When ‘Protecting Children’ Really Means Protecting Adults
The Loyalty Conflict: A Convenient Scapegoat for Adult Discomfort
The most common objection to a child testifying in a custody or parent-time dispute is the invocation of a supposed “loyalty conflict.” The term is meant to imply that asking a child to describe a parent’s conduct and to express custody and parent-time preferences forces the child into an intolerable emotional betrayal, one so psychologically damaging that silence is preferable to truth.
But that assumption deserves scrutiny. Is this conflict truly inherent to the child, or is it largely a projection of adult anxiety and institutional discomfort with what children might say? Is it a projection of the adults’ anxieties and the adversarial structure of the court?
The mistake is treating emotional discomfort as an evidentiary defect. It is not.
Our system often conflates a child’s natural, temporary stress with severe, long-term psychological damage. When adults testify against a business partner or a close friend, they experience anxiety, guilt, and stress. Yet we do not deem the adult incompetent to testify, nor do we exclude his/her testimony on the theory that discomfort invalidates truth. We recognize they have the capacity to process the conflict and understand the legal necessity. And we expect adults to manage conflicting loyalties because an effective justice system depends on hearing from those with first-hand knowledge.
Children are denied that same respect—not because they lack perception, but because adults are uncomfortable hearing what they might say.
The usual response is that a child’s relationship with a parent is foundational to his/her identity. That is true, but it cuts the other way. If a child’s lived reality is foundational, and if custody decisions will shape that reality for years to come, then hearing from the child is not indulgent. It is necessary. It is our professional and moral duty.
By aggressively protecting the child from the fact-finding process, we are doing more harm than good. Children are denied agency and taught—implicitly but unmistakably—that their perspective is too dangerous to be heard. The result of treating children as evidentiary hazards rather than percipient witnesses is, not surprisingly, leaving children feeling invisible, helpless, and resentful of a system that makes life-altering decisions about them without their input.
Furthermore, true “loyalty conflict” is often fabricated by the parents long before the child steps into a courthouse, or even a private interview room. To blame the child’s act of stating facts for a pre-existing family dynamic is a category error. The fallacy lies in treating emotional discomfort—a psychological condition—as if it were an evidentiary defect, which it is not.
The real problem is not determining how to “protect” children from their own voices, but protecting children from undue parental pressure and from adult manipulation. When questioning is narrow, factual, and developmentally appropriate—stripped of adversarial theatrics—the distress is manageable and the information is often indispensable.
The “loyalty conflict” becomes less about the child’s internal struggle and more about the adults’ discomfort with what the child may have to say. In the end, the so-called “loyalty conflict” tells us far less about children’s emotional limits than about adults’ tolerance for unfiltered and inconvenient facts.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277