The Appointment of Minor’s Counsel Must Stop
Appointing minor’s counsel to represent the child in a family custody dispute is the single most destructive action the Court can take.

There are four primary problems with the appointment of minor’s counsel to represent the child:

1.) Appointing minor’s counsel introduces two prominent sources of bias into the legal proceedings that favor one side over the other;

2.) The appointment of minor’s counsel introduces, incites, colludes with, and supports pathological processes within the family to the detriment of the child;

3.) By introducing, inciting, and supporting the family’s psychopathology, the appointment of minor’s counsel undermines and can fully nullify therapeutic efforts to resolve family psychopathology;

4.) In failing to comprehend the complexity of developmental immaturity during childhood and adolescence, appointing a minor’s counsel offers an overly simplistic effort at a solution that will result in misguided advocacy by minor’s counsel for positions that are contrary to the child’s best interests and healthy development.

Second Source of Bias
The second source of inherent bias introduced by the appointment of minor’s counsel is in favor of pathological family processes over healthy family processes.

The appointment of minor’s counsel to represent the child fails to appreciate the complexity of family relationship dynamics, and two particular family relationship patterns are of particular concern relative to the appointment of minor’s counsel, 1) a role-reversal relationship in which the child is being used to gratify and meet the emotional and psychological needs and the psychopathology of the parent, and 2) the child’s triangulation into the spousal conflict through the formation of a cross-generational parent-child coalition of the child with one parent against the other parent.