Ohio law index
Sup.R. 48: Guardians ad litem
The Ohio Rules of Superintendence on guardians ad litem (Sup.R. 48 and its subparts): appointment, training, duties, reports, and complaints.
Plain-language summary, not the statute text. Laws change. Read the official text and confirm current law before relying on anything here.
Read the official text of Sup.R. 48
Our coverage citing Sup.R. 48
Every Word an Exhibit
Courts sometimes order separated parents to communicate only through a paid co-parenting app. These products generally do what they are meant to do, and that is the problem. A record built to capture what parents write, screened for tone rather than truth, sees little of what happens at the door. And the people who order the app are often not the people who pay for it.
The Standard Schedule
A family law attorney, guardian ad litem, and visitation-center owner wins election to the bench, dies of a stroke on election night, and wakes in a place that runs on his own forms. Nobody there is cruel. They just follow the procedure he wrote. A story in the spirit of classic anthology television, followed by a plain account of what each tool in it is and how to fix it.
Two Sets of Books
Ohio family law often answers the same question two different ways, depending on which answer serves the institution. Support arrears count against a parent in custody, but lost parenting time is no defense to support. A sixteen-year-old can be tried as an adult but cannot choose where to sleep. The proceedings are private, except when a parent owes money. This essay walks through eight of these contradictions, one provision at a time.
The Church of CYA
An institution's real values show in the errors it reliably tolerates. Across courts, hospitals, schools, and AI systems, that tolerance drifts toward whatever minimizes blame rather than harm, and Ohio family law sits near the far end of the spectrum.
The Function, Not the Failure
Anxiety, depression, anger, and withdrawal in parents caught in long custody disputes are often accurate responses to a hostile environment, not signs of a broken mind. Treating them as pathology misses the cause and hands the system a weapon.
Who Decides Who Counts
Before any court weighs interests, it decides whose interests are on the ledger at all. Ohio's family law makes that membership decision in ways that tax parents without representation and govern children without consent, sometimes long past childhood.