Law You Can Use: A Guardian Ad Litem Protects Best Interest of the Child

Q: How is a guardian ad litem dif­fer­ent from a guardian who man­ages affairs for someone?

A: A guardian is any per­son who is legally charged with the care of another per­son or of another’s prop­erty, but the role of a guardian ad litem (often called a GAL) is more spe­cial­ized than that of a “reg­u­lar” guardian. A GAL is specif­i­cally respon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing the inter­ests of a minor child who is in some way involved in a law­suit. In March 2009, Ohio Super­in­ten­dence Rule 48 became effec­tive. This rule gov­erns guardian ad litem stan­dards in Ohio. All GALs must now have train­ing spe­cific to their role in rep­re­sent­ing a child’s best inter­ests. The Supreme Court of Ohio pro­vides this train­ing, which includes instruc­tion in mat­ters such as inter­view­ing chil­dren, iden­ti­fy­ing domes­tic vio­lence and deal­ing with sub­stance abuse.

Q: Who may serve as a GAL?

A: In many juris­dic­tions, court-appointed spe­cial advo­cates (CASAs) may serve as GALs in depen­dency, neglect or abuse cases. Indi­vid­ual coun­ties have pro­grams to train CASA vol­un­teers, who come from all walks of life. To learn about Ohio’s CASA/GAL pro­grams, visit http://ohiocasa.org. Attor­neys also may serve as GALs on depen­dency, neglect and abuse cases, as well as in pri­vate cus­tody dis­putes. A GAL can­not gain cus­tody of a child.

Q: Who appoints a GAL?

A: The judge or mag­is­trate will appoint a GAL. In domes­tic rela­tions cases, where cus­tody of a minor child or chil­dren is an issue, the attor­neys may agree on a GAL or will ask the court to appoint one. When the inter­ests of sev­eral chil­dren must be pro­tected in a par­tic­u­lar case, one GAL is usu­ally appointed to rep­re­sent all of the children’s inter­ests. If a con­flict arises, then addi­tional GALs may be appointed.

The court must make a state­ment indi­cat­ing whether an attor­ney is being appointed as both a GAL and as attor­ney for the child or as a GAL only. When­ever fea­si­ble, the same GAL is reap­pointed to rep­re­sent the best inter­est of a spe­cific child in any sub­se­quent court case.

Q: What are the GAL’s responsibilities?

A: Accord­ing to Supreme Court of Ohio stan­dards and Ohio law, GALs must do the following:

1. Rep­re­sent the best inter­est of the child.

2. Main­tain inde­pen­dence, objec­tiv­ity and fairness.

3. Act with respect and cour­tesy to the parties.

4. Appear and par­tic­i­pate in all hear­ings and at “in cam­era” inter­views between the judge or mag­is­trate and the child.

5. Ask the court, in writ­ing, to resolve con­flicts by enter­ing appro­pri­ate orders. Request psy­cho­log­i­cal, men­tal health or sub­stance abuse assess­ments regard­ing the parties.

6. Avoid any actual or appar­ent con­flict of inter­est that may arise from any rela­tion­ship or activity.

7. Make rea­son­able efforts to become informed about the facts of the case by:

· meet­ing with and inter­view­ing the child and observ­ing the child with each par­ent, fos­ter par­ent, guardian or phys­i­cal cus­to­dian and con­duct­ing at least one inter­view with the child where none of these indi­vid­u­als is present;

· vis­it­ing the child at his or her res­i­dence in accor­dance with any court-established standards;

· ascer­tain­ing the child’s wishes;

· meet­ing with and inter­view­ing the par­ties, fos­ter par­ents and other indi­vid­u­als who may have rel­e­vant knowl­edge of the case’s issues;

· review­ing plead­ings and other rel­e­vant court doc­u­ments; review­ing crim­i­nal, civil, edu­ca­tional and admin­is­tra­tive records per­tain­ing to the child and, if appro­pri­ate, to the child’s fam­ily or to other parties.

· inter­view­ing school per­son­nel, med­ical and men­tal health providers, child pro­tec­tive ser­vices work­ers and rel­e­vant court per­son­nel, and obtain­ing copies of rel­e­vant records.

8. Pro­vide the court with a writ­ten report of the activ­i­ties listed above.

This “Law You Can Use” col­umn was pro­vided by the Ohio State Bar Asso­ci­a­tion. It was pre­pared by Jen­nifer L. Myers, Esq., of coun­sel, at Pol­ing | Petrello’s Colum­bus office. Arti­cles appear­ing in this col­umn are intended to pro­vide broad, gen­eral infor­ma­tion about the law. Before apply­ing this infor­ma­tion to a spe­cific legal prob­lem, read­ers are urged to seek the advice of a licensed attorney.

Posted by Guest 2 Columnist on Apr 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.