How can you hold them accountable?

[alleyesonme]

In most criminal or civil cases, once a decision has been made and the appeals process has been completed, everything is final. However, in custody disputes, nothing is truly final until the children all age out of the system.

In that context, is there a way to hold family law professionals - attorneys, custody evaluators, GAL's, etc. - accountable for extremely unethical behavior? I know that you can file a complaint with the bar association, but you never know who the person you're filing the complaint about may have a close relationship with, so a judge or magistrate can easily retaliate against you in future hearings/motions. Similarly, even if you post a negative online review about someone, they can badmouth you to the judge or magistrate. Is family law the one sector of the legal industry where the professionals are virtually immune from any sort of repercussions for unethical behavior?

[PeteWitsend]

No, but the family law... uh... industry?  ecosystem?  is more insular than other areas of law. 

Maybe similar to bankruptcy practice where you have not only specialized attorneys and other professionals, but specialized judges who only hear bankruptcy matters.

So for sure they extend professional courtesies between eachother that you (or any mere client) wouldn't benefit from. 

That being said, they have their own issues between them, and personality clashes and what not.  and there's bad blood sometimes between former judges and other practitioners (remember family law judges are elected).  so it's not a monolith. 

And they have incentives to police themselves, so if there's a bad actor bringing attention to all of them, they'll absolutely act against him or her. 

But yeah, if you're just complaining about a decision that was against you, it's unlikely any of them are going to rock the boat; they'll likely have to work with the person that made that decision again, and may even know them personally.  Not the same concern with a parent moving through the system.

[Thomas0311]

I ran into a rather vexing situation in family law, and met a similar "old boys club" response to. In my divorce we were splitting a 401k from my job that was worth a sizable amount ($400k)... there was a $40,000 loan out against it that was used to help put a down payment on the house. When we were negotiating the separation agreement, the language was written that the $40,000 loan would be treated as early withdrawal (really this means nothing, because you own yourself back for it... you both basically then pay taxes for early withdrawal on $20,000 each). I wanted to split the $360,000 even at $180K each, and I was willing to carry forward the $40k loan and pay it back myself moving forward to boost my account to $220,000 after the divorce using my income. Anyway, my lawyer put language in the agreement that said I would take on the $40,000 loan... and he wrote it in a way that did the opposite. A year later when my wife's lawyer submitted the paper to split the account after the divorce. They went after $200,000, leaving me with $160,000 and the $40,000 loan.

When I went to my lawyer to ask about how this could happen. That everyone knew what the intent was for our language being in there they way it was "excluding the $40,000 loan." He went "yeah, I guess they got us on a technicality." - so his mistake cost. I got a new lawyer and asked if I could sue his practice for this mistake... they told me, the whole legal system would likely be against me if I tried to do that. I could spent $10,000-25,000 trying to sue him, and he has insurance to cover defending his practice over something like this, and in the end a judge would likely say "you can read the language yourself, right?" it says to split the account excluding the loan... meaning to split the 400k amount, and I would have a had time...

To me it was ambiguous. "Husband and wife will split 401k 50-50 excluding the 40k loan." ... to me that reads we'll split $360,000... oh well.

[ForeverDad]

Sorry about that.  We usually think it's the pwBPD who creates loopholes and gotchas where there are none, it can happen elsewhere too if the intent is not spelled out.  Reminds me of some state law, probably out west,  that was contested and the outcome depended on whether the final comma in "this, this, and that" was optional.  Here is another example.  Besides the language changes overtime, I think the phrase that fits is arcane jargon.