his consent, and just hadn’t conducted the investigation properly. So he also filed to get the guardian ad litem removed.
She was removed, but it spoke to the fear of retaliation that parents have. He felt that it was this purposeful effort to sabotage his employment. But even then, the guardian ad litem was removed, but her report still remains a part of the case. So it can still impact the custody outcome.
Norcross: You’ve told us a couple of really hard stories here, but I’m just curious how often this actually happens. How often is there an issue with the guardian ad litem when they are actually appointed to a case?
Turner: It is anecdotally pretty frequent. I’ve spoken to some attorneys, who specifically represent domestic violence survivors, who say that they’ll almost always advocate for not putting a guardian ad litem on the case because they feel like they’re often these issues of bias. Numbers wise, since we collected some data from the Administrative Office of the Courts in Washington, guardians ad litem have been appointed to over 7,100 cases since 2020. So it’s common for them to be appointed in these high conflict cases. It also seems quite common that there are concerns raised about bias, but the actual number of complaints are pretty low, partly because of what we talked about – there’s not a great system to complain that parents feel like they can trust.
Norcross: Are guardians ad litem paid?
Turner: They are paid, yeah. They’re quite pricey, and that’s another issue. So they’re basically paid like private attorneys would be paid where they have a retainer, and then they’ll cost around $200 an hour or something like that, give or take. That can be a huge financial burden on parents. They’re paying all of these private fees and then if the guardian ad litem isn’t really doing their job well, it also costs a lot to try to get them removed. One parent I spoke to, through all of her custody litigation and trying to fight the jail report, ended up having to sell her home and stay with friends because she just had nowhere to go.
Norcross: Any moves to reform the system?
Turner: Yeah, so this is where the Washington Legislature is still talking about possible reforms. The Administrative Office of the Courts is also talking about trying to do more training or just a better way to facilitate the training. It’s a little slow going. It seems at this point, there’s a lot of issues in family court in general, so guardians ad litem aren’t always the top priority of these legislators. But it’s definitely on their radar.
Norcross: Kelsey Turner, thank you so much for this.
Turner: Thanks so much.
Norcross: Kelsey Turner is a reporter with InvestigateWest.
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