For many parents involved in child custody disputes, the phrase “appointing a PGAL” comes up before anyone explains what it means.
“PGAL” is short for private guardian ad litem. In Utah child custody cases, a PGAL is a private attorney appointed by the court to represent what the PGAL believes to be the child’s best interests. The PGAL is not the child’s therapist. The PGAL is not a custody evaluator. The PGAL is not the judge. The PGAL is not appointed as an expert witness or a fact witness. The PGAL does not decide custody or parent-time. And the PGAL does not simply repeat whatever the child says he or she wants.
At least conceptually, the PGAL’s job is to gather information, speak with the child when appropriate, review relevant records, talk with parents and other witnesses, participate in the case, disclose the child’s “intent and desires” when required, and make recommendations to the court about what orders the PGAL asserts would serve the child’s best interests. Utah Code § 78A-2-705 authorizes PGAL appointments in district court actions involving custody or parent-time, including cases where abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect of a minor child is alleged.
Private guardians ad litem are usually discussed in noble language. They are appointed “for the child.” They “represent the child’s best interests.” They supposedly “give the child a voice” (as if the child did not otherwise have one). They are presented as a safeguard when parents are fighting and the court needs help seeing past the fog of conflict.
Sometimes that may be true.
But anyone who works in child custody disputes long enough knows there is another truth the profession is reticent to acknowledge: courts often value PGALs for reasons that have little to do with whether the PGAL actually provides any substantive benefit to the child or to truth-seeking.
Courts and attorneys who tout PGAL appointments often justify them in the language of child protection, but courts frequently value them for something else: case management, liability diffusion, settlement pressure, institutional convenience, and giving the court an intermediary when the judge does not want to hear directly from the child.
None of those things is inherently evil. Courts have crowded dockets. Judges have limited time. Child custody disputes can be emotionally exhausting, factually messy, and hard to manage. But institutional convenience is not the same thing as serving a child’s best interests. A PGAL’s institutional value has little to no meaningful value to the child or to the record.
Institutional Value Is Not Child Value
A PGAL gives the court another professional to consult. A PGAL may pressure (actively or indirectly) the parties toward settlement. A PGAL may make the judge feel less exposed when deciding a difficult case. A PGAL may simply take work off the court’s plate. A PGAL may give the court a report, a recommendation, or at least the comfort of believing someone “looked into it.”
Those things are not nothing. Judges are often asked to make serious decisions on incomplete information. A competent, careful PGAL may help clarify a dispute. But the real question is not whether the PGAL made the case easier to manage. The question is whether the PGAL helped the child by surfacing competent evidence. That question is rarely asked honestly.
Before appointing a PGAL, the court should ask what the appointment is supposed to accomplish, how the PGAL is expected to accomplish it, and whether the appointment is likely to improve the situation rather than merely make the litigation feel more procedurally complete. That is the difference between child protection and institutional comfort.
The PGAL Becomes a Substitute for Evidence
One of the biggest problems with PGAL appointments is role confusion. And not just role confusion but deliberate role confusion.
A PGAL is a lawyer. But in practice, PGALs often operate as investigators, quasi-evaluators, child interviewers, custody commentators, expert witnesses, and recommendation-makers. That is not by accident.
If an expert gives an opinion, the expert must be qualified to do so. The expert’s methods must be subject to scrutiny. The expert’s conclusions must testable. The expert can be deposed, challenged, and cross-examined.
If a fact witness testifies, the witness testifies under oath. The witness can be questioned. The court can assess demeanor, credibility, bias, foundation, and personal knowledge. The record preserves what was said.
A PGAL does not fit neatly into either the expert witness or fact witness category.
A PGAL is not appointed as an expert witness. Appointment as a PGAL does not qualify the attorney to offer psychological, developmental, forensic, diagnostic, or custody-evaluation opinions. A law license and a PGAL appointment do not turn a lawyer into a mental-health expert or a child-development expert, or a custody evaluator (and don’t get me started on the failings of custody evaluators in Utah).
Nor is a PGAL merely a fact witness. A PGAL may gather information, speak with people, review records, participate in hearings, and advocate a position regarding the child’s best interests based on the evidence in the record. But when a PGAL purports to relay what others allegedly said, converts disputed allegations into “concerns,” offers impressions about credibility, or makes recommendations built on out-of-court statements and untested assumptions, the ordinary rules of evidence do not disappear.
At least, they should not disappear.
The problem is that courts too often wink at this. Hearsay becomes “information gathered by the PGAL.” Credibility judgments become “the PGAL’s observations.” Unsupported impressions become “concerns.” Recommendations built on untested assumptions become “best-interest advocacy.” What would be objectionable if offered by a parent, therapist, teacher, police officer, or evaluator is too often tolerated when it comes through a PGAL.
That is evidentiary laundering. It is not legal. It is not even rational. But it happens all the time.
The PGAL becomes neither fish nor fowl: not treated as an expert when qualifications and methodology would be inconvenient, but treated like an expert when recommendations are useful; not treated as a witness when oath, foundation, hearsay, and cross-examination would matter, but treated like a witness when the court wants factual impressions from someone who has been “in the case.”
That is not a harmless technicality. It is a due process problem.
The PGAL may say, “The child told me…” or “I believe the child feels…” or “I am concerned that…” or “In my opinion, the child needs…” Those statements may then become the center of gravity in the case. Not because they were tested like evidence. Not because they were subjected to rigorous expert analysis. But because they came from the person appointed to represent “the child’s best interests,” as if that appointment alone alchemically converts hearsay into evidence, impressions into findings, and advocacy into truth.
Utah Code § 78A-2-705 requires that when a PGAL makes a recommendation regarding the child’s best interests in a court hearing, the court must require the PGAL to disclose the factors forming the basis of the recommendation. That is good as far as it goes. But disclosing factors is not the same as creating a reliable record of what was asked of the child, what was not asked, what the child said, what the child did not say, the circumstances under which the child was questioned, what assumptions the PGAL made, or whether the PGAL’s recommendation follows from admissible, competent evidence.
A PGAL can always make an argument or recommendation. But accountability requires disclosure, testing, challenge, and comparison against evidence. Without that, the PGAL’s recommendation is not a safeguard. It is an untested assertion carrying more authority than it has earned.
Worse, Utah law gives PGALs civil immunity for acts performed within the scope of their duties. That may make sense in some respects. No court-appointed lawyer should face a lawsuit every time an angry parent dislikes a recommendation. But when a court gives a PGAL substantial practical power, treats the PGAL’s statements with evidentiary leniency, and then shields the PGAL from ordinary liability, the system has created a role with influence out of proportion to its accountability.
That is as ridiculous as it is dangerous.
The Child’s Alleged Statements Still Have to Be Tested
When a PGAL tells the court, “The child told me…,” the PGAL is not merely advocating. The PGAL is proffering an out-of-court statement attributed to the child.
In ordinary evidence law, that matters. Utah Rule of Evidence 806 provides that when a hearsay statement has been admitted, the declarant’s credibility may be studied as if the declarant had testified. And if the opposing party calls the declarant as a witness, the party may examine the declarant on the statement as if on cross-examination.
But in child custody disputes, courts often want it both ways. They allow the PGAL to relay the child’s alleged (and unrecorded) statements, feelings, fears, preferences, and impressions, while refusing any meaningful testing of the child declarant’s credibility, context, consistency, or actual words (to say nothing of testing whether the interview itself ever actually took place—that’s a fair question when there is no record).
Most Utah courts do not want the child who is at the center of a custody and/or parent-time dispute cross-examined. No decent legal professional (judge or lawyer) wants to subject a child to hostile, abusive, or unnecessary questioning. But the assertion that any cross-examination of a child is inherently harmful is self-serving and false. Cross-examination does not have to mean theatrics, intimidation, or cruelty. It can be (and not just can be, but easily can be) limited, measured, and age-appropriate under the supervision of the judge.
The court has the means and experience to protect the child without pretending untested hearsay becomes reliable merely because a PGAL repeats it.
If the court will not permit meaningful testing of the child’s alleged statements, it should be far more reluctant to let those statements enter the case through the PGAL as functional evidence. The answer cannot be: “We will accept what the PGAL says the child said, but we will not allow the process the rules provide for testing the declarant’s credibility.” That is not child protection. That is an evidentiary one-way ratchet. The child’s supposed statements come in when useful, but the safeguards for testing those statements are treated as too inconvenient, too harsh, or too emotionally uncomfortable to permit.
If the Judge Cannot Hear the Child, Why Trust the Judge to Decide for the Child?
Courts are entrusted to decide what is in a child’s best interest. That requires judgment, restraint, discernment, and even a measure of courage.
It does not mean every child should be interviewed in every case. Some children are too young. Some cases involve timing, trauma, manipulation, or other concerns that may counsel against an interview. A child should not be turned into a messenger, a litigant, or a tie-breaker between parents.
But when the child’s experience, observations, opinions, concerns, preferences, fears, maturity, or relationships are central to the dispute, the judge should not automatically outsource the child’s voice to a PGAL and still pretend the process is child-centered.
A judge may need safeguards. Fine.
The interview can be conducted in camera. Counsel can submit proposed questions in advance for the court’s consideration. The court can control the setting. The court can avoid asking the child to choose between parents, if warranted. The court can protect the child from pressure, coaching, embarrassment, and unnecessary emotional burden.
And critically, the interview can be recorded.
That matters. In Utah, PGALs are not required to create a record of their interviews with the child. No transcript. No audio. No video. No reliable way to know exactly what was asked, what was answered, what tone was used, what context was omitted, or whether the child’s statements were later summarized fairly.[1] The child’s words become the PGAL’s untested account of the child’s words.
That is not transparency. That is “trust me.”
A court-conducted in camera interview is different. It can give the court direct access to the child’s views while preserving a record. The record protects the child, the parents, the lawyers, the court, and the integrity of the process. It allows everyone to know what was actually said, rather than litigating around someone else’s unrecorded interpretation of what the child supposedly meant.
A PGAL interview is not magically less burdensome, less stressful, or more reliable merely because it happens outside the courtroom or because it is conducted by a non-judge. The same pressures may exist. The child can still feel afraid. The child can still try to please the interviewer. The child can still worry about betraying a parent. The child can still misunderstand the role of the adult asking questions. The child can still say what he thinks will make the conflict stop.
The difference is not that the PGAL interview is inherently safer. The difference is that the PGAL interview is usually less visible, less reviewable, and less testable.
In law, invisibility is not a virtue. It is a danger.
Refusing to hear from the child because it is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or easier to delegate is not child protection. It is judicial avoidance.
If a judge cannot be trusted to speak with a child in a controlled judicial setting and on the record, then why should that same judge be trusted to decide what is in the child’s best interest? That is the contradiction no one wants to confront.
A child’s voice is not a procedural inconvenience. It is evidence. Not perfect evidence. Not controlling evidence. But often some of the best evidence of the child’s experience, perceptions, maturity, fears, preferences, and relationships. It may be complicated. It may require careful handling. So what? Courts handle complicated, imperfect, sensitive evidence all the time. That is what courts are for.
“Best Interests” Can Become a Shield
The phrase “best interests of the child” is dangerous when used carelessly.
Almost anything can, with enough “nuance,” be described as serving a child’s best interests. Appointing a PGAL. Refusing to appoint a PGAL. Interviewing the child. Refusing to interview the child. Ordering therapy. Refusing therapy. Restricting a parent. Expanding parent-time. Keeping things the same.
“The best interests of the child” does not answer the question. It merely frames the inquiry.
Utah Code § 81-9-204 lists statutory best-interest factors for courts to consider in custody decisions. None of those factors includes “what the PGAL recommends.” A PGAL may help the court evaluate evidence, but a PGAL recommendation is not itself the best-interest analysis. That analysis belongs exclusively to the court.
Before appointing a PGAL, the court must be able to answer specific diagnostic questions:
• What problem is the PGAL being appointed to help solve?
• Is appointing a PGAL the right tool for that particular job?
• Is the child incapable of being heard directly?
• Is there credible evidence of manipulation, coaching, alienation, intimidation, or fear?
• Is a judicial in camera interview genuinely insufficient? If so, why?
• Can the necessary information be obtained through ordinary discovery and testimony?
• Will a PGAL appointment reduce the child’s burden, or merely add another adult, another bill, and another layer of litigation?
• Will the PGAL’s role be clearly defined, or will the PGAL become a floating combination of lawyer, investigator, mediator, evaluator, and settlement lever?
• How will the court distinguish facts from the PGAL’s impressions?
• How will the parties test the basis of the PGAL’s recommendation?
• What is scope of the PGAL’s role? What is the exit ramp? When is the PGAL’s work done?
Without that analysis, appointment risks becoming reflexive. Worse, it risks becoming performative. The court appoints a PGAL, everyone says the child is now “represented,” and the system congratulates itself for being careful. But appearances are not protection.
Good PGALs Do Not Cure a Bad System
A bad system cannot be defended by pointing to its best actors. The question is whether the PGAL structure itself promotes reliable, accountable, child-centered decision-making. It does not.
Because so much PGAL work occurs outside the record, it can be difficult to tell whether a PGAL did competent work. That is not a minor procedural concern. It goes to the integrity of the process and to the best interests of the child.
A good PGAL may try to be careful, may document well, and may resist exaggeration, avoid overclaiming, and respect the limits of the role. Even so, the system cannot depend on private (i.e., untestable) virtue. The system should require accountability.
The Better Question
The better question is not “Should we appoint a PGAL?”
The better question is: “What specific problem are we trying to solve, and is a PGAL the most reliable, least burdensome, most accountable way to solve it?”
Sometimes the answer may be yes, although under the current Utah PGAL structure, I have yet to encounter a case where a PGAL appointment was a net positive to due process and truth-finding. More often than not, the answer should be no.
The presumptively better tool is a recorded in camera interview conducted by the judge or commissioner. Testimony from a therapist, teacher, doctor, parent, or other witness may be helpful too. Regular discovery may be enough. Records may answer the question. A custody evaluation may be needed in rare cases. The point is not that one tool is always right. The point is that a PGAL appointment should not be treated as the default merely because the case is hard.
A child is not protected merely because another adult has been inserted into the case. A child is protected when the court receives reliable evidence, tests it fairly, understands its limits, and makes disciplined findings. That is harder than appointing a PGAL. It is also the court’s job.
When Convenience Masquerades as Protection
PGALs are sold as child-centered safeguards. But courts often value them for reasons that self-serving more than of service to the child or to truth-seeking: case management, settlement pressure, institutional comfort, liability diffusion, and avoidance of difficult judicial responsibility.
That does not make every PGAL appointment wrong. It does mean the appointment should be justified, not assumed.
Before a court appoints a PGAL, it should have to explain what the PGAL is expected to do that cannot be done more directly, more reliably, more affordably, and more accountably through ordinary evidence or a properly conducted in camera interview.
And after the appointment, the court should remain skeptical. Not hostile. Skeptical. “Best interests of the child” is not a slogan that ends the analysis. It is the discipline that begins it.
Utah law recognizes that a judge’s direct interview of a child should be structured and recorded. The same system should not pretend that an unrecorded PGAL interview is automatically more child-centered merely because it is less visible.
Until courts are willing to ask whether PGAL appointments actually subserve the best interest of children and getting to the truth—not merely whether they make cases easier to process—the system will keep confusing institutional convenience with child protection. That confusion helps adults feel better but it does not subserve the best interest of children.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
[1] Utah’s 2026 Legislature considered requiring GALs and PGALs to audio-video record interactions with children under 14, but that requirement did not survive into the enrolled version of H.B. 372. The enacted law requires more disclosure about GAL contacts, activities, sources, and recommendation factors, but it still does not require GAL child interviews to be recorded. That omission matters.