By Susan J. Bassi, Fred Johnson and Faith Strader
A small group of private attorneys in Sonoma County have been paid more than $1.4 million in public funds over seven years to represent children in their parents’ divorce and custody cases. One attorney, Daniel ‘Dan’ Beck, collected more than $271,000 of that total, billing taxpayers at $100 an hour while a mother under a temporary custody order waited years for a permanent ruling on custody of her own child.
Public records obtained by the Vanguard reveal how these appointments work, who gets them, and what happens when a complaint about one of them disappears into a dead email inbox for four months.
WHAT IS A TEMPORARY ORDER – and WHY DOES IT MATTER?
When parents go through a divorce or custody dispute in family court, a judge can issue a temporary custody order while the case is still going on. The idea is simple: set up a short-term arrangement while the court works toward a permanent solution.
In practice, ‘temporary’ can mean years. These orders cannot be appealed. Parents and children are bound by them, sometimes without any trial, sometimes after a single hearing — waiting on court dates while legal fees pile up.
For one Sonoma County mother, a four-year temporary custody has kept her on supervised visits with her autistic son as the case slowly moved to trial for a permanent custody order. She is no longer able to pay her attorney. During the four years the temporary order has been in place, the court appointed two separate minors’ counsel attorneys to represent her son.
The first was Julie Levy, who, as previously reported, did little but extend the proceedings and drive-up costs for all attorneys, supervised visitation monitors and court reporters. The mother tried to have Levy removed. The judge denied the request. When Levy eventually withdrew from the case, she was allowed to bill fees from her young client’s special needs trust, money set aside for an autistic child’s education and care.
The court then appointed a second attorney: Dan Beck.
Dan Beck’s request for December 2025 fees as minors counsel
BECK’S BILLING – WHAT TAXPAYERS PAID FOR
According to a billing statement filed with the court Jan. 8, 2026, Beck billed Sonoma County taxpayers $3,550 for December 2025 alone. His December billing included preparing for a custody trial that was supposed to finally deliver a permanent decision.
The trial was vacated.
It will have to happen again, at additional taxpayer cost, after a cascade of events that began when the Vanguard published its December 16, 2025, reporting on minors’ counsel in Sonoma County, naming Beck and raising questions about transparency and accountability.
Within days of that article, Beck filed a notice of unavailability. One week later, he filed a motion to seal the entire 14-year case file — not one sensitive document, but the complete public record of a divorce spanning more than a decade.
On New Year’s Eve, Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Robert LaForge signed the sealing order. No hearing. No findings. No notice to anyone.
The mother, representing herself, filed a writ with California’s First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. The appellate court sided with her, ordering the lower court to immediately vacate the sealing orders or explain why it would not. Judge LaForge subsequently recused himself. A new judge cleaned up the legal mess in a single hearing.
The Vanguard continued reporting on the cost the public incurred for Beck’s representation of the child at the center of the case.
Taxpayers paid for all of it: Beck’s work to seal the file, the appellate proceedings to reverse it, and the vacated trial that must now be scheduled again.
PUBLIC RECORD: A COMPLAINT THE COURT IGNORED
On Dec. 31, 2025, journalist Susan Bassi filed a formal complaint about Beck’s conduct and billing as set forth by Sonoma County Superior Court local rules. She sent the complaint by email and hand delivery to Presiding Judge Christopher M. Honigsberg, Supervising Family Law Judge Shelly J. Averill and Court Executive Officer Robert M. Oliver.
The email went to a retired employee’s address. It sat unread for nearly four months. The court claimed the hand delivered letter was never received.
At the same time, the Vanguard submitted public records requests for minors’ counsel payment data to Sonoma, Los Angeles, Orange, Contra Costa, Stanislaus and Santa Clara counties. Los Angeles responded first. Orange County reportedly mailed its records. Contra Costa sent a partial response. Santa Clara refused to add to records from a prior production.
Sonoma County’s response was striking: the court initially claimed no records existed.
After the Vanguard pushed back and provided evidence of the complaint and that responsive records did exist, the court finally produced spending records showing who had been paid from public funds to represent children. The court also finally produced records of a minors’ counsel panel list, meaning records showing names of attorneys receiving court appointments to represent children in county’s family law matters.
As to the complaint, the court’s Presiding Judge Honigsberg finally responded to Bassi’s 2025 complaint by letter on April 16, 2026 — acknowledging he had just received it that day, nearly four months after it was hand delivered and emailed to a court employee who had since retired. He promised to investigate and respond within 90 days.
WHO GETS THE WORK
Payment records the court eventually produced, spanning fiscal years 2018–19 through March 2026, show a pattern: a small group of attorneys collect the majority of public payments. The table below shows total spending by year, Beck’s share and the top three recipients.
These records do not include payments family court judges order parents to pay attorneys court appointed to represent their children during a divorce or custody matter. The records only reflect public payments the attorneys are paid.
Beck Law, Inc. does not appear in the spending data until FY 2022–23. By FY 2024–25, Beck had become the single largest recipient of public minors’ counsel payments in Sonoma County — collecting $105,590 in a single year, one-third of the county’s entire minors’ counsel budget.
| Fiscal Year | Total Paid (All Vendors) | Beck Law, Inc. | Beck % of Total | Top 3 Recipients |
| FY 2018–19 | $64,163.00 | — | — | Julianne Major: $10,918.50 Andrea M. Ponticiello: $10,590.00 Harold Sewall: $10,421.25 |
| FY 2019–20 | $128,872.00 | — | — | Deborah Lynn Reece: $33,238.75 Julianne Major: $19,961.25 Harold Sewall: $18,005.20 |
| FY 2020–21 | $182,400.00 | — | — | Julianne Major: $49,926.80 Deborah Lynn Reece: $63,634.00 Law Offices of Levy and Carroll: $24,184.46 |
| FY 2021–22 | $105,680.00 | — | — | Julianne Major: $15,272.25 Laura M. Dunst: $15,142.50 Law Offices of Levy and Carroll: $19,146.90 |
| FY 2022–23 | $139,825.00 | $34,751.61 | 24.9% | Law Offices of Levy and Carroll: $41,167.54 Beck Law, Inc.: $34,751.61 Harold Sewall: $15,176.50 |
| FY 2023–24 | $174,234.00 | $39,901.00 | 22.9% | Beck Law, Inc.: $39,901.00 Law Offices of Levy and Carroll: $30,938.43 Joseph A. Castagnola: $19,400.85 |
| FY 2024–25 | $303,030.00 | $105,590.00 | 34.8% | Beck Law, Inc.: $105,590.00 Kathleen Smith: $32,983.75 VanDyk Law PC: $33,695.00 |
| FY 2025–26 (Jul–Mar) | $222,006.00 | $91,430.00 | 41.2% | Beck Law, Inc.: $91,430.00 Kathleen Smith: $27,420.00 VanDyk Law PC: $23,280.00 |
| TOTALS (FY22–26) | $1,320,210.00 | $271,672.61 | 20.6% |
Source: Sonoma County Superior Court public records, produced in response to Vanguard records requests. FY 2025–26 is year-to-date through March 31, 2026. Highlighted cells indicate Beck Law, Inc.’s payments exceeding $50,000.
MINORS COUNSEL: NOT A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
In criminal court, the right to an attorney is a constitutional guarantee. If you’re accused of a crime and can’t afford a lawyer, the government must provide one. That right was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963. In dependency court, when the government removes children from the home because of abuse or neglect, children are also guaranteed an attorney by state law.
But in a family law divorce or custody case, there is no such guarantee. No law requires a judge to appoint minors’ counsel. It is entirely at the judge’s discretion, based on a vague standard called ‘the best interests of the child.’ No evidence of abuse is required. No finding that either parent is unfit. No proof that the child needs an attorney at all.
Once appointed, the attorney bills. The money comes from the parents, or when parents can’t pay, from the court’s budget — meaning taxpayers. There is no performance review. No required outcome report. No statewide database shows how much public money is spent on attorneys representing children in family law cases.
Critics of the system, including legal scholars and parent advocacy groups, argue that court-appointed minors’ counsel in family law cases may amount to arguably ineffective counsel for the children they represent — with no clear standard of performance, no accountability mechanism, and financial incentives that reward prolonged cases over efficient resolution.
WHEN THE SYSTEM FAILS: CHILDREN PAY THE HIGHEST PRICE
The Sonoma County case is not isolated. The Vanguard’s investigative team has documented the pattern across California.
A Santa Clara County case in which a mother — her children referred to here as “Maddy” and siblings to protect their identities — had no minors’ counsel appointed at all during a four-year family law custody dispute. The mother’s attorney, Elise Mitchell, allegedly pressured her client into signing a stipulated order, a private agreement to avoid a hearing, when a hearing on temporary custody conflicted with Michell’s planned vacation. The stipulated order resulted in Mitchell’s client giving up temporary custody and being placed on supervised visits with her own children. Mitchell reportedly assured her privately paying client the arrangement was “temporary.”
For the past four years, the children could only see their mother with a paid monitor present, as if she were a stranger or a threat. The father was under no monitoring or supervision orders. The stipulated order did not require it.
No minors counsel was appointed in the case.
In addition to her private client work, Elise Mitchell is regularly appointed as minors counsel where she is paid with both public and private funds.
Four years after Maddy’s mother signed the stipulation, at Mitchell’s urging, she could no longer afford to pay Mitchell, and the supervised visitation monitor. Then CPS became involved after one of the children made sexual abuse allegations against the father.
The children were removed from the father’s home in April 2026. The father was arrested and sent to county jail.
The case was transferred to dependency court. Each child was assigned a separate court-appointed attorney — as the law now required. The children ended up separated from each other, bouncing between group homes and out-of-county foster placements as the county’s foster care system is under fire, as previously reported.
The parents are now both under CPS supervised visitation with their children, at public expense. Taxpayers are now paying for the children’s living expenses through the public social services and county foster care system. Their father is a NASA employee, and his divorce attorney throughout the proceedings has been Travis Whitfield.
COMPLAINTS OF UNFAIRNESS GO UNANSWERED
Also in Santa Clara County, Michael Sternberg, a father who operates on social media as Father in Exile, filed a complaint about unfairness in the family court back in 2022. He saw his complaint shredded by the CEO of the local bar, Sherry Diamond. The father has now taken the matter to federal court, adding public expense to an issue that should have been properly handled at a local level.
When a court allows local attorneys to shred complaints or a government email account goes unmonitored because an employee retired, that is not a technical glitch. It is an accountability failure. Published court contact information exists precisely so the public can reach the courts. When complaints disappear into inactive inboxes, oversight disappears with them.
While the Sonoma complaint against Beck sat unread for four months, as he continued billing, the trial continued. The sealing motion was filed, then reversed by the Court of Appeal. The family at the center of all of this — a mother, a child with autism, and years of litigation funded in part by that child’s special needs trust — continued waiting.
Bassi’s response letter to Judge Honigsberg, dated April 26, 2026, directs the presiding judge’s attention to California’s Code of Judicial Ethics, Canon 3D(2), which requires a judge who learns of a substantial likelihood that a lawyer has violated the Rules of Professional Conduct to take appropriate corrective action. It also notes that the presiding judge has administrative authority to remove an attorney from the court’s minors’ counsel panel — an appointment that is not a constitutional right but a discretionary contract, paid with public money.
JUDGES SLOW TO CHANGE
California gives family court judges wide discretion to appoint minors’ counsel. It gives them almost no tools to measure whether those appointments are working. In Sonoma County, one attorney collected more than $271,000 in public payments over roughly three years — more than any other publicly paid children’s attorney and largely for representing a single autistic child whose case has still not been permanently resolved.
In Sonoma County, when a journalist asked for records, the court said they didn’t exist. The journalist had to ask again. When the journalist reported, an attorney subject to that reporting moved to close the courthouse doors. The appellate court opened them back up
When a journalist complained about an appearance of unfairness and attorneys misusing public funds, the journalist was ignored. The journalist continued reporting. Now, a presiding judge has promised to respond in 90 days. What he does next will say a great deal about whether public trust in Sonoma County’s family courts is warranted.
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