Stormy Enright hasn’t seen her son in nearly two years. She lives in Colorado and her son remains in Connecticut following a contentious custody dispute in court in which she raised abuse allegations against her ex-boyfriend, but the parenting plan ultimately awarded primary physical custody to the father with the instructions that the two parents – who were already at odds – were to work out a visitation schedule for Stormy on their own.

The parenting plan, according to Stormy, was created by the Guardian ad Litem (GAL) assigned to her son. A GAL is often assigned by a family court judge to represent the best interest of the child when there is a custody dispute between parents or a high conflict divorce that can see hundreds of filings between two contentious individuals. 

The GAL is given instructions by the judge and, according to the Guardian ad Litem Code of Conduct, the GAL is to carry out the court’s orders and “identify and communicate to the court the best interests of the minor child without being bound by the child’s preferences.” They interview family and friends, gather facts, try to work out an arrangement between the parents, and ultimately report their findings and recommendations to the judge. They are the eyes and ears of the court when a custody dispute makes ascertaining the truth difficult.

In Connecticut and in family courts nationwide, the best interest of the child typically means having an established and nurturing relationship with both parents, a guideline that is followed and enforced by family court sometimes to a fault.

However, in Stormy’s case, her relationship with her son was complicated by the fact that she was in Colorado, forced to flee Connecticut, she says, where she had no family or support, having been isolated with her former boyfriend and his family for years before he dropped her off alone in front of LaGuardia Airport.

Stormy says the parenting plan created by the GAL and signed off on by all parties, awarded her joint legal custody of her son, but did not allow for her to see him because visitation was essentially dictated by the father. According to the parenting plan, “If Defendant is visiting from out of state, the Defendant shall advise the father in writing, within two weeks notice and the parties shall make plans for parenting access.”

To her, it was a non-plan. Already strapped for money from paying her attorney, Stormy couldn’t afford to fly to Connecticut in the hopes of working something out, and the father refused to allow Stormy to fly out and bring her son back to Colorado for a visit.

“They’re just not interested in me being his mom, essentially,” Stormy said in an interview. When she pointed out to the GAL that the father was not facilitating the visits outlined in the parenting plan, the GAL advised her to consult an attorney. Although Stormy still has Zoom calls with her son, she hasn’t physically seen him since 2024.

Stormy filed an official complaint over how the GAL handled her case with the Standing Committee on Guardians ad Litem and Attorneys for the Minor Child in Family Matters, a committee formed in 2017 by the Judicial Branch to establish GAL training curriculums, approve individuals to serve as GALs, and to “establish and administer a process by which an individual may be removed from the list of those deemed eligible for appointment as a guardian ad litem or attorney for the minor child.”

The committee was formed following intense pressure from aggrieved parents that bubbled to the surface in 2013 resulting in a legislative task force that issued a report and recommendations. Prior to formation of the Standing Committee, the use and practices of GALs had been a gray area easily subject to abuse – or at least allegations of abuse – particularly when it came to financial issues. 

The vast majority of GALs are attorneys and they charge attorney rates. During a contentious divorce or custody case, those costs, which are borne by one or both parents depending on the judge’s determination, can add up to tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Allegations from the early 2010s that GALs were essentially doing more harm than good and bankrupting people in the process drove the push for accountability, eventually leading to the Standing Committee, a nine-member panel that includes experienced judges, attorneys who served as GALs, state agency representatives, and a representative from the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

While the Standing Committee has been in place since 2017, whether it has resulted in true oversight or accountability for GALs is another story. 

Stormy submitted her complaint the committee in June 2025, alleging the GAL on her case removed overnight visitation “after a judicial decision was already made that overnight visitation would be granted;” that the GAL requested Stormy only be allowed supervised visits and then did not obtain the supervisors report “that said there were no safety issues with the mother of the minor child;” and lastly, that the GAL “failed to properly investigate abuse of the minor child.”

Stormy submitted her complaint to the Standing Committee where a two-person subcommittee examines the complaint and determines whether there is probable cause to remove the GAL from the approved list; it has never found probable cause.

Despite the formation of the committee in 2017, it wasn’t until June 2019 that the committee approved the rules and process for removing a GAL from the approved list, and it wasn’t until September 2019 before they made the complaint process public. 

Since that time, there have been 47 complaints submitted to the Standing Committee, including one before the committee had even approved the process. Not one of those complaints has ever made it past the initial probable cause review, and all have been dismissed by a unanimous vote of the full committee. Unless probable cause is found, record of the complaint and the GAL response remain confidential, as are the “deliberations” by the Probable Cause panel, according to the committee’s removal procedures.

Complainants must submit their complaint within one year of the alleged violation and the complainant is not permitted to submit proof or evidence with their complaint, only their allegations. 

If the full committee determines there is probable cause for removal, the committee can temporarily suspended the GAL immediately, but a full hearing before the committee will determine whether the GAL is subject to temporary suspension, removal of from the GAL list altogether, or referred to the Statewide Grievance Committee or Department of Public Health if they are a licensed mental health professional.

After filing her complaint, Stormy says she never heard anything back – no phone call or interview or request for proof of her claims. Hers, like 46 other complaints, was likely dismissed, although it is difficult to tell as the committee only references complaint numbers.

Part of the problem, it appears, is that in drafting what constitutes grounds for removal of a GAL from the approved list, the committee set the bar so high that likely nothing a GAL does would ever warrant removal. 

While attorneys can and are disciplined by the Statewide Grievance Committee for small accounting errors, and even judges are required to avoid even the appearance of impropriety under the Judicial Review Council, GALs can only be removed from the approved list if they “present an imminent risk of significant harm to the health, safety, or welfare of the public.”  What constitutes an imminent risk to the health, safety, or welfare of the public is not defined, and, so far, no one has been found to present such a risk. 

Indeed, in response to a complaint filed in 2020, a GAL wrote to the Standing Committee that the complainant “cannot present any evidence that I am an imminent risk of significant harm to the health, safety, or welfare of the public, which is the standard for disqualification he is seeking.” The GAL asked that the complaint be dismissed, which it promptly was.

The question is not necessarily the validity of Stormy’s or anyone else’s claims per se, but rather whether anyone with any complaint would ever get a hearing and whether a committee whose stated purpose is oversight of a very fraught role in the judicial system that involves both sensitive child custody determinations and large sums of money, is fulfilling that mission and addressing the concerns that brought about its creation in the first place.

“I don’t know why it’s like this, but I want it stopped,” Enright said. “Nothing has happened. No one has reached out to me at all. No one has talked to me about this. No one cares what my story is, they’d rather just think that I’m f***ing crazy.”

The Task Force

The Standing Committee on Guardians ad Litem, like the Statewide Grievance Committee and the Judicial Review Council, is essentially a self-policing organization. The board, like the boards of the other two oversight committees, is made up largely of professionals who play some supervisory role the system they oversee.

Members of the Standing Committee cycle in and out but currently includes Chief Administrative Judge for Family Matters Leo Diana, and Judge Jennifer Macierowski. It also includes Justine Rakich-Kelly, executive director of the Children’s Law Center, whose attorneys have served as GALs on hundreds of cases, and family law attorney Edward J. Bryan, whose website lists him as a trained GAL but is not currently listed as an active GAL.

While DCP Commissioner Bryan Cafferelli is there only as a citizen participant, the agency he oversees is responsible for ensuring consumers aren’t taken advantage of by businesses and has more stringent standards than GALs; there is Barbara Cass from the Department of Public Health, the agency that controls licensing for mental health professionals and social workers, Assistant Attorney General Nisa J. Khan, and Rachel Boucher from the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

The Standing Committee is a creation of the Judicial Branch, not the legislature, but it has its roots in a task force created by the legislature in 2013 in response to shocking concerns raised by parents who had been through the family court system and claimed to have been harmed by the GALs on their case.

Creation of the Task Force to Study Legal Disputes Involving the Care and Custody of Minor Children was an amendment to a 2013 bill that would change family court law to assume a 50/50 shared parenting plan for all divorces unless certain circumstances showed this would be detrimental to the children. The proposed change was pushed for by some parents and organizations who believed it would decrease custody disputes; it was opposed by both the Connecticut Bar Association and the Judicial Branch. 

While the Task Force would examine the shared parenting concept, it was largely created to examine the role of GALs and the fees assessed on parents for attorneys, psychologists, and therapists throughout the divorce process, and was chaired by two attorney GALs – Sue Cousineau and Sharon Wicks Dornfeld. 

The public hearing in January 2014 saw a large amount of testimony from parents who had been through the family court system, many described paying tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to a GAL to determine the best interest of the child only to end up estranged from their children altogether. Some of the bills ranged from $20,000 to over $100,000, not including the cost of attorneys and many times the costs for psychologists to conduct evaluations of the parents and children, which again, added thousands to the tab.

“$80,000 is what my ex-husband and I were forced to pay our guardian,” Linda Demirali wrote in public testimony. “We are middle class, and we had to sell our home, go through our savings and take out loans to pay for the GAL and our attorneys.” 

“We have no rights, and the GAL has complete immunity with no oversight,” Demirali continued. “My daughter is a sophomore in high school, and I have saved nothing for college because of this.”

Another mother described how she filed grievances with the Statewide Grievance Committee against the attorney GAL but those grievances “were dismissed immediately.” Other parents described either going to jail or being threatened with jail time for not paying the GAL.

Faced with tens of thousands in attorney’s fees and saddled with another attorney in the form of a GAL, who often then recommends psychologists to conduct evaluations for thousands more, many parents began to posit a cabal within the family court system to extract as much money from contentious divorce hearings as possible. And while it sounds fanciful, the idea was not completely without evidence.

At the time, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), a national association of various professionals who provide services-for-hire to the family court system, had a chapter in Connecticut. Many highly influential Connecticut family court attorneys, judges, and psychologists, including those serving on the Task Force, were members, organizers, fundraisers, and presenters at AFCC conferences. 

Former Chief Administrative Judge for Family Matters Lynda B. Munro was on the Connecticut chapter’s board along with Task Force chair Sue Cousineau and Munro developed the GAL training program along with numerous other attorneys, psychologists and judges, many of whom were also part of the AFCC. Although the Connecticut AFCC chapter went defunct in 2015, its influence carries on in various family court practices.

One stepfather, recounting how his wife was “punished by the courts due to the lack of due diligence and professional ethics on the part of the GAL,” pointed out that the judge in her case was “an AFCC Director and all the court-appointed professionals on this case were also AFCC members.” Another woman listed twelve attorneys, judges, and psychologists who were part of her divorce case and who were “affiliated” with the AFCC.

Even those who offered testimony without any reference to the AFCC often made the case that the system appeared to be a money machine built on cronyism: attorneys request a GAL, the judge appoints a GAL who is an attorney well-known to the court, and the GAL then assigns a psychologist and a custody evaluator well-known to the court. All of it racking up tens of thousands of dollars. At the time, there was little a parent could do to have a GAL removed once they were assigned.

The financial issues came along with numerous other complaints: not actually meeting with the children; ignoring signs and reports of abuse; GALs using coercive tactics to get parents to sign off on their parenting plans, which ultimately left some of them not seeing their children for long periods of time; withholding or hiding reports or showing bias toward a parent, and lastly, sometimes not doing much at all to justify the mandatory high price tag.

With a GAL having the ability to greatly influence a custody hearing, including where the child will live and how often the child will see a parent and under what circumstances, the power dynamic created a coercive situation in which parents wouldn’t or couldn’t raise objections or complaints without fear it would bias the GAL against them.

However, attorneys and representatives from organizations that work in the judicial system also testified. While nearly all conceded that there is always room for improvement in any profession, they stringently pushed back on the idea that GALs are acting unethically and basically extracting money. 

Instead, they testified that it was a difficult, demanding, and, at times, rewarding role but usually one in which one or both parties is going to come away dissatisfied with the outcome. With GALs typically assigned for high conflict divorces that involve hundreds of motions filed, often by pro se litigants, the fact that GAL fees add up quickly, they say, is more due to the parents continuing the conflict than any malfeasance.

“My GAL/AMC work is emotionally draining and demanding,” wrote attorney Lisa J. Capalli. “First, in no area of my family work do I feel as much responsibility to my clients as I do when my client/ward is a child whose parents are involved in litigation. Second, it is often heartbreaking to see what parents and extended family members will do to their children. Third, parents are often rude, disrespectful and threatening toward me and have little sense of boundaries.”

“An undercurrent within the Task Force’s examination of this first issue has been the issue of cost. It is, and has been, my experience that child advocates are not getting rich doing this work as GALs and AMCs. We often are the last to be paid, when paid at all,” wrote Robert D. Zaslow, an attorney and, at the time, a board member of the Connecticut AFCC. “My experience leads me to believe that the cases in which complaints of GAL fees being excessive are made from those cases in which one or both of the litigating parents is churning the litigation.”

The Committee ultimately released their final report with a list of recommendations for the Judicial Branch to consider and included recommendations that were not unanimously agreed to by the full committee. However, among the unanimous recommendations were that “the Judicial Branch examine whether to establish a supervisory unit to receive complaints about, oversee and evaluate AMCs and GALs,” and “establish a procedure to remove an AMC or GAL from the list of approved individuals ‘when good cause is found.’”

Following the report, the General Assembly moved forward with legislative changes to the GAL system in 2014 that was approved unanimously in the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

The changes included allowing “certain parties” to seek removal of a GAL from a case through filing a motion in court; established a list of factors GALs must consider in determining the best interest of the child; established a sliding scale for GAL fees for families with less money and prohibiting the raiding of college funds to pay for GALs, and finally developing a GAL code of conduct.

While the legislation only required the Judicial Branch to develop a court process by which a GAL could be removed through filing a motion, the Judicial Branch took one of the recommendations from the task force and implemented it by establishing a committee to oversee GAL and AMC conduct and to establish a procedure by which an individual can be removed from the list of GALs.

But whether the Oversight Committee has lived up to expectations is up for debate. While it has established a method by which someone can be removed from the list of approved GALs, whether that method is reasonable is up for debate.

The Vocal Micro-Minority

Throughout public hearing testimony before both the Judiciary Committee regarding the 2014 bill, An Act Concerning Guardians ad Litem and Attorneys for the Minor Child, several attorneys and judges pushed back against what they called the “family court reformers,” whom they believed were mistaken in their accusations against GALs and the family court system in general.

While all systems can be improved, they argued, GAL billing practices and “collusion” between attorneys, GALs, and judges were either low on the list of needed reforms or demonstrated a misunderstanding of a process and system that sees thousands of cases each year in which there are no problems and things run relatively smoothly.

“As in any system, there is always room for improvement,” attorney, GAL, and former chair of the Task Force Sue Cousineau wrote in testimony. “But I do not agree with the vocal micro-minority that the family court system is broken… This is not about the GALs or the AMCs or the parents. It is about protecting children from the conflict of their litigating parents.”

“Family court attorneys, GALs, and mental health professionals who work in the family court arena volunteer hundreds if not thousands of hours each year trying to help families resolve their issues in a positive way,” the Children’s Law Center submitted in testimony, whose executive director is a current member of the Standing Committee. “Unfortunately, instead of providing the tools and support necessary to continue to do this vital work, the recent ‘reform movement’ has demonized these professionals. This has gone on too long unchecked.”

Indeed, there was testimony submitted by the Connecticut Coalition for Family Court Reform signed by 700 individuals calling to “reform our state family court’s broken and inherently corrupt Guardian ad Litem system.”

“The system we currently have is terribly ineffective, abusive, damaging and does not in any way address the best interests of the children and families of this state,” the Coalition letter stated. “Each of us has had suffered Guardian ad Litems who have billed outrageous sums of money and caused our families and our children very real harm. We have had no one to complain to, no one to turn to, no one to file complaints with.”

Jennifer Verraneault was one of those signatories and one of those who pushed lawmakers to create the Task Force on which she served. Verraneault was spurred to action after watching what her partner experienced in the family court system. 

Verraneault believes the Task Force was formed largely to placate that “vocal micro-minority” by lawmakers who thought any reforms suggested by the Task Force wouldn’t go very far.

“It kind of backfired on them because there was such an outpouring of parents,” Verraneault said in an interview. “It was unbelievable how many people came out and testified. It was a crazy amount of people for many hours.”

Despite the positive changes the Task Force was able to effectuate, she feels the Task Force was ultimately restrained as it was chaired by Cousineau and Dornfeld.

“Unfortunately, the chairs who were selected were basically the gatekeepers,” Verraneault continued. “It was like fighting against them because they were GALs. They were part of the problem.”

But the Task Force had the added effect of spurring the Judicial Branch to action, according to information supplied by Deputy Chief Court Administrator Anna Ficeto.

“The creation of the committee began after the task force report and was part of the progression of regulating the appointment of guardians ad litem,” Ficeto wrote in response to Inside Investigator’s questions. “Legislation in 2014 created a new process for the appointment of guardians ad litem and, among other things, called for the Judicial Branch to create a code of conduct for GALs.  The Rules Committee of the Superior Court began formulating requirements for the training of people to become eligible for appointment as a GAL and ultimately adopted rules in 2016 that created the Standing Committee to oversee the process.”

Divorce mediator Colleen O’Neil, who occasionally works with couples brought to her by GALs, says she believes the intent of forming the Standing Committee, like the original Task Force, was “quiet the noise from people complaining,” but has since morphed from “an oversight committee to a shield.”

“People can complain to it [the Standing Committee]. It’s like a receptacle for the complaint with no investigation, no oversight of judges and attorneys, which is the problem to begin with, so you have a community policing itself,” O’Neill said. “You have families who, if they want to file a complaint, can’t get access to any of the information, no discovery, no nothing. I think the rule they put to it – imminent risk – it’s not even in the same category.”

Despite the high “imminent risk” threshold, the 47 complaints submitted to the Standing Committee over six years is vanishingly small in comparison with the number of family court cases on which GALs serve each year and even compared to the number of complaints filed against judges.

The current list of GALs numbers roughly 182, although there is churn as GALs either maintain their certification or let it lapse. According to information supplied by the Judicial Department, in fiscal year 2025 GALs were assigned to 628 family court cases; there were only nine complaints received and dismissed by the Standing Committee during that same time. 

For comparison, the Judicial Review Council, which oversees 299 judges, family support magistrates, administrative law judges, and family court referees (retired judges appointed to decide a family court case) received 234 complaints, and dismissed 135 complaints after investigation as having “no factual basis.”

The difference between the two bodies, however, are the rules surrounding complaint investigation. According to the Judicial Review Council’s annual reports, each complaint is “thoroughly investigated by the Executive Director,” who then reports his findings to the full Council, who receives all the evidence in advance of their meeting, can request additional evidence, and ultimately makes the determination whether to move forward. 

Under state statute, judges can be censured, suspended, or removed from office for prejudicial conduct, neglectful or incompetent performance of their duties, willful violation of the code of conduct, and filing a fraudulent financial statement among other things.

For the Standing Committee, aside of the imminent risk threshold, a committee of two receives the complaint without evidence and then makes their recommendation to the full Committee. A full quorum is five of the nine members, and it functions by majority vote, meaning that ultimately it only takes three members to dismiss a complaint outright.

“The devil is in the details,” Maureen Martowska, a retired Massachusetts attorney who became a family court reform advocate after watching what her son experienced and testified in 2013 and 2014, said. “Imminent risk of significant harm to the health, safety or welfare of the public is an overly broad definition. So much so, that it renders it vague and meaningless. Because that gives the power to the probable cause committee to define what that means.”

“You would think that grounds for removal would be any violation of the GAL code of ethics. Nope. Not there. You have to ask yourself why,” Martwoska said. “The people they have on there, they may say they are members of the public, but there’s always a nexus of some sort to a state agency, or a line of revenue, or the judiciary. There isn’t the transparency needed to support a truly independent oversight of GALs. They have a veil of protection over them.”

Of course, absence of a problem does not necessarily mean there is a problem, but Peter Szymonik, a long-time family court reform activist who likewise testified before both the Task Force and the Judiciary Committee, says that the lack of complaints filed submitted to the Standing Committee is likely either due to people not being aware of its existence, see little utility in filing a complaint or, perhaps, have been encouraged not to because custody of their children hang in the balance.

“I run Facebook pages with parents, and they are in the system, and I haven’t heard a lot of people saying they’ve filed complaints against GALs and I think one of the reasons for that is they’re probably being encouraged not to by their attorneys,” Szymonik said. “The people I work with have already had a taste of what the system is like and don’t see the point in doing that.” 

Szymonik says that instead of filing a complaint with the Standing Committee to have a GAL removed from the approved list, parents in the family court system are successfully filing motions in court to have the GAL removed from their case, one of the reforms contained in the bill passed in 2014.

“We’ve had parents who have success doing that citing constitutional issues,” Szymonik continued. “Have a GAL on your case is one of the worst mistakes you can make because you’re essentially telling the court that you’re incapable of being a parent. If you allow the GAL to stay on the case uncontested, if you get an adverse ruling and decide to appeal, the appellate court will say you didn’t challenge the assumption of your parental rights.”

The “vocal micro-minority” of family court reformers never really went away following passage of the 2014 law. Instead, many of them have banded into separate groups who differ on what the appropriate reforms should be and ushering in new sets of parents and divorcees every year who have had bad experiences with the family court system and giving rise to new calls for reform. 

However, those who have been through the system already, and have watched GALs become judges don’t forget and bring their experiences to public hearings on judicial appointments.

When former GAL Barry Armata was nominated to become a judge in 2017, barely squeaked by a confirmation vote in the House of Representatives after family court reform activists voiced their opposition and Rep. Minnie Gonzalez, D-Hartford, led a contingent of representatives against the appointment. 

When Superior Court Judge Gerard Adelman was up for reconfirmation, some parents who had come before him in court submitted scathing testimony in opposition. Even former Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Chase T. Rogers faced harsh criticism regarding her time in the family court system.

“The only thing we could actually get done was to have a bill in front of the Judiciary Committee to kind of manage the GALs,” said Jennifer Verranault, one of the original Task Force members and whose advocacy, in part, led to the creation of the Task Force to begin with. “I don’t know what’s happening now. I’ve heard it’s just as bad.”

Absolute Quasi-Judicial Immunity

In the wake of the 2014 legislation, the Judicial Branch released a report in 2015 on its family court initiatives and some of the progress that had been made. Among the statistics cited were allowing judges to use family relations counselors instead of GALs, removing more than 500 individuals from the approved GAL list, implementation of a sliding scale for GAL payment, and a 24 percent reduction in GALs appointed to cases from 1,618 to 1,235 cases.

Of note, roughly three-quarters of those surveyed who had been through the family court system reported they were satisfied with their overall court experience, while roughly one-quarter were not, and nearly two percent reported filing a complaint against the family court system.

By 2017, when the Judicial Branch updated its report, the use of GALs had declined even further. The number of approved GALs had dropped from 1,200 in 2014 to 400 in 2016, and the number of cases to which a GAL was assigned decreased from 1,594 to 889. The report also announced the formation of the Standing Committee per a rule change in the Practice Book.

These days, the numbers are even lower. In fiscal year 2025, GALs were assigned to 628 cases following an uptick in 2022 and 2023 as cases that were delayed during the pandemic were finally adjudicated. As of this writing, there have been 587 assignments for fiscal year 2026. 

As indicated before, as of this writing there were only 182 GALs on the approved list, many of whom have gone through the family court process in their personal lives, including having a GAL assigned to their case. It’s a dramatic decline from the 1,200 listed in 2014, and even a fewer number of approved GALs take cases. 

Inside Investigator conducted a review of all the approved GALs and looked at the number of cases they’d been assigned; 75 of them show no online listing of having ever served as a GAL, while for others it appears they serve as GALs full time, generally in the same two or three court districts. Leaving aside the Children’s Law Center, which has handled hundreds of GAL assignments, some GALs handled between 50 and 85 cases, according to our review.

It’s not a new phenomenon. In 2013, roughly 90 percent of the 1,000 GALs did not take assignments leaving the remaining 10 percent of GALs getting all the work at the time.

Although mental health professionals and licensed social workers can be GALs, they are very few and are assigned to very few cases. According to our review of the current list of 182 approved GALs who have worked on 1,627 cases combined, only 21 are social workers or therapists, and have been assigned a combined 15 cases to serve as GAL. The rest are all attorneys.

Deputy Chief Administrator Ficeto says the discrepancy is because the GALs, under the changes implemented in 2014, are agreed to by both parties and the “parties seem to choose attorneys much more often than mental health professionals.” According to language posted on the Standing Committee’s website, they appear to be seeking out additional mental health professionals to serve as GALs.

As indicated before, comparing the number of GAL assignments in 2025 to the number of complaints received by the Standing Committee gives a percentage of 1.4 percent, lower than the complaints listed in the Judicial Department’s 2015 report. Lower GAL assignments, early identification of cases that may require a GAL, the ability to bring in family services, and the ability for a litigant to file a motion for removal have likely led to the low number of complaints before the Standing Committee.

But the question of oversight and accountability remains. Ficeto did not indicate what is meant by an “imminent risk of significant harm to the health, safety or welfare of the public,” and under what circumstances a GAL could present such a risk. 

While the Standing Committee is meant to be a place for complainants to get fair consideration, some who are either unaware of the Committee’s existence or feel they will not get a fair hearing have filed lawsuits alleging misdeeds by the GALs who served on their family court cases.

In 2025, a lawsuit filed against Sue Cousineau, alleged “a continuous, multi-year pattern of misconduct by the Defendants, characterized by constitutional and statutory violations, intentional misrepresentations to the Court, and the malicious exploitation of a minor child to achieve extrajudicial and retaliatory ends.” 

The Plaintiff also filed a second lawsuit against her own former divorce attorney, who is also on the approved GAL list, alleging collusion with Cousineau and the court appointed psychologist.

“These acts, taken under the guise of legal representation, deprived Plaintiff of her parental rights, violated her constitutional protections, and contributed to the unlawful separation of a mother and her child,” the Plaintiff wrote. 

Both lawsuits are ongoing but, like many who come before family court for divorce proceedings, the Plaintiff is representing herself and the claim likely has little chance of success. That’s because the GAL system is undergirded by two court cases, including a case by the Connecticut Supreme Court, that guarantees GALs immunity from liability, but not necessarily from professional discipline.

In 2000, plaintiff Paul Carrubba attempted to sue Emily Moskowitz, the GAL assigned during his divorce proceeding, alleging Moskowitz had caused emotional distress intentionally or negligently, and had engaged in legal malpractice against his son. In 2005, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that GALs and AMCs have “absolute, quasi-judicial immunity for actions taken during or, activities necessary to, the performance of functions that are integral to the judicial process.”

But that does not mean that GALs are not subject to professional discipline, according to 2009 court ruling in Shaughnessey v. Statewide Grievance Committee. Attorney Sheryl A. Shaughnessey claimed immunity from potential discipline by the Statewide Grievance Committee for filing a judgement lien on property to collect her GAL fees. The court determined that a GAL cannot claim immunity from violating the Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys, referring to Carrubba v. Moskowitz.

“The court made it crystal clear that a guardian ad litem’s absolute quasi-judicial immunity from legal liability in connection with her guardianship work does not include immunity from professional discipline for ethical violation committed in the course of that work,” the court ruled.

“If a GAL is a Connecticut licensed attorney, and the Statewide Grievance Committee received a complaint about the attorney, it would be reviewed in accordance with the provisions of Practice Book Section 2-32,” Ficeto wrote. “Any GAL not qualified to serve would be removed from the list.”

Of course, the difficulty in any of this, is that a parent who may have just lost a custody battle based on the findings and recommendations of a GAL, may perceive any number of “ethical violations,” based on their emotional response to the outcome. The result becomes another contentious he said, she said battle, this time between the parent and the GAL. It is often this very situation in custody battles that causes a judge to assign a GAL in the first place.

Of course, it is not a given that a judge will accept the finding and recommendation of a GAL. During a 2025 custody dispute in which the father claimed to be Michael the Archangel and had made a serious of increasingly bizarre and at times threatening statements and emails, the GAL recommended granting the mother full legal and physical custody pending the father receiving a physical and mental evaluation.

The judge ignored all of it, awarded joint custody to the father and then chastised the mother for withholding visitation from a man she had multiple restraining orders against.

“There Has To Be Accountability”

In 2022, amidst an on-going high conflict divorce, Casey Schrieber lodged a complaint against the GAL assigned to her case with the Standing Committee. In it she alleged the GAL engaged in “inappropriate conduct,” ignored abuse allegations and statements by therapists, and “misrepresented facts on multiple occasions,” as the GAL pushed for the children to be reunited with their father.

Although the complaint indicates that she has audio and email evidence of her allegations, the Probable Cause panel did not determine there was a need to investigate further and her complaint was dismissed. A pro se litigant, Schreiber was ultimately more successful bringing a motion to have the GAL removed from her case. He was ultimately replaced with a GAL from the Children’s Law Center, but the issues continue.

Schreiber is part of a new wave of family court reform activists comprised mostly of women who helped push through Jennifer’s Law in 2021 redefining domestic abuse to include coercive control who say the family court system is ignoring domestic abuse and enabling abusive partners to use children as pawns to continue exerting control. GALs can be part of the problem, they believe, but not the whole problem.

“There has to be accountability. We cannot have a GAL allowed to perjure themselves or to misrepresent the facts,” Schreiber said, adding that she believes there isn’t enough training around domestic violence, child abuse, and child development. “I think it is wild that you have attorneys making decisions for children when they have absolutely no clue the developmental stages kids have.”

“In Connecticut, it’s best interest of the child. I’m not understanding why we’re bringing in more attorneys,” O’Neil said. “They’re not therapists.”

However, it should be noted that even if the Standing Committee did find grounds to move forward with a complaint, discipline would only be removal from a list. While that could be somewhat damaging professionally for some GALs, it does not necessarily open doors for any further action, although, one can assume that if an attorney was found to be an imminent risk to the public he or she would likely face the Statewide Grievance Committee as well.

During the most recent Standing Committee meeting in June, which is open to the public, the Committee members met in executive session before dismissing two complaints, but the agenda quickly turned toward revising the Committee’s complaint process and their ability to discipline GALs, including adding a second tier of discipline. Committee members acknowledged the imminent risk threshold for removal was a “very high bar that, to date, no one has met,” and believe there should be a disciplinary standard for GALs who violate the code of conduct, do not maintain the appropriate training, or do not act in the child’s best interest.

While committee members envisioned adding remedial disciplinary measures like suspension or forms of intervention if they determine a GAL has violated the code of conduct, at present it does not appear they have the authority to do so: the Connecticut Practice Book only allows for removal of a GAL from the list. It’s an “all or nothing cliff,” as one member put it, and empowering the Committee with greater flexibility when it comes to discipline will likely require a rule change, something they plan to discuss with legal services.

“The standard should really be if you violate the GAL code of ethics,” Schreiber said. “If you want to tell me there would be too many complaints, guess what? That’s telling you enough, that’s your problem.”

“The whole thing [family court] needs to be revamped but I don’t have faith that it ever will be,” Verraneault said. “If things didn’t change back in 2013, 2014 when we drew so much attention, I don’t know how it’s going to change.”

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