Why Not Have the Judge Interview the Children About Child Custody?
Why Appoint a GAL or Custody Evaluator When the Judge Can Interview the Children?
This post is the first in series of 15 posts on the subject of custody evaluations and the appointment of guardians ad litem (“GALs” for short) in Utah child custody cases when the judge could simply interview the children instead. You do not have to read all 16 posts to benefit from this series. Read as many or as few as you wish.
The purpose of this series is to make the case for the proposition that an interview by the judge is a faster, more accurate, more particular, more reliable, and less expensive form of evidence than what a GAL and/or custody evaluator provides.
I can imagine a case in which ordering a custody evaluation and/or appointment of a guardian ad litem may be warranted, even necessary, but generally guardians ad litem and custody evaluations are an obscene waste of time and money and effort. They don’t just fail to justify their costs; they spectacularly fail to justify their costs. Instead, in the overwhelming majority of child custody disputes, the court can and should interview the children directly. The Utah Code expressly provides for this. Section 30-3-10(5), to be exact. Yet in 24 years of practice I have never had a judge agree to interview a child in a child custody dispute. Not once. And I submit that’s ridiculous. In the posts that follow we will discuss why judges interviewing children is clearly superior to appointing guardians ad litem and/or custody evaluations for the vast majority of child custody dispute cases.
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