Child-Abduction Units Spent Thousands of Hours and Tens of Millions Recovering Children. “Good Cause” Defense Work Got Minutes a Week — and Audits Called It Non-Reimbursable

August 7, 2026|Julie Holburn

Originally published on Julie M. Anderson-Holburn’s Unveiled and Uncensored

Updated Aug. 7, 2026, 4:49 P.M.

State audits of California’s Child Abduction and Recovery program show tens of millions in taxpayer reimbursements for locating and recovering children in alleged parental-abduction cases. For years those same audits treated work evaluating parents who withhold children under Penal Code section 278.7 — the Legislature’s “good cause” protection — as non-reimbursable. That interpretation is now directly before the Commission on State Mandates. Staff’s Proposed Decision in the Los Angeles County Incorrect Reduction Claim, set for hearing Aug. 14, recommends that the Commission reject the Controller’s blanket exclusion. Staff holds that good-cause evaluation is already embedded in the existing mandate under Family Code sections 3130–3131 (supported by the predecessor statute, former Penal Code section 277) and is therefore reimbursable when it occurs as part of locating a child, enforcing a custody order, or deciding whether to return a child.

For over 30 years California has operated a state-mandated reimbursement program that pays district attorneys unlimited funds to locate, recover and return children in alleged parental-abduction cases. The Custody of Minors — Child Abduction and Recovery program traces to a 1979 test-claim decision and Parameters and Guidelines first adopted in 1981 and last substantively amended in 2009. In that time the statute recognizing that some parents may lawfully withhold a child to protect the child from abuse has never been added to the funding framework.

As that gap now sits before the Commission on State Mandates, with a public hearing scheduled for Aug. 14, 2026, several pending cases illustrate what the imbalance can look like in practice. Public hearing details appear at the end of this article. The public may attend in person or via zoom and submit comments in person or by prior submission.

1996 —The Legislature Added A Protection The Funding Rules Never Caught Up To

That year lawmakers enacted Penal Code section 278.7, Good Cause defense, formally recognizing that not every parent who withholds a child from the other parent commits a crime. Under the statute a parent may lawfully withhold a child when the parent holds a good-faith, reasonable belief that the child would suffer immediate bodily injury, emotional harm, or domestic violence provided the parent meets the statute’s reporting requirements.

Thirty years later section 278.7 has never been expressly listed by its current statutory number in the program’s operative Parameters and Guidelines. It is not identified as a reimbursable activity by that number and has never been the subject of a claiming instruction under its own name.

The result is a funding structure that supports investigations focused on recovering children in alleged parental-abduction cases while providing no state reimbursement for investigations centered on parents who withhold children under California’s statutory “good cause” protection.

What The Child Abduction And Recovery Program Covers

A statewide cost estimate for the program was adopted in 1982. California law requires district attorneys to perform specific duties involving children who are allegedly unlawfully taken, concealed or detained. Those duties include locating missing children, enforcing custody and visitation orders, recovering abducted children, coordinating returns, filing civil enforcement actions, appearing in court, and coordinating with law enforcement and other agencies.

Because the duties are state mandates, counties may seek reimbursement for eligible costs. Recent State Controller’s Office audits of six counties — representing roughly one-third of the counties audited under the program during the periods examined — show those counties collectively claimed more than $25.5 million in program costs. The state initially paid most claims as filed. On audit, however, the Controller subsequently disallowed the large majority of those costs in nearly every county reviewed since November 2022.

Family Code section 3130 authorizes district attorneys to locate children, enforce custody and visitation orders, recover children unlawfully withheld, coordinate returns and bring civil enforcement actions. Those activities form the core of the mandate and account for the overwhelming majority of work performed by county child-abduction units.

Auditors repeatedly found that counties failed to adequately document employee time, actual hours worked, activities performed and supporting records. The audits do not conclude that reimbursement policies influence charging decisions or prosecutorial judgment, and they do not accuse district attorneys of ignoring abuse allegations because of funding. Standing alongside the documentation findings is a second, consistent finding repeated across nearly every county audited: activities related to Penal Code section 278.7 are not identified in the Parameters and Guidelines and therefore are not reimbursable.

The Funding Framework Never Caught Up

The Legislature recognized that child protection sometimes requires immediate action. California’s reimbursement system never squarely reflected that recognition. Section 278.7 has never been the subject of a claiming instruction or a claiming-form category under its current number. The Controller’s audits state, repeatedly, that activities related to Penal Code section 278.7 are not identified in the Parameters and Guidelines and are therefore not reimbursable.

That is the Controller’s position, but it is not the only reading of the record.

Commission staff have concluded that the Controller’s exclusion of good-cause work is incorrect as a matter of law. Penal Code sections 278, 278.5, and 278.7 do not impose new mandated duties; they help define the scope of the duties already created by Family Code sections 3130 and 3131. The Parameters and Guidelines authorize reimbursement for “all actions necessary” to obtain compliance with custody and visitation orders and for using any appropriate civil or criminal court action. The only explicit exclusion is the cost of criminal prosecution that begins after the defendant’s first appearance once the child has been returned. Therefore, staff finds, activities related to good-cause cases that fall within those reimbursable categories must be paid.

Former section 277 supplied a comparable good-cause protection before California reorganized its child-abduction statutes in 1996. It applied when no custody order existed and required proof that a custodial parent acted maliciously and “without good cause.” The Legislature defined good cause as a good-faith belief that taking or concealing the child was necessary to protect the child from immediate bodily injury or emotional harm. The historical Parameters and Guidelines expressly identified former section 277 alongside sections 278 and 278.5. Although current section 278.7 was never separately added by number, former section 277 remained in the statutory caption after the 1996 amendments. Commission staff therefore contend that good-cause evaluation is embedded in reimbursable custody-enforcement work rather than categorically excluded — a reading the Controller has not adopted in the field.

Riverside Said The Quiet Part Out Loud

One county openly challenged the Controller’s position. Riverside County’s district attorney’s office told auditors that “Good Cause statements are inextricably intertwined with our Child Abduction duties” — that prosecutors cannot decide whether to file a child-abduction case until they determine whether a parent acted with a good-faith and reasonable belief the child was in danger. The office went further: “The DAO will not return a child to a parent when the DAO believes the child may be placed in danger by doing so.”

Those statements acknowledge something many protective parents have argued for years: investigating abuse allegations is inseparable from deciding whether a child should be returned. The Controller disagreed — not on child-safety grounds, but because the reimbursement rules do not specifically mention section 278.7. Therefore, the Controller found, those costs are not reimbursable.

The result is a policy distinction that has held for three decades: California reimburses counties for investigating alleged parental child abductions under Penal Code sections 278 and 278.5. California does not reimburse investigative work devoted to determining whether section 278.7 — the Legislature’s own statutory good-cause protection — applies.

Orange County And Sacramento: Different Treatments Of Limited Good-Cause Work

Leon Page, county counsel, drafted Orange County’s response to the controller’s audit sheds light on how much of the child-abduction unit’s work actually involved section 278.7. According to the county, the Controller disallowed 100 percent of more than $3.07 million in claimed labor and related indirect costs after auditors learned that investigative assistants entered reports involving potential section 278.7 matters into the database.

Yet during the audit, according to Orange County’s written response, the investigative assistant explained that entering a good-cause report required only two to three minutes per report, with approximately three to six reports per week. That equates to roughly 9 to 18 minutes per week — less than one-third of an hour each week, or approximately 8 to 16 hours annually — compared with thousands of hours spent performing the unit’s remaining mandated duties.

Orange County argued that this limited activity could not reasonably justify eliminating reimbursement for virtually the entire program. If any adjustment were appropriate, the county said, it should reflect only the limited time actually attributable to section 278.7.

Sacramento County’s audit used a different approach. For the period July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2019, Sacramento claimed $1,885,876. The Controller allowed $1,420,782 and disallowed $465,094. Of the salaries-and-benefits disallowance, $32,276 was attributed to good-cause cases under section 278.7; the remainder largely reflected non-program-specific “standard distributed” time that the Controller found was not actual costs traceable to mandated activities. Materials-and-supplies costs allocated across the unit rather than supported by source documents accounted for another $217,020 in disallowances.

Orange County pointed to the Sacramento methodology as closer to its own estimate that only a small fraction of child-abduction unit work involved good cause section 278.7 reporting. The comparison raises an obvious question: if Sacramento’s audit treated good-cause work as representing only a small percentage of overall labor, 2.6%, why was Orange County’s claim reduced by 100 percent based in part on similarly limited activity?

A Pending Reversal

That may be changing. Commission on State Mandates staff have issued a Proposed Decision in Los Angeles County’s Incorrect Reduction Claim (IRC 25-4237-I-05) involving more than $10 million in claimed costs. Staff find that the Controller’s exclusion of good-cause work is “incorrect as a matter of law.” They reason that Penal Code sections 278, 278.5, and 278.7 do not impose new mandated duties; they help define the scope of the duties already created by Family Code sections 3130 and 3131. The Parameters and Guidelines authorize reimbursement for “all actions necessary” to obtain compliance with custody and visitation orders and for using any appropriate civil or criminal court action. The only explicit exclusion is the cost of criminal prosecution that begins after the defendant’s first appearance once the child has been returned. Therefore, staff concludes, activities related to good-cause cases that fall within those reimbursable categories must be paid.

The Proposed Decision also finds that the wholesale disallowance of Los Angeles County’s claim to zero was “arbitrary, capricious, and entirely lacking in evidentiary support,” noting that the Controller’s own audit acknowledged the child-abduction unit’s continued operation and hundreds of child recoveries during the audit period and had allowed overtime hours supported by descriptions of mandated activities using the same records it rejected for regular time.

Riverside County, facing an identical disallowance in its own pending claim, filed comments supporting the staff recommendation in full and asked the Commission to apply its holdings consistently across all pending claims — including Sacramento’s, Ventura’s and its own. Riverside’s filing also pointed to a March 16, 2026, jurisdictional clarification letter from the Commission’s executive director, which it says confirms that neither the function-level documentation standard nor the good-cause exclusion the Controller has applied in the field has any basis in the current Parameters and Guidelines.

The Proposed Decision does not create a new funded activity called “good-cause investigation,” nor does it require district attorneys to spend more time assessing abuse claims. It holds only that when those assessments already occur as part of the existing mandate work, the state must reimburse the costs rather than zero them out.

In response to questions about the legal basis for treating good-cause evaluation as reimbursable and about possible next steps if the Commission rejects the staff recommendation, Commission Executive Director Juliana Gmur stated that she could not comment beyond what is already contained in the Proposed Decision. She directed attention to the official document that will be considered on August 14 (available at csm.ca.gov) and noted that the Commission, as a quasi-judicial body, can only decide the matters properly before it. Any further actions after the decision would be up to the parties.

This is the only substantive reply received so far from the Commission, the State Controller’s Office, the Department of Finance, POST, or the district attorney’s offices contacted for comment.

The Commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the Los Angeles claim on Aug. 14, 2026. What the Commission decides will determine, for the first time in the program’s 45-year history, whether California’s own mandate-review body agrees that good-cause evaluation was always supposed to be funded when it is part of enforcing custody orders — or whether the Controller’s long-standing practice of excluding it stands.

Where The Funding Gap Meets The Courtroom

The clearest illustration of what this structural gap can mean for a family is unfolding in Ventura County. In People v. Genevie Esquivel (Case No. 2025000146), the Ventura County district attorney has argued that Penal Code section 278.7 applies only to prosecutions under section 278.5, not the charge Esquivel faces under section 278, and has asked the court to exclude evidence concerning alleged abuse, her stated safety concerns and her reasons for withholding her child as legally irrelevant. Whether that legal argument prevails is for the court to decide. But the category of evidence the prosecution seeks to exclude — abuse allegations, safety concerns, the good-cause framework — is the same category of work the state’s own audits say was never funded.

[READ: She Said She Was Fleeing Abuse. He Said He Was “Untouchable.” What Did Ventura County’s DA Know?]

Esquivel’s case is not the only one where the pattern is visible.

In Orange County, records show that Laura’s House, a domestic-violence shelter assisting Tawny Minna Grossman, never informed her about the county’s Good Cause Report form despite its long involvement with her case, including efforts to obtain a restraining order and a Safe at Home address. After what a shelter advocate described as “aggressive contact” from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office in early 2024, Laura’s House advised Grossman to stop receiving services through the agency and to seek a Safe at Home address and continued support through another shelter, citing concerns for her safety and the confidentiality of her information.
At Grossman’s preliminary hearing, OCDA Investigator Joe Faria testified that he “thinks” he provided Minna-Grossman with the Penal Code section 278.7 good-cause report; communications reviewed by this reporter indicate he did not, and Grossman has said she was unaware of the form’s existence. In a written communication to Grossman, Faria stated he assumed a domestic-violence advocate had told her that the district attorney’s office receives good-cause reports.
Most parents in Orange County have never heard of a good-cause defense or report; the form is not readily available online. During an interview, when asked for a copy of the Orange County version, Laura’s House staff said they were “not allowed to release a copy.” When asked about providing good-cause information or the form to victims, a staffer said, “We are instructed to direct victims to seek relief via family court.”

[READ: OCDA Ignores Good Cause Law, Family Court Violates Due Process in Tawny Minna Grossman Case]

[OC court whistleblower revelations, felony charges, OCDA intimidation tactics against protective mother]

[UPDATE: Orange County Mother Seeks Removal of Minor’s Counsel Tracy Willis, Alleging Coordination with OCDA Prosecutor Tamara Jacobs]

In Los Angeles County, Giselle Farias Smiel — who has remained in her community and home for five years — has faced a pending Penal Code section 278.5 charge for roughly 11 months without receiving discovery while separated from her children. Public defender Jessica Schibler confirmed by email on Aug. 4 that, after involving head public defender Lisa Roth, the office agreed to provide Smiel with her discovery at the next court hearing set for Aug. 27.

[READ: Abuser Held on $50K, Gets Diversion and 10-Year CPO — Later, Kids Refuse Visitation. Mom Gets Arrested, Charged With 5 Felonies, Held on $500K]

A related but legally distinct matter involves OCDA Nate Ridlon and Tammy Jacobs. An Orange County case has moved into a Hague Convention proceeding in the United Kingdom. Hague cases turn on the treaty’s own “grave risk” defense under Article 13(b) — a different legal standard than California’s section 278.7 — but the dynamic experts have flagged is familiar: a parent’s abuse concerns raised, contested, ignored, or seemingly uninvestigated before rapid enforcement action to remove the child moved forward.

[READ: From Criminal Convictions to Parental Alienation Claims to the UK Hague Court: The Nicely-Castro Case Raises Questions About Orange County Family Court, the OCDA and California Child-Safety Laws]

[READ: Orange County Mother’s Plea for Protection: Local Police and OCDA’s office Fail to Act]

None of these cases, standing alone, proves that a district attorney’s office was influenced by what California does or does not reimburse. The audits themselves are careful not to draw that causal line, and neither does this reporting. Standing alone, the audits do not establish that reimbursement policies drive individual charging decisions or litigation strategy.

The larger pattern

What the record does show is structural, and it has held for three decades.

Orange County’s own estimates suggest good-cause reporting consumed only a matter of minutes each week, while the overwhelming majority of staff time — thousands of hours — involved locating children, enforcing custody orders, conducting investigations, coordinating recoveries, appearing in court and performing the remaining activities reimbursed under the program.

If those estimates are accurate, the controversy before the Commission is not about a program primarily devoted to Penal Code section 278.7. Rather, it concerns whether a comparatively small amount of work evaluating California’s statutory good-cause protection should affect reimbursement for a program otherwise dedicated to recovering and returning children under Family Code section 3130 and the Child Abduction and Recovery mandate.

The audits document a funding structure that has reimbursed the work of recovering children for decades while providing no reimbursement for evaluating the Legislature’s statutory good-cause protection. Orange County’s own figures and Sacramento’s percentage-based disallowance both indicate that the time devoted to section 278.7 activity was minimal relative to the overall program.

Whether that structural imbalance creates an institutional incentive to treat cases as unlawful withholding rather than examine whether section 278.7 applies is a policy question the audits themselves do not answer. They simply record that one category of child-custody enforcement has carried a dedicated stream of state funding for thirty years and the companion protection for parents acting to shield a child from abuse has not.

Moving forward

The Commission’s Aug. 14 hearing will not resolve any individual family-law or criminal case, and it cannot undo 30 years of a program built and funded around one set of statutes while omitting its companion protection for parents and children who may be subject to abuse.

The Commission’s August 14 decision will answer, for the first time, whether California’s own mandate-review body agrees that good-cause evaluation was always supposed to be funded when it is part of enforcing custody orders — or whether the Controller’s long-standing practice of excluding it stands. Whatever the Commission decides will not rewrite how district attorneys allocate investigative resources or handle individual cases. It will only determine whether the state continues to reimburse the recovery-focused work while treating the Legislature’s own good-cause protection as an unfunded afterthought.

Should the state continue spending tens of millions to recover children while providing no comparable support for investigating whether those children were withheld to protect them from abuse?

Public hearing on August 14

The Commission on State Mandates will consider the Los Angeles County Incorrect Reduction Claim (and the staff Proposed Decision recommending that good-cause-related activities be treated as reimbursable) on Friday, August 14, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. The hearing will be held in person at the Jesse M. Unruh State Office Building, 915 Capitol Mall, Room 121 (The Boardroom), Sacramento, and via Zoom.

To observe or speak via Zoom

Link: [Zoom Hearing]

Passcode: 081426

One-tap mobile and dial-in numbers are also available on the Commission’s website.

Anyone who plans to testify (in person or remotely) must notify the Commission office by noon on August 11 and provide names and email addresses so speakers can be added to the witness list and receive a panelist link.

Written comments

Comments filed at least 15 days before the hearing are included in the Commissioners’ hearing binders.
Comments filed more than five days in advance are included in the meeting binders if feasible.
Comments filed less than five days before the hearing must be e-filed as a PDF through the Commission’s system at least 24 hours prior to the meeting.

Focused legal arguments about the Parameters and Guidelines are most likely to influence the Commission’s decision on the Incorrect Reduction Claim. Broader testimony about the real-world consequences of a funding structure that has long prioritized recovery work over evaluation of California’s statutory good-cause protection can still register as a public statement of priorities.

Full participation details, accessibility requests, and the agenda are available on the Commission’s website.

This ongoing series on the California family and probate court and CPS corruption crisis—and the broader nationwide family court crisis—aims to bring national attention to systemic failures and to advocate for meaningful reform and accountability.

This article is investigative reporting intended for public-information and public-interest purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, and nothing herein should be relied upon as a substitute for consultation with a licensed attorney or qualified legal professional. References to laws, court proceedings, or legal processes are presented for journalistic and informational purposes.

Whistleblowers and victims of family court, CPS, probate court, IDEA/ADA or foster care corruption anywhere in the U.S.—please contact this reporter at juliea005@proton.me or rjh.investigative.reports@gmail.com.

Julie M. Anderson-Holburn is a California-based investigative journalist reporting on criminal and family court corruption, judicial abuse, domestic violence, child abuse and systemic failures. Her work is published on NewsBreak, Substack, and The Family Court Circus, and has been featured by the Center for Judicial Excellence and National Safe Parents. Julie believes that exposing the truth is the first step toward meaningful reform.

Thank you.

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