San Mateo County’s family court counselor fabricated agreements, buried evidence, and helped set in motion the loss of a mother’s relationship with her son. Seven years later, she is still working there — and the county is only now being asked to explain why.
By Michael Phillips | Riptide Investigations
On October 11, 2018, Brenna Gano walked into a Family Court Services session in Redwood City carrying something no custody mediation should require: a prepared counter-narrative, a knot in her chest, and the quiet conviction that the process had already been decided.
She wasn’t wrong.
The session was run by Samantha Esver-Poon, a child custody recommending counselor employed by San Mateo County Family Court Services. Her role, under California law, was to conduct a neutral assessment and issue recommendations in the best interests of Brenna’s son, Jacob. Instead, according to a formal complaint now before county officials, Esver-Poon accepted a stack of documents from Brenna’s ex-husband at the start of the session — documents Brenna was never shown — and then produced a report presenting pages of detailed custody arrangements as mutual “agreements” that both parents had reached together.
No such agreements had been made.
“I did not have a chance to defend myself in mediation because Paul monopolized the session,” Brenna wrote to her attorneys the following day. Her own lawyers then told her there was nothing to be done. “We need to take the position that the agreements and recommendations should be ordered into effect,” one advised. Another was blunter still: “Do not waste your time. The Court has ruled.”
Those “agreements” — fabricated or mischaracterized in a court document, Brenna now alleges — became the foundation for custody orders that dramatically reduced her time with Jacob and set the terms of a years-long legal and financial siege. Jacob is now 18. He and his mother are estranged.
What the Report Said — And What It Didn’t
The November 2, 2018, FCS report, signed by Esver-Poon and reviewed by supervising counselor Lisa Bergman, LMFT, is a short document — eleven pages including a cover sheet and signature block. Pages seven through ten are formatted as “Agreements.” The report explicitly states: “The parents’ agreements and this counselor’s recommendations follow.”
The level of detail embedded in those “agreements” — a structured alternating-week custody schedule, specific exchange times, therapy mandates, and co-parenting provisions — is not consistent with the product of a single contested mediation session. Brenna’s complaint, filed with the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors on March 27, 2026, and supplemented on April 3, argues that the content instead reflects a pre-formulated plan aligned with her ex-husband’s litigation position, drawn from the documents he handed Esver-Poon at the session’s outset.
It was only in March 2026, in the process of preparing formal complaints, that Brenna re-examined the report closely enough to recognize what had happened. The document that sealed her son’s custody fate had been misrepresenting itself — and her — for more than seven years.
The collateral record in the 2018 report makes the fabrication allegation harder to dismiss. Brenna’s treating psychologist, Dr. Ben Seider, had told FCS that she was a self-referral focused on personal growth; that her challenges arose largely within the context of the marriage; that the father’s allegations of PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder were unsupported; and that she presented as “very grounded, caring, insightful, and introspective.” Dr. Seider also identified something more troubling: that “seeds were being planted, prompting Jacob to perceive the mother as the bad guy.”
FCS did not analyze any of this. The report’s conclusions aligned with the father’s narrative. The recommendations imposed an equal timeshare structure that displaced Brenna as primary caregiver without investigating her caregiving history or applying continuity-of-care principles.
Jacob’s therapist at the time, Dr. Patrick Whalen, had told FCS that Brenna was engaged and appropriately responsive, that she was the parent who had initially supported therapy, and that the father could be “quite possessive.” Dr. Whalen had flagged concern that the father “may not be entirely genuine” in the context of the proceedings and recommended that his interactions with Jacob be monitored. None of that found its way into the report’s conclusions either.
Brenna also documented that Jacob had been pre-conditioned before the FCS session by both his father and his therapist — a detail that, if accurate, would fundamentally compromise the session’s neutrality and the report’s reliability.
Six Years Later, the Same Counselor, the Same Patterns
On January 8, 2024, with Jacob now a teenager and the case still unresolved, Brenna attended a second FCS session. Esver-Poon was again the assigned counselor.
By that point, the court had appointed Dr. Frank Davis as a neutral private child custody evaluator. Dr. Davis spent over a year working with the family. His comprehensive report was submitted to the court for filing on three separate occasions. It was never docketed. It was never entered into the record. It never appeared in the case file as a court document.
Brenna told Esver-Poon directly during the January 2024 session that Judge Cadet had a copy of Dr. Davis’s evaluation in chambers. Esver-Poon did not consult it. She was also aware of a completed Child Protective Services investigation involving Jacob. She did not meaningfully review or incorporate those findings either.
Instead, she drafted her own custody recommendations — recommendations that, according to Brenna’s complaint, continued to favor the father’s position and ignored the most authoritative evidence available to the court.
California Rules of Court are explicit. Rule 5.220(d) requires recommending counselors to consider all relevant information when assessing a child’s best interests. Rule 5.230(b) requires that recommendations be based on adequate investigation and objectively gathered evidence. The failure to review a court-ordered forensic evaluation — one whose neutrality is established by judicial appointment — is not a matter of professional discretion. It is a violation of mandatory procedure.
The 2024 report also reflected what Brenna’s complaint describes as a “180” by Jacob’s therapist: a documented shift in the therapist’s alignment toward the father, contrary to concerns expressed in earlier proceedings. The report cataloged Brenna’s objections — to Dr. Whalen’s conduct, to the suppression of Dr. Davis’s report, to the therapy orders she considered harmful — and then produced recommendations that preserved the status quo that had kept her son from her for years.
“The report documents the disputes,” Brenna wrote in her March 2026 complaint to the Board of Supervisors, “but fails to remedy the very bias that persisted since 2018.”
Dr. Davis’s evaluation cost the family more than $40,000 in attorney and therapy fees — split evenly between Brenna and her ex-husband, a senior technology executive, even though she had never received half his income.
The County Is Now on Notice
Brenna’s formal complaint against Samantha Esver-Poon and San Mateo County Family Court Services was submitted to the Board of Supervisors on March 27, 2026. A supplemental complaint followed on April 3. On April 23, Brenna escalated the matter by email directly to Acting Court CEO Jeniffer Alcantara, the presiding judge, Supervisor Ray Mueller, County Executive Michael Callagy, Assemblymember Kevin Fong, and the court’s ADA coordinator — formally invoking violations of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The ADA dimension is not incidental. Brenna has documented invisible disabilities that substantially affect her ability to process information and communicate under pressure. No accommodations were provided during either FCS proceeding. The complaint argues that the procedures employed — rapid sessions, unequal access to materials, pressure to accept predetermined outcomes — actively exploited those limitations rather than accounting for them.
On April 22, the County Executive’s office confirmed in writing that both complaints had been received and were under review. Supervisor Mueller and CEO Callagy were copied. On April 23, the county advised that a review was underway and that further guidance on submitting supplemental materials would follow.
The county also noted, in the same correspondence, that it does not have jurisdiction over court matters — a disclaimer that illustrates precisely the accountability gap at the heart of this story. Family Court Services operates within the courthouse. Its counselors are county employees. Their reports carry the weight of judicial recommendation. But when those reports are contested, neither the court nor the county accepts unambiguous responsibility for investigating them.
A Pattern the Record Confirms
What happened in Brenna’s FCS sessions does not exist in isolation. Earlier reporting in this series documented that the 2018 custody outcome was openly characterized as a strategic win by attorneys involved in the case — a “huge win with Phil” in the words of contemporaneous correspondence — and that it was used as leverage to structure subsequent financial proceedings, ultimately culminating in a private judging session Brenna describes as coercive and which is now the subject of a motion to set aside.
Brenna’s complaint draws this connection explicitly: “The documented statements that matters should proceed ‘as we managed on the custody issue,’ together with the characterization of a ‘huge win with Phil,’ demonstrate that the custody outcome was viewed and used as a strategic precedent.”
The FCS process was the first gate. It was the point at which a contested custody dispute — one in which the mother had been the primary caregiver, in which the treating professionals had documented concerns about the father’s conduct, and in which the evidence did not support the outcome — was converted into an official record that courts would rely on for years. What entered that gate as a live dispute emerged as settled fact.
Brenna is asking the county to account for how that happened. She is also asking the court. Tomorrow, on May 20, 2026, she is scheduled to appear before San Mateo County judge Vivian Wang on her motion to set aside the Memorandum of Agreement that ended the case’s financial chapter under circumstances she describes as coercive. The FCS record is part of what she intends to present.
Where Things Stand
The San Mateo County complaint review is ongoing. The county has confirmed receipt of both submissions — dated March 27 and April 3, 2026 — and has indicated that Supervisor Mueller and CEO Callagy are aware of the matter.
A new Acting Court CEO, Jeniffer Alcantara, was recently appointed following the departure of her predecessor. The county acknowledged in April correspondence that the transition may affect response timing.
Brenna has also issued a subpoena to Family Court Services for records related to her complaints. A hearing on her motion to set aside the MOA is scheduled for tomorrow, May 20, 2026.
Samantha Esver-Poon continues to work at San Mateo County Family Court Services. Her supervising counselor on the 2018 report, Lisa Bergman, LMFT, signed off on the document that Brenna’s complaint identifies as the foundation of seven years of harm.
The county has not yet said whether it will investigate, discipline, or refer for further review the conduct described in Brenna’s submissions. It has said it is reviewing the matter.
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