Washington courts rarely discipline guardians ad litem accused of misconduct in custody cases

Stephanie Maya thought the facts were on her side in the custody case for her 3-year-old son.

She’d recently escaped an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend, the father of her son. He had been arrested for physically assaulting and strangling her, an experience that Maya says happened repeatedly throughout their relationship, often while he was drunk and often in front of their toddler.

The guardian ad litem — court appointed in May 2024 to represent the best interests of her son and investigate issues that could impact his safety, like domestic violence — knew about the dad’s pending domestic violence charges and court orders prohibiting him from contacting Maya.

So Maya was shocked when the guardian ad litem, Meredith Gerhart, submitted a report that portrayed Maya as a potentially criminal abuser. Gerhart, a well-respected attorney in Thurston County, a community on the southern tip of the Puget Sound, wrote that Maya had three “prior offenses involving domestic violence” based on a list provided to her by Maya’s ex-boyfriend. Yet a background check would have confirmed that Maya was the one who reported those assaults to law enforcement — as a victim and witness.

“The fact that I was trying to do something good, and she used that against me to try to paint me as this criminal, as an abuser, was very upsetting,” said Maya, 34. “She never once even asked me if any of that was true.”

The report, which Maya says includes many other false claims from her ex-boyfriend stated like facts, had a near immediate impact on her custody case. A court commissioner ordered that the child spend weekends with his dad — who, until that point, was only allowed supervised visits — and said the report “clearly establishes” that Maya was causing conflict in the co-parenting relationship, a finding that can lead to restrictions on parenting time. Gerhart, who’s still working as a guardian ad litem in Thurston County, said she cannot comment for this article because the case is active.

It took nearly a year and the help of a lawyer for a court review board to formally reprimand Gerhart for failing to make “any effort” to substantiate the claims of Maya’s ex, who pleaded guilty in February 2026 to assaulting Maya and interfering with her attempt to call 911. It’s a rare instance of a parent successfully proving that an investigation of a guardian ad litem — a neutral third-party court investigator also referred to as a GAL — was unfairly biased, although parents and attorneys say they see biased reports all the time.

Guardians ad litem have been appointed in over 7,100 Washington family law cases since 2020, according to data from the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts. Although they don’t have a direct say in custody outcomes, their conclusions and recommendations can hold significant weight in court. 

But despite courts’ frequent reliance on these professionals — and the sometimes tens of thousands of dollars that parents must pay for them — there’s little independent oversight of the role, leaving many parents without a meaningful way to hold them accountable for inaccurate, biased or shoddy investigations that shape custody cases. 

The decision to remove guardians ad litem or their reports from a case is up to the judge, yet judges have limited insight into how investigations are conducted. Even in instances when court committees or judges found that a guardian ad litem conducted a biased investigation, or stepped outside the scope of their role, discipline rarely extended beyond a reprimand and orders for additional training, according to InvestigateWest’s review of grievances and removals of guardians ad litem in Washington.

While those court investigators may go on to work with more families, some parents are left fighting the consequences of questionable reports for years. Parents say their kids have been placed in homes with potentially abusive adults, and some have even lost custody to their abusers. 

Other than a state-mandated three-and-a-half-day training, Washington’s guardians ad litem — like those in other states — have few standardized qualifications, and they have no managers or statewide agencies vetting their work. Some started their careers over a decade ago, when there were even fewer training requirements. 

Advocates and researchers across the nation — from Washington to Idaho to Georgia to New Hampshire — have called on their legislatures to require more training and accountability for guardians ad litem as their use in family court and influence in custody cases has grown in recent decades. Washington state legislators acknowledged the need to address this insufficient oversight in a work session in December that discussed gaps in the oversight system and impacts of biased investigations on parents. 

State Rep. Jamila Taylor, chair of the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee who led the session, noted a “strong interest” for guardian ad litem reform within the family law community. 

“We probably do need to have a commission or some sort of review of the GAL statute and how we can navigate these issues around a very unregulated practice,” Taylor said in the session.

This minimal oversight makes it difficult for parents to challenge flawed reports without risking damage to their own cases — and, in some cases, even their chances of retaining custody of their children.

“Complaining about the way a GAL is going about something can be a dangerous space, because the court can feel like you’re distracting from the main issue,” said Jeffrey Keddie, a managing attorney at the Northwest Justice Project, a nonprofit legal aid program, who helps lead the state’s guardian ad litem trainings. “It’s about likability half the time, and if you become less likable, that can be very problematic.”

Their lack of understanding of issues like domestic violence can harm children for life, said Dawn Sydney, a family law attorney and former guardian ad litem in King County. “There has to be some system set up where there’s some accountability for these people.”

Discipline is rare, and limited

In Washington, the only avenue for parents to formally complain about a guardian ad litem is through the same superior court where their family law case is taking place. While most large counties have review committees made up of judges or other court officials to handle complaints, in King County — the state’s most populous county that appoints among the most guardians ad litem — grievances are reviewed by just one judge. 

InvestigateWest requested complaints from six counties with the highest number of guardian ad litem appointments in Washington family law cases, and reviewed other complaints and court filings by parents alleging misconduct. While they flag common concerns with reports, such as one-sided investigations, incorrect or misleading information, and missed deadlines that delay cases for months, many parents and attorneys say they hesitate to file grievances because they fear it will do more harm than good. 

“I don’t have faith that most GALs can separate their anger at a complaint being lodged at them from their neutrality as a GAL,” said Jennifer Summerville, Maya’s attorney.

In 2024 and 2025, a total of 31 grievances were filed against guardians ad litem across King, Snohomish, Pierce, Thurston, Cowlitz and Clark counties, according to each superior court’s administrations. Just four were found to have merit and are publicly available, including Maya’s. However, at least in some cases, grievances are dismissed without evaluation of their merit.  

Those four founded complaints offer a window into how guardians ad litem face limited discipline and continue holding influence in cases, despite the deficiencies:

• Thurston County’s review board found that Gerhart’s report and investigation “do not show independence, objectivity, or the appearance of fairness.” Apart from a requirement to correct the report regarding Maya’s criminal history, the report remains part of Maya’s case, meaning it could still influence the custody outcome.
• After a father called a Clark County guardian ad litem to raise concerns about her investigation, the court investigator became hostile and told him, “If that comes out in court I will take you to the wall,” according to the father’s notes from their phone call. A judge removed the court investigator from the case, and a court committee admonished her to remain respectful. She still works as a guardian ad litem, and her report remains part of the case.
• Only one grievance resulted in removal from a county registry — meaning a guardian ad litem can no longer work in that county, the most severe discipline a court can impose. But a Thurston County judge reversed the removal after the guardian ad litem appealed the decision. A review committee found that he repeatedly inserted personal commentary and humor in his reports and acted outside of his role, such as creating his own “trauma scale” and facilitating a meeting between a domestic violence victim and perpetrator. He’s currently suspended but can be reinstated after completing a corrective action plan.
• A Snohomish County guardian ad litem who was reassigned to a case in 2021 to conduct a quick follow-up investigation dropped out of contact with the court and could not be reached by the mom or her attorney for over a year. The court investigator resigned before the grievance was filed, limiting any sanctions the court could impose.

Parents aren’t notified about guardians ad litem’s disciplinary history when they’re appointed to a case, according to judicial officers. To get that disciplinary history, a person would need to file public records requests with the court where a guardian ad litem has worked. While many counties require guardians ad litem to disclose past grievances or case removals on their applications to continue working in the county, only Pierce County publishes those applications online.

If a guardian ad litem is barred from working in a county due to a grievance, the county’s superior court must notify the Administrative Office of the Courts, which will then share that information to courts across the state. But this is rare. The office said it hasn’t been notified of any such removals in the last five years.

The mom in Snohomish County, Katie Buss, spent two years trying to get a $2,500 refund for a report that was never written after the court investigator disappeared from the case. But she estimates that the guardian ad litem cost her closer to $8,000, between the cost of removing her from the case, an initial report that was later thrown out and attorney fees for the 15 months they could not reach her. Buss also spent another $1,575 for a new guardian ad litem.

Because the court investigator had resigned, the only sanction the court could impose was a promise not to reinstate her if she ever applied again. It couldn’t help Buss recoup the lost money.

“I did everything the system asked of me,” Buss told InvestigateWest. “I followed court orders, participated in evaluations, and relied on the processes that were supposed to protect my child. Instead, the system failed to provide meaningful accountability.”

Risks to filing a complaint 

On Christmas Eve 2024, Maya logged into Zoom for a court hearing to review Gerhart’s guardian ad litem report. She listened as Thurston County Superior Court Commissioner Nathan Kortokrax praised Gerhart’s “thorough” work. While some judicial officers may balk at a 50-page report, Kortokrax said he actually appreciated it. He even read it twice.

With Gerhart seated in the courtroom and no attorney representing her at the time, Maya stayed quiet. 

“Right then and there, I was like, ‘I will not have a voice tonight,’” she said. “I was just so scared to speak up against her.”

Due in part to parents’ fear of retaliation by the guardian ad litem or the court, only a couple dozen formal grievances have been filed across Washington’s most populous counties since 2024, despite guardians ad litem having served on hundreds of cases.

For parents who are already facing reputational attacks in the family law arena, convincing the court that a well-known guardian ad litem is not trustworthy can seem like an insurmountable task.

“If that guardian ad litem has the respect of the court, you’re going to have to really prove that they did a lot wrong to get them removed from a case,” said Keddie, the Northwest Justice Project attorney. “It’s near impossible.”

Some parents also worry that a guardian ad litem’s collegial relationships with judicial officers and attorneys make courts less willing to hold them accountable. Like Gerhart, who has been chair of the Thurston County Bar Association’s family law section since 2019, many guardians ad litem are respected attorneys or social workers. Some even work as temporary judicial officers.

Alicia Burton, a Pierce County Superior Court judge who chairs the county’s guardian ad litem grievance committee, said that as a family law judge, she didn’t hesitate to call out biased behavior. But Burton acknowledges that making such accusations can be intimidating even for judicial officers.

“It’s a hard thing to do as a judge, to tell a well-respected guardian ad litem who’s been in Pierce County for years, to say, ‘I thought your investigation was one-sided,’” Burton said.

In heated custody battles involving allegations of abuse, judges face the challenge of sorting through many competing accusations. Parents accuse each other of lying, abusers claim to be victims, and both parents may have histories that raise concerns about the children’s safety. These dynamics can make it difficult for judges to discern whether a parent’s complaint against a guardian ad litem is valid or just an expression of their personal dissatisfaction with how a report portrays them. 

Superior Court Judge Aimée Sutton, who oversees King County’s family court and handles such grievances, said she’s received only a couple of complaints in the last two years and decided neither had merit. 

“We all, in this line of work, have to deal with people complaining about us. It happens to lawyers all the time, it happens to judges every day,” Sutton said, adding that complaints are often from parents unhappy with the outcome of a report or ruling.

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For many parents, however, the possibility of retaliation feels real — and they don’t always trust that the court will protect them. This is the risk that a Clark County dad weighed when he tried to remove a guardian ad litem in 2024. 

Leslie, who asked to go by his first name, questioned the guardian ad litem in his custody case for relying heavily on a previous ex-girlfriend for information that he said was inaccurate. Leslie had been arrested 15 years before for allegedly assaulting that ex-girlfriend during an argument, a history that Leslie says he had disclosed to the guardian ad litem. That charge was also dismissed.

The guardian ad litem, Robin Jones, threatened to take him “to the wall” if he brought his concerns about Jones to the court, according to Leslie’s notes from their phone call. He took that to mean that Jones would do “everything in her power” to try to minimize his time with his child, he said.  

In the weeks after their phone call, according to Leslie’s complaint, Jones contacted two of Leslie’s workplace supervisors and shared some of these claims about his previous relationship, as well as medical information about his gender transition surgery without his permission. One of Leslie’s supervisors said in a court declaration that the conversation with Jones “did not sit well” and that she was “very surprised with the lack of confidentiality for such sensitive information.”

Leslie felt that it was an intentional effort by Jones to sabotage his employment and wanted her off his case. His lawyer wasn’t supportive of removing Jones and withdrew, so he hired another to help him file the motion. A judge approved the removal in October 2024, finding that Jones had disclosed information to third parties without Leslie’s consent. Jones declined to comment due to the active case, and her responses to Leslie’s grievance are not publicly available. 

But her report remains part of the court record, and even though a court advisory committee found merit to his claim that Jones threatened him, the only discipline was an admonishment for Jones to “remain respectful and courteous.” The committee did not find merit to his allegation that Jones disseminated false information to third parties and found insufficient evidence supporting that she disclosed confidential medical information to third parties.

Leslie, whose case is still pending, felt like he had to put a lot on the line to get any form of accountability. 

“It is so dangerous because you are putting recommendations for your time with your children at risk by taking those steps,” he said.

Few guardrails

As courts entrust them to represent what’s best for the children, even some guardians ad litem say they feel unsupported or unprepared for complex cases.

Dawn Sydney, a family law attorney in King County, became a guardian ad litem in 2017. After serving on around a dozen cases, she stopped taking assignments because she felt uncomfortable with the power she held over families and the prospect of getting it wrong.

It’s time consuming to write a thorough report, Sydney said, especially for guardians ad litem who, like her, often have other jobs as attorneys or social workers. Conducting more in-depth investigations also means charging parents potentially exorbitant fees, as private rates can reach up to $300 per hour.

“My rates for GAL cases are lower than my attorney hourly rate, and yet as much as I’d like to say, ‘I don't charge for that,’ I do have a practice, I have staff, I have a mortgage that I have to pay,” Sydney said.

She thinks these challenges, along with insufficient training, mean many court investigators “just don’t do great jobs.”

Although she’s no longer taking cases as a guardian ad litem, Sydney continues seeing the consequences of shoddy investigations as a lawyer representing domestic violence survivors. In 2020, while representing a mom in King County, she successfully removed a guardian ad litem from a case who admitted to altering the mom’s form consenting to the release of medical information and falsely attributing a quote to a therapist. The resulting discipline for the guardian ad litem, Meera Shin, was no more than a “slap on the hand,” Sydney said.

“I would lose my license for that. A doctor would lose their license for that,” Sydney said.

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Shin continued working as a guardian ad litem in Snohomish County for several years and is still on King County’s registry. The removal process, meanwhile, cost Sydney’s client thousands of dollars.

Shin said her errors were not in bad faith — she thought she had the mom’s permission to access the medical records, and she altered the release to speed up the paperwork process. She admits it was a mistake and agrees with the judge’s decision to remove her, she told InvestigateWest. It was the first big family law case that she’d been assigned to, and she felt largely unprepared for its complexity. 

“If they did not remove me, and if I did not have this experience, I wouldn’t have known,” she said. 

Yet in the court order discharging Shin, the judge said it was “far from clear” whether Shin “understands the gravity of what she did.” Six years later, Shin, who has a Ph.D. in child development and family studies, said she still doesn’t feel confident in the role and plans to leave the profession once her current cases wrap up. She thinks more ongoing training could have helped her find more success.

In Maya’s case, Gerhart defended her investigation by pointing to a disclaimer that she includes in all her reports, which states: “The content of this report assumes that all information provided and reported to the GAL is true and correct.” Gerhart didn’t see a need to correct the false information about Maya’s criminal history because it was the father’s statement, not hers, and the father later clarified his claims directly with the court.  

The review board disagreed. In a November letter of reprimand, they concluded that her report “appeared to be written from the perspective” of Maya’s ex-partner and that Gerhart is still obligated to make reasonable efforts to be informed about the case. The board required her to correct the report regarding Maya’s criminal history, stop using the disclaimer and complete at least two hours of guardian ad litem training.

It was a bittersweet outcome for Maya, who’s still waiting for her more-than-two-year custody case to go to trial. Several other statements that Maya had flagged in the report, which remains a part of the case, also were not corrected.

But for parents like Maya, the impact of guardian ad litem misconduct runs deeper than the words themselves. Gerhart’s report plunged Maya into a deep depression as she confronted the possibility of losing time with her son.

“I started to believe that I was a bad person,” Maya said. “That maybe I wasn’t good enough for my child. That maybe I was the problem.”