Ethical Decisions of the Family Counselor

Ronald D. Aucutt (Attorney, Tysons Corner, Virginia and Washington, D.C.) recently published his article entitled Creed or Code: The Calling of the Counselor in Advising Families, 36 ACTEC L.J. 669 (Spring 2011). The abstract of the article is below:

Families succeed by maintaining a tradition of regular, honest, and wide-ranging communication. The highest calling of a counselor is to encourage and enable such communication, both in planned family meetings and as an ongoing mindset. This requires the counselor to earn the family’s trust and to engage in open-minded listening that demonstrates that the family comes first.

But whenever the counselor has contact with so many members of the family, there are ethical implications that sometimes pose impossible dilemmas regarding conflicts of interest and the flow of information. The prevailing rules of professional conduct, rooted in the needs and limitations of litigation, are not always helpful, particularly when they might require the trusted and understanding counselor to withdraw from the engagement at a time of stress or conflict when the family might need that counselor’s services the most. At those times, the counselor must consider whether technical rules should yield to the higher creed of placing the family first.