Guardians ad litem offer ‘impactful’ assistance, but program is largely available only to families who can pay
By Kelly Burch-Granite State News Collaborative
During her 25 years working full-time as a guardian ad litem — a person who represents the interests of children in family court cases — Judith Hamilton has worked with hundreds of families. Yet she knows that many more children have no one to speak for them in court..
“All kids should get the same level of care and concern from the court system,” said Hamilton, who lives in Keene. “And that doesn’t happen.”
Guardians ad litem are appointed by the court to represent the interests of children, often in contentious court cases involving custody, parental rights, and abuse and neglect.
“A GAL brings in a nuanced, middle-of-the-road perspective” that can help judges make good decisions in complex cases, said Judge Kathleen Quigley, president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
But in New Hampshire, GAL services are too often available only to families that are able to pay — typically at a rate of $125 per hour, with costs often tallying thousands of dollars.
State funding for GALs was cut in 2011, part of budget cuts enacted in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Last year, the state operated a limited pilot program to reinstate GAL funding for a small number of low-income families. Analysis from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy at Dartmouth, issued in May, found that the state funding addressed inequalities and also helped complicated cases move through the court system more effectively.
People working in the court system “really expressed … how impactful GALs were to the process of reaching judgments and the process of providing more equitable justice, particularly in complex cases and those that have been open for a long time,” says Elizabeth Pfeffer, postdoctoral fellow with the Rockefeller Center, who helped oversee the research and report.
Despite that, there’s currently no plan to extend state funding for GALs for low-income families. The funding for the pilot was a “small, one-time allocation” from the Department of Health and Human Services, according to Heather Kulp, director of court operations for the N.H. Judicial Branch.
“How to fund GALs for indigent parents and the scale of such funding in the future is a legislative decision,” she said.
‘Logjam in the system’
The lack of funding for poor families is just one of many issues facing the GAL system in New Hampshire, according to a 2025 policy brief from the Rockefeller Center. The brief outlined four in particular that the guardian ad litem program faces: “inadequate” training; “compensation challenges”; a shrinking number of licensed GALS; and an unequal distribution of services.
The reduction in the number of licensed GALs is striking. Before state funding was cut, there were about 260 GALs, according to Dartmouth analysis. As of June 30, 2026, there were 58, state data show.
The sharp decline has compounded pressure.
“The remaining GALs can be very overworked or have a pretty high burden psychologically,” Pfeffer said.
Since the state no longer pays for GAL services, parents in court cases are billed for the work. Hamilton said she’s sometimes assigned to cases where it’s clear that parents will be unwilling or unable to pay for her services.
“The court will assign me a case we all know I’ll never get paid for,” she said. “That just feels unfair to me, but they know that I’ll do it.”
Other GALs have picked up pro-bono cases, the Dartmouth report found. Even so, “there’s a lot of people who don’t ever get served,” Hamilton said.
Last year, 21 families received a GAL through the pilot program. Their cases were being heard in four New Hampshire circuit courts — Laconia, Franklin, Rochester and Keene. In each court, judges decided which eligible cases received a GAL.
Those GALs gave judges “new information that could cut a logjam in the system,” Pfeffer said.
“It had implications for cases, caseloads and families who are going through the court system for quite a long period of time,” she said.
Looking to other states
Any effort to reinstate a GAL fund would also need to address challenges facing the GAL system, Pfeffer said.
To explore options for that, Dartmouth researchers looked at the GAL systems in four other states: Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine and Minnesota.
New Hampshire’s system is complex, in part because it involves all branches of government, Pfeffer said. The court system uses the services, but the program is funded by the Legislature, and licensing and training are handled by the executive branch.
Other states have handled this by placing their GAL programs within the court system. In Minnesota, for example, GALs are direct employees of the judicial branch.
Vermont has taken an almost opposite approach, relying heavily on volunteer GALs organized through paid regional coordinators.
“This seemed to help recruitment and retention through the slightly more structured mentorship and training programs,” Pfeffer said. While the number of GALs has dropped substantially in New Hampshire, it has remained steady in Vermont, according to the Dartmouth report.
This volunteer-driven approach is somewhat similar to that taken by Court Appointed Special Advocates of New Hampshire (CASA of NH), an organization that provides volunteer GALs to represent children in cases of child abuse and neglect (see sidebar). Currently, CASA of NH has about 600 volunteer GALs, according to Marty Sink, longtime CEO of CASA of NH who retired on July 1, 37 years after she founded the organization .
“For us, in New Hampshire, it’s worked really well,” Sink said. “... It’s volunteerism, but it’s also a way for the community, just normal citizens, to dig in and get involved. That piece is really important.”
-
Guardians ad litem can serve in any type of court cases, including divorce, custody and termination of parental rights. Children in cases of child abuse and neglect can be served by another resource: a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), a volunteer GAL who is typically unpaid.
While a CASA is a type of GAL, the work of CASAs and paid GALs is distinct, experts say.
CASAs serve on about 90% of new child abuse and neglect cases that enter the court system, according to Marty Sink, founder of CASA NH, who retired as CEO on July 1. Federal law requires that children in these cases have a GAL, so if a CASA is not available, a paid GAL must be appointed at the $125-an-hour rate.
CASA is “a very highly effective, cost-effective form of advocacy,” Sink said. “We save the state a lot of money.”
About 35% of CASA NH funding — about $1.1 million — comes from the state. Last year, CASA volunteers logged 8,300 hours, she said. According to the organization’s website, it provides the state with $3 million in advocacy work each year.
CASA NH has about 600 volunteers, who served about 1,500 children last year, Sink said. In an ideal world, she would have 800 volunteers — roughly the number needed to provide a CASA for every case of child abuse and neglect.
Knowing she was unlikely to have enough volunteers to fully meet the need, Sink decided to focus solely on child abuse and neglect cases when she started CASA NH in 1989.
“Those are the kiddos who are so vulnerable,” she says.
In Massachusetts, the GAL program benefits from the state chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts. That organization can set guidelines for effectively operating a GAL program within a given jurisdiction, according to Bryan Altman, executive director of the association.
“A chapter might be able to bring together experts across all these different silos,” he said. “They might put together a training on skills that are needed to fulfill that role.”
In addition to additional training, communication mechanisms and administrative processes for New Hampshire GALs, the Dartmouth report called on the state to investigate establishing a chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.
A system in need of support
While the GAL system faces acute challenges, experts say they’re part of a larger lack of support for New Hampshire’s most vulnerable families.
“We just, across the board, don’t spend much money on families in this state,” said Susan Carbon, a retired New Hampshire family court judge and past president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. “There’s a lot more we can do to support families, and we’re not.”
The families Hamilton works with often could have benefited from help to address and resolve issues before they ended up in court, she said. Instead, they’re often left in crisis, with nowhere to turn.
This has become even more acute since the pandemic, she said. One example is the lack of access to mental health counselors for kids. In addition to her work as a GAL, Hamilton has worked in community mental health. She used to be able to connect children with therapists and other mental health professionals quickly, she said, but now she’s often unable to.
“Even when I have kids I’m really worried about,” she said, “I can’t get them in.”
Sink sees a “system that needs to collaborate and come together supporting children and families” through challenges such as homelessness, mental health and substance abuse.
“The odds that families are challenged with are at times insurmountable,” she said. “If we can do one little piece of systemic change, [we can] help people have better outcomes, and hopefully develop a stronger, healthier community of New Hampshire citizens.”
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.
These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.