Many people who write us have children who have their own attorneys because in difficult cases the court assigns and pays for them. We have heard many stories now and sadly it seems unusual that parents say these attorneys have helped protect their children.
It’s nice to know that the legal profession is also concerned that children receive ethical and competent representation. There is actually an American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) that developed in 1995 Standards for Attorneys and Guardians ad Litem in Custody or Visitation Proceedings. These standards have recently been revised and there is considerable debate about just what the role of children’s attorneys should be.
In 2003, the American Bar Association developed its own standards, and in 2006, the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) (formerly the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws) released a draft of its Model Act regarding children’s attorneys.
The heart of the debate is whether it is ethical for an attorney to formulate his/her own opinion about what would be best then argue for that opinion before the court.
In an important article, The AAML’s revised standards for representing children in custody and visitation proceedings: the reporter’s perspective, Martin Guggenheim, (Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law, New York University School of Law), argues that children’s attorneys should not be allowed to advocate for their own personal opinions. He states:
It is one thing to want to hear from a neutral investigator who has spoken with the child in an extended way. It is another entirely to empower this investigator to try to ensure that the case comes out the way the investigator wants. The one adds to the case the findings of the investigator but leaves the case in the hands of the court and the adult parties to debate how much the investigator’s views and opinions ought to matter. The other contaminates the proceeding by adding a forceful and skilled advocate who is now advocating for the outcome s/he has selected. This is not only dangerous; it is unnecessary.
Professor Guggeinheim argues that the court needs neutral trained experts that can assess families, report to the court and be subject to cross examination. A layers job is to advocate for what his client wants, Guggeinheim concludes “I hope others in the field of custody and visitation disputes who are interested in improving practice will build off of the (AAML’s) Standards by supporting efforts to limit sharply the use of the term “children’s attorney.” If we could agree to call someone a child’s lawyer only when we expect him or her to advocate for the objectives sought by the child, we can then work on the rest of the issues plaguing the field.”
The problem with lawyers formulating their own opinions and arguing for them, is that they are subject to being deceived by the sociopath and may not even know that psychopathic personality traits are something they should watch out for. I agree with Professor Guggeinheim in that allowing these lawyers to only represent the child’s wishes prevents them from having undue influence over the outcome.
Recently someone told me about a Guardian ad Litem (GAL) who tried to convince a child to see the psychopath parent saying “children are better off when they have relationships with their parents.” Thankfully the child now a tween is wise enough to understand that this dictum does not always apply.
In hearing these stories in the last 2 weeks I came to a realization. There has really been a great deal of research done regarding what factors help shape development in a positive way. It is only natural that clinicians, academics and others would want the family courts to utilize this information to help children. The problem is that clinicians are trained to understand and interpret the data that comes from these kinds of studies. They are also trained in how to apply that data to individual cases.
For example an oncologist reads about treatments for cancer. He knows that these treatments do not work 100% of the time. He also knows that there are certain characteristics of tumors that increase the likelihood they will respond. He then looks for these characteristics in individual patients and can predict how likely it is the patient will have the outcome suggested by clinical research. Clinicians have a natural understanding of percentages and variability in people.
The legal profession has an opposite mandate. Lawyers and judges ignore individual differences and try to treat everyone the same, equal justice under the law. Therefore, I conclude that it is impossible for a lawyer or judge without specialized training to understand how to apply clinical studies to a legal setting. We have to do a better job in the process of going from study to practice in the courtroom.
Please comment on your GAL experience in the comment section.
Addendum: Thanks to everyone who has written in response to this issue. I am working on getting back to you all! Everyone has very important insights to share.
Not having a GAL experience, none-the-less, I do totally agree with you concerning the family court systems. It doesn’t I think matter if you are trying to protect your child from a psychopath, or if you are (as I was) trying to protect your elderly parent from a psychopath–courts just do NOT get it. Her attorney (heavily narcissist himself and universally personally disliked by almost everyone) fought for her “right” to have the 3X convicted pedophile sex offender in her house as her live in caregiver and to allow her to give him all the money she wanted to…come ON! What reasonable person would think that this was BENEFICIAL to her, even if it was what she wanted? Her attorney didn’t do her any favors that’s for sure!
I have worked some with the CASA (court appointed special advocates) for foster kids and observed the LACK OF KNOWLEDGE of mental illness and personality disorders in both the attorneys, judges and the advocates as well. Many times the social workers assigned to the cases also are without a clue it seems in dealing with not only the children in foster care but with the parents as well. It seems to be the focus is on “uniting” the family, even if one of the parents is a psychopath.
Dr. Leedom, A more timely article cannot be found. In the last couple of weeks, I have learned that my ex spath, who doesn’t pay child support that was ordered by the court has the gall to take me to court for visitation. Let me preface this by saying that when my 11 yr. old son was 2, I did go to court for sole custody of our son. The ONLY thing his father was ordered to do was pay medical and dental, the reason for this being that the spath is diabetic and I knew he wouldn’t be without medical coverage and therefore his son wouldn’t be either.
That was my thinking THEN.
TODAY is a different story. My son does not want to be alone with his father. He doesn’t even want to TALK to his father. The last time my ex actually took our son somewhere, he stopped at a drug dealer’s house on the way and as they had gone to a football game, my son told me he had been freezing but his father had ignored that and not taken him to a warm place until the game was over. It is this kind of behavior that my ex exhibited on more than one occasion that proves he is not a rational person and my son neither trusts nor believes his father. His father has broken too many promises.
THIS person is entitled to visitation rights? I think not. I hate that the idiot is doing this. Common sense would tell you that he is not fit to be alone with this child. I know my son will be questioned and I hate to think of him having to go through this.
My concern is exactly what you’ve written about. I am concerned that my son will have a GAL who will be snowed by my ex spath and the B.S. that comes out of his mouth.
My ex is pushing all of this because he is moving out of state as soon as all of his legal problems are taken care of, which will be in a couple of months and he wants to know his child will be forced to fly across country for holidays and summer vacations, etc..
He is NUTS, NUTS, NUTS.
The greatest blessing in all of this is that my son is nothing like his father. He is a very caring person who thinks of others first and I am happy to see that he has none of the characteristics his father has.
I can take this in court. I can go to court and I know I can handle myself. It’s my child I am concerned about.
After reading your post, I agree completely with you. It’s also my greatest concern.
Dear Dr. Leedom,
As Cat says, “a more timely article” for me right now. We are dealing with “The GAL from Hell”. She is young, super impressed with her legal brilliance and does not know poop from applesauce about children in general, let alone neurologically and emotionally impaired children. She speaks to my grandson’s therapists, never really listens and reports what SHE feels are the problems.
I will write more when time allows. My time is so limited right now because I am dealing with a child who is going through an emotional spiral thanks to the decisions this woman is making.
Best interest of the child – what a joke!!!
Dear Milo,
Thanks for checking in. God bless.
Oxdrover-I can’t read the most recent post that you directed to me. My computer won’t open the thread-I think because it’s too long.
Ox-I was able to read your post and it all makes sense. I shouldn’t have responded like I did to Katydid. On Friday when I got her questions asking about my motives in being the other woman, it was too hard for me to deal with. I learned to stuff that pain. guilt and humiliation down deep because it was too painful to me. I felt so exposed. I am never going to be able to forgive myself for what I did. My head knows that GOD already forgave me when I asked him to but myself won’t let me believe it. I can’t forgive myself. All I can think about is what kind of horrible person does what I did, by being with him. I never thought I would ever be the one to do that and I let myself down.
I went from what I always thought to be a good person to a very bad person. I can’t even imagine the pain that I caused his wife and I know what kind of pain I caused his daughter. I despised myself before but now it’s infinitely worse. I let everybody down. I have hardly any friends left in my life because of what I did. My siblings won’t speak to me. They don’t want anything to do with me. A lot of people who liked and respected me think I’m trash. I feel like my ex narc was right when he discarded me-he said I was trash.
When I’m not at work, at the shooting range, at they gym, or riding my bike, I lock myself inside my apartment and I don’t come out unless I have to. I feel like if I do then everyone will see and know what I am. I didn’t want to respond to all of Katydid’s questions because they hurt so much. Part of my emotions/behaviors I blame on my head injury because I have been crying nonstop since it happened. I finally got the nerve to answer the questions and be completely open and honest about my whole story and I just felt like it wasn’t good enough. My openess and honesty didn’t matter. My feelings were hurt so bad and I lashed out.
I wish you could understand how much it hurts to live with the fact that you were with someone who wasn’t yours. To do something that terrible and wrong. I feel like I won’t ever get past that.
Dear Erin72,
Okay, I’ve heard a lot of excuses in your above post about how you can “never forgive yourself”—that is CARP—you CAN when you get ready to.
Then you give me a list of all the NON PRODUCTIVE AND COUNTER PRODUCTIVE things you do–“lock myself in my apartment” ya da.
“I blame my head injury” BULL CARP!!! You were acting and talking this way a LONG TIME BEFORE YOU BONKED YOUR HEAD…so quit laying blame on something outside yourself.
“I can’t quit crying”—OKAY, SO CRY til you stop–it’s good for you.
You lashed out “because my feelings were hurt”—that’s another excuse—-so quit lashing out!
Sugar, I’ve been where you are—hurting and lashing out, and feeling sorry for myself, but it is time you stand up and pony up and start taking responsibility and become accountable to yourself.
1) YOU ARE NOT POWERLESS, however, you ARE giving your power to circumstances to control your life.
2) YOU ARE NOT ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITY for yourself, you are giving that to “circumstances”
QUIT BLAMING your emotions on “head injuries” or feeling bad because you made a bad choice, or feeling like trash because of a bad choice you made……take responsibility for yourself.
Go read the “Blue Bird of Happiness” article that EB dug up, and the posts she made to it at the bottom, she has some good points there and things that YOU need to recognize and start doing.
YOU ARE POWERFUL if you choose to be. YOU CAN GIVE AWAY that power if you decide to, or you can use it for YOURSELF.
I know I am being hard on you Erin, but at the same time, I know that you KNOW I care about you—just as if your problem was booze and I didn’t say anything but “there there darling, all your problems are because of that nasty whiskey” I would not be doing you any favors. It just so happens that right now your “problems” are from shifting blame for all your unhappiness to others and situations, and you need to pony up and say,
“Hi, my name is Erin, and I’m a pity-a-holic” So sweetie, I ain’t gonna give you no more pity, any more than I would go buy you a bottle of vodka if your problems were booze. No matter how much you whine for it, or cry for it, tough titty Kitty!
Now if you had the smarts and gumption to get through nursing school, you ought to have enough gumption and smarts to stand up and be counted for ERIN! OK, you’re not perfect, so get over it for fracking sake! Quit whining about it. OK you got involved with a married freaking psychopath, so quit beating yourself up about it and quit using that as a freaking excuse for being a whiner! FORGIVE yourself already!
None of us have to be perfect, and if we did, I would fail that test for sure—but I do think I am a pretty good old battle ax! I’m smart and feisty and uppity, and have a lot of different talents. I also have CRS and a short term memory like Swiss cheese, and my biological kids are both a POS, but I’m STILL OKAY!
And you know what, Erin, you can be okay too, if you will LET YOURSELF. I have never ever boinked anyone on the head as hard as you have boinked yourself, and I always did it with a purpose to get their attention—like the joke about the mule! But you know, I’m tired of hearing you whine about how bad your thumb hurts while you are pounding it with a freaking hammer!
NOW BE GOOD TO YOURSELF OR ELSE!!!! (((Hugs)))
E72, “I wish you could understand how much it hurts ……”
Whatever you put at the end of that sentence … if anyone understands how much it hurts it’s people here. Thank goodness for others who empathise because they’ve lived it as well. So you have validation for your pain and now you have to take responsibility for your life.
It’s the hardest bit for me, forgiving myself. Being with the man who brought me here made me into a DISGUSTING person. I was so sexually addicted to him that I made my daughter almost nothing. I compromised my values, spent money I needed for more important things on him, defied my friends, acted like a skank, told lies, turned myself into somebody despicable in order to keep him with me. I was addicted to him because of the abuse. Very strong trauma bond and he knew exactly what to do to keep me there. He had done it before and knew the mindf***ing tricks and went at it HARD. I’ve verbally attacked him now. I’ve judged, blamed, name-called and spat venom and once I’d finished doing that I had to look at me. I can only change me, and I really, really needed changing.
I have always wanted to be seen as a good person because of wanting to lose my childhood label of ‘mad’, designed by my dad to scapegoat me. The recent man brought out the ‘mad’ big time. I saw my shadow. Didn’t know she was there and she is horrible! I am only glad that I had brakes stopping me from doing what I really wanted to do when it was over, because if my revenge had been carried out I don’t know what might have happened. I shudder at who I turned into.
You did something you’re ashamed of. So did a lot of people here. So you admit your wrongs (you’ve done that now and can stop) and then spend some thought and time on what you can do to make sure it never happens again and turning yourself into the person you want to be instead of the person who was vulnerable to a spath. Or you will just make yourself and anyone who has to listen to it sick. I did that.
Self-pity is what I felt for a long time, and self-respect is the cure. Give yourself respect, not punishment. You are heavily into punishing yourself right now. I have done it and it achieves nothing. Pick yourself up, tell yourself you’ve done something arsey but that you knew no better or didn’t have the skills to override your impulses or the attractions of a manipulative man, feel compassion for yourself that you had to go through this, and then find out what it would take to get self-respect. I’m nearly 50 and I had none! Just wanted love and attention from other people because of the mess of my childhood. I had no clue.
You only wanted to be loved so give yourself a break. You know better now so do better. Once you start to do better you will feel so much stronger every day and in every situation. Self-pity will keep you stuck but compassion for yourself will move you forward. Suicide isn’t the answer. If you even keep yourself ALIVE when you don’t want to you’ll get self-respect. I have that. I wanted to give in but I was strong enough to keep going and I am proud of me for that. I feel a lot of pride these days and dropping the self-harm of self-hatred is a great thing. You have to stop the abuse, not pick up where spaths or damaging parents leave off.
I’m writing this for me as much as for you.
Something which helps me every day is thinking about ‘responding’ and not ‘reacting’. Complex ptsd, and we’re all in some sort of trauma here, makes us react emotionally. The child part gets activated and we just turn into toddlers and noise comes out. I’ve done it too much and want to stop now. So I try to slow everything right down, including my response times if possible. I think more about every emotion I feel, see if I can work out what’s triggered it, where it comes from, get myself into what I consider an adult frame of mind and theeeeeeen … respond. It is really improving my life and my relationships so much. I don’t want my poor little inner child to lose any more self-respect.
Dear Verity,
Good thoughts! (((Hugs))))