Questioning the Assumed Superiority of Custody Evaluators and Guardians ad Litem
A foundational assumption in modern custody practice is rarely stated outright, but it governs nearly everything that follows: that only highly trained, highly credentialed professionals—Guardians ad Litem (GALs or PGALs (the “p” stands for “private” or a GAL who is not employed by the government), custody evaluators, forensic psychologists—possess the skill, judgment, and empathy necessary to safely and effectively interview children. Judges are routinely told that hearing directly from a child is risky, potentially harmful, and unreliable, while filtering the child’s experiences through an expert intermediary is safer, more objective, and more accurate.
That assumption deserves far more scrutiny than it receives.
The question is not whether these professionals are well-intentioned, trained, or experienced. Many are. The real question is narrower and more important: has this specialized training been shown to produce significantly more reliable, less biased, or more accurate factual information than simpler, transparent, on-the-record methods of hearing from children directly?
At present, the confidence placed in expert intermediaries far exceeds what the evidence actually supports.
Credentialing Is Not Validation
Custody evaluators and GALs are deemed qualified largely because they complete required coursework, obtain certifications, and meet licensing or rule-based criteria. But these qualifications are created, administered, and enforced by the same professional ecosystem that relies on their continued appointment. That is not inherently improper—but it is not conclusive proof of competence.
What is largely missing is independent, outcome-based proof that this training reliably produces superior fact-finding. There is little comparative evidence demonstrating that expert-mediated interviews are less suggestible, more accurate, or more objective than properly conducted, open-ended questioning by judicial officers or counsel operating under clear procedural safeguards.
In other words, credentials establish permission to participate, not demonstrated epistemic superiority.
The Persistent Flaws of the “Expert” Model
1. Interpretation Without Accountability. Children are typically questioned off the record, without making a verbatim recording of the interview. Their words are summarized, paraphrased, and contextualized after the fact. By the time the court reads a report, it is often impossible to distinguish what the child actually said from how the professional understood, interpreted, or re-framed it.
This is not evidence in the traditional sense. It is testimony filtered through an intermediary—unsworn, unrecorded, and largely immune from meaningful cross-examination, verification, and validation.
2. Theory-Driven Filtering. Every evaluator brings a theoretical orientation—attachment models, trauma frameworks, risk-avoidance heuristics—whether disclosed or not. A child’s statements are not merely reported; they are interpreted through those perspectives. Two equally credentialed professionals can hear the same child and reach different conclusions, not because the child changed, but because the framework did.
That does not make the professional dishonest. It makes the process inherently subjective and—consequently—not as valuable as many in the mental health and legal professions would have us believe.
3. Conclusions Without a Demonstrated Nexus. Final recommendations often leap from interviews, observations, and testing to custody outcomes without clearly explaining how the underlying data logically or empirically supports the conclusion. Courts are asked to defer to expertise while being given little ability to evaluate the reasoning process itself.
At that point, expertise becomes a cheap substitute for explanation.
The Question Courts Rarely Ask. Why must we accept the costly, time-consuming, and potentially biased interpretive report of an expert over the child’s own recorded words?
It bears stating plainly that competent, careful attorneys and judges are at least as well equipped to question children in a litigation setting as most mental health professionals—and in some respects, better equipped. Judicial officers and experienced counsel are trained to ask neutral, open-ended questions; to avoid suggestion and coercion; to remain attentive to power dynamics; and to create a clear, reviewable record. They work within defined procedural limits, articulate the purpose of each inquiry, and are held accountable for how questions are asked and how answers are used. Mental health professionals, by contrast, are trained primarily for diagnosis, treatment, and therapeutic rapport—not for evidentiary precision or record-making. In custody litigation, where the task is fact-finding rather than therapy, that distinction matters. The relevant skill is not clinical insight, but disciplined inquiry—a core judicial function, not a psychological one.
If the concern is suggestibility, leading questions, or undue pressure, those risks are not unique to judges or lawyers. They are risks inherent in any interview of a child—including those conducted by experts. The difference is that expert interviews are often shielded from scrutiny, while courtroom testimony is structured, limited, and reviewable.
If the concern is emotional harm, that risk too must be demonstrated, not presumed. Courts routinely permit children to testify in criminal cases, abuse proceedings, and other high-stakes contexts when appropriate safeguards (if needed) are in place. It is difficult to explain why a judge or attorney asking a child—carefully, briefly, and respectfully—about who gets them to school, helps with homework, or provides stability is categorically more harmful than prolonged, probing, diagnostic interviews conducted in private.
The prevailing approach reflects not proven necessity, but institutional habit.
Transparency Is Not Trauma. Direct testimony does not mean adversarial interrogation. It does not mean forcing children to choose between parents. And it certainly does not mean abandoning caution.
It means simple, developmentally appropriate, open-ended questioning, conducted on the record, under clear limits, and subject to judicial control and appellate review. It means asking children factual, concrete questions about their lived experience, not soliciting psychological interpretations or loyalty statements.
Ironically, such questioning is often less intrusive than the expansive interviews conducted by evaluators tasked simultaneously with diagnosis, risk assessment, and recommendation. A short, focused inquiry can be more humane—and more reliable—than hours of interpretive probing whose content and tone are never fully disclosed.
The Cost of Deference. The near-automatic deference given to credentialed intermediaries carries real costs: financial, procedural, and epistemic. Families spend tens of thousands of dollars. Cases drag on. And complacent courts increasingly rely on opinions that are insulated from the very evidentiary disciplines the legal system otherwise demands.
Most troubling, the child—the person with the most direct knowledge and the greatest stake in the case—becomes the least heard participant in the process. This is not the exercise of caution and sound analysis, but the erosion of evidence through interpretive substitution.
A Modest Proposal. The solution is not to abolish GALs or custody evaluators. There will always be cases in which specialized expertise is genuinely necessary. But their use should be limited to circumstances where the court can identify a specific evidentiary problem that cannot be addressed through transparent, on-the-record inquiry. The solution is not abolition, but restraint. GALs and custody evaluators can play a legitimate role in limited circumstances, yet their routine appointment has far outpaced any demonstrated necessity.
Reliance on expert opinion should be justified by an identified evidentiary need, not presumed from professional title. Before displacing direct evidence, courts should ask what evidentiary problem an intermediary is solving that cannot be addressed through transparent, controlled inquiry. And when experts are used, their methods and conclusions should be scrutinized with the same rigor applied to any other evidence.
It is time to stop treating acronyms and certifications as substitutes for demonstrated superiority in fact-finding. Credentials may open the door—but they do not, by themselves, prove that what comes through it is clearer, truer, or fairer than hearing from the child directly.
If the confidence placed in current reliance on expert opinion is justified, it should withstand scrutiny; if it is not, then the emperor deserves closer inspection.
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