Political newcomers vie for Family Court bench

Attorney Patricia Marr and prosecutor Gwynneth Smith are hoping to fill the Clark County Family Court Dept. D vacancy resulting from Judge Bob Teuton’s decision not to seek reelection.   

Marr moved to Las Vegas from Ohio in 1985. She worked in the hospitality industry, and as a single parent, obtained a psychology degree from UNLV. She eventually put herself through UNLV’s Boyd School of Law. 

In 22 years as an attorney she’s practiced in a variety of specialties, including divorce and custody, guardianship, abuse and neglect, bankruptcy, personal injury, tribal, administrative, and criminal law. She’s appeared before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Nevada Supreme Court. 

Dept. D handles divorce and custody cases. Marr says she’s “done thousands of them” and says she has the ability to handle complex matters that arise in divorce, such as business evaluations and breach of contract. 

Marr says she’s running because she’s disappointed with the quality of candidates who seek election to the Family Court bench. She thinks judges should be appointed.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not perfect either, but when I see poor decisions being made that are actually harming people, it’s stressful. It costs money the clients don’t have,” she said. “We need experienced, qualified people on the bench. For whatever reason, we’re not getting that in Family Court.” 

Marr says her goal as a judge would be to “de-escalate and explain that we’re here for resolution. Everybody has this ‘I need to win’ mentality.  Nobody wins down at Family Court,” she observes. “You’re talking about the conclusion of a marriage. It’s sad, but the goal is to get everybody on with their lives and to new beginnings.” 

Marr has raised about $15,500 and has about $1,000 remaining. She is endorsed by Veterans in Politics and by attorney Robert Eglet. 

Smith, a Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney, earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Palo Alto University and obtained her law degree from Golden State University.

She says her mental health background would be an asset in maintaining an environment in which litigants can approach emotionally charged issues with decorum and cooperation. 

“So many of the cases that come to Family Court involve underlying issues that are bringing families to court or causing them to stay there,” Smith said. “I’m clinically trained and spend a lot of time working with kids and families outside of a courtroom on mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence. I have a different perspective on what their experience is – not just as parties in a courtroom, but as human beings trying to resolve their issues and reunify their families.”

Smith joined the District Attorney’s office in 2012 as a law clerk and became a deputy DA in criminal matters. In 2014 she took on cases in the juvenile division where she represented the Department of Family Services in child welfare, dependency, and foster care cases. 

Smith is currently responsible for Family Court’s mental health court for foster youth who are hospitalized for psychiatric issues. Nevada, she says, is short on resources to address the needs of its youngest residents, particularly in the area of mental health. 

“If you work in any capacity with kids and families in our court system, you really see that,” she said. “We don’t have enough hospital or outpatient placements. We need more of everything.” 

Smith says she’s developed expertise in knowing “what’s available and what works. I do think that’s an asset in decision making.”

In 2023 Smith led the legislative workgroup that revised Nevada law pertaining to psychiatric admissions for youth in foster care, and she’s been a member of the board of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Southern Nevada since 2019.

About half of the Family Courts, including Dept. D, hear divorce and custody matters exclusively. 

Smith has no experience in domestic cases, but says she’s attended conferences and researched statutes and case law to get up to speed on complex issues such as division of assets.

While obtaining her PhD she “did a year of training with a high-conflict custody evaluator” and says in her role as a DA in dependency court, she receives cases from divorce court and has an understanding of what they entail. 

She says she has experience working with families and suggests the “thorniest issues” that arise are common to all Family Court cases. “Parental substance use, untreated mental health, parent-child contact, reunification, domestic violence – those kinds of issues are certainly the bread and butter of what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years.”

Smith asserts she has “extensive courtroom experience and a lot of trial experience,” and appears in court three to four days a week on hearings involving allegations of abuse and neglect and termination of parental rights. She also oversees specialized dockets, including mental health court; a specialty court for children who are in the foster and delinquency systems; and the Safe Babies Court, a national model she helped implement in Clark County, which is focused on providing stability to foster babies from birth through the age of three. 

As of July, Smith had raised $56,000 and had $25,000 in the bank. She is endorsed by more than a dozen law enforcement organizations, Culinary Local 226, Service Employees International Union, Teamsters Nevada, Hispanics in Politics, and The Third Branch PAC, which is funded exclusively by the Nevada Republican Club.