Family Court in the Dark: How Secrecy Shields Systemic Failure

Family court is one of the few places in the American legal system where life-changing decisions are made behind closed doors—and almost no one is allowed to watch. Proceedings are often sealed. Transcripts are rare. Records are hard to access. And for the families caught in the middle, there’s no meaningful oversight of how these cases are handled, or mishandled.

This lack of transparency doesn’t protect children. It protects the system.

It protects Guardian Ad Litems who ignore violations and never respond. It protects judges who allow court orders to be broken without consequence. It protects a system that is failing parents, failing children, and facing no accountability for either.

No Oversight, No Recourse, No Reform

In most areas of law, if something goes wrong, there’s a process to challenge it: appeals courts, media scrutiny, independent reviews, professional licensing boards. In family court, that structure is almost nonexistent.

Parents have no official process to file a complaint about a Guardian Ad Litem who fails to act, ignores communications, or misrepresents facts. Judicial complaints are rarely successful and often inaccessible without legal help. There’s no statewide tracking of how many parenting orders go unenforced, how long it takes to process a violation, or how often judges ignore repeated infractions.

And because cases are sealed, there’s no public record to reveal patterns of neglect, bias, or delay.

Each family is left to fight the same battles in isolation—while the system shields itself from scrutiny.

Privacy Shouldn’t Mean Impunity

The confidentiality of family court is important. Children deserve privacy. Sensitive matters require discretion. But privacy must not be used as a shield against responsibility.

Too often, secrecy is used not to protect the family, but to protect the institution. It allows inaction to go unnoticed. It makes data invisible. It keeps families from learning from each other’s cases or identifying systemic patterns. It prevents the public from understanding how widespread these failures are—and how many families are suffering silently.

If any other government system failed this consistently—schools, police departments, public health agencies—it would be investigated. But in family court, silence is the norm.

What Transparency Could Look Like

Confidentiality and accountability can—and must—coexist. Here’s what needs to change:

✅ Establish Oversight for GALs and Judges

Guardian Ad Litems and family court judges should be subject to professional review boards, with complaint procedures that are independent, accessible, and responsive.

✅ Track and Report Data

Illinois should publish anonymized data on parenting time violations, enforcement timelines, and complaint outcomes. Patterns must be visible to create change.

✅ Audit Family Court Procedures

A formal statewide review of family court practices—including enforcement delays, repeat violations, and GAL performance—should be conducted and reported.

✅ Create a Family Court Ombudsman Office

Parents navigating custody disputes should have a state-supported resource to raise concerns, report misconduct, and request intervention without facing retaliation or legal penalties.

The Public Can’t Fix What It Can’t See

We cannot reform what we don’t acknowledge. As long as family court remains hidden from view, families will continue to fall through the cracks. Parents will be forced to spend thousands just to enforce rights they already have. Children will lose time, stability, and connection with their parents—all while the system insists it’s acting in their best interest.

We need transparency not to expose personal details, but to expose systemic failures. We need oversight not to punish individual judges or GALs, but to build trust and ensure that the legal system serves those it was created to protect.

Family court is supposed to safeguard children and support families—not hide behind a wall of silence while families are torn apart.

It’s Time to Bring Family Court Into the Light

This is not about politics. It’s not about one case or one judge. It’s about a system that affects thousands of families in Illinois and millions nationwide—operating without the checks and balances we expect from every other public institution.

We don’t need to sacrifice privacy to demand accountability. We simply need the will to build structures that protect both.

It’s time to stop treating family court like a backroom process—and start treating it like what it truly is: one of the most important courts in our legal system, with the power to shape children’s lives for years to come.

And that power must be exercised in the light.