AAMFT and Testimonials: What Marriage and Family Therapists Are Actually Allowed to Do

Ethics & Online Presence · Private Practice

AAMFT and Testimonials: What Marriage and Family Therapists Are Actually Allowed to Do

The AAMFT Code of Ethics testimonials rule is Standard 9.2, and it bars AAMFT members from soliciting testimonials or endorsements from current clients or other persons who are vulnerable to undue influence. That rule is newer than most MFTs realize. It took effect on January 1, 2026, and the Code it replaced never used the word “testimonial” once.

Justin De Angel, Director, Transference StudioSeptember 202615 min read

If you went looking for AAMFT’s position on client testimonials a few years ago and came away confused, it wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t one. Psychology, counseling, and social work have all carried an explicit testimonial standard for years. AAMFT didn’t.

That changed on January 1, 2026, when the revised Code took effect and added a single sentence to the advertising standard. It’s short, it’s easy to miss, and it moves marriage and family therapy from no written rule to a clear one.

Our overview across professions (Can Therapists Ask for Reviews?) covers the broad strokes for therapists generally. This guide is about the AAMFT Code, what it now says, and the parts of the question it still doesn’t answer.

What the AAMFT Code of Ethics Testimonials Rule Actually Says

Standard 9.2, Promotional Materials, sits inside Standard IX on advertising. Here it is in full, word for word, from the AAMFT Code of Ethics effective January 1, 2026:

Marriage and family therapists ensure that advertisements and publications in any and all media are true, accurate, and comply with applicable law and professional standards. Marriage and family therapists do not solicit testimonials or endorsements from current clients or from other persons who are vulnerable to undue influence.

Two sentences. The first is an accuracy rule that has been there in some form for years. The second is the new one.

Notice what it prohibits. Soliciting. The act of asking. It doesn’t say testimonials are banned, and it doesn’t say a therapist may never publish praise. It says you can’t go and ask for it from two groups of people, current clients and other persons who are vulnerable to undue influence.

Notice also that it covers endorsements, not just testimonials. An endorsement is broader. A client agreeing to be named on your site as someone who recommends you, or tagging your practice in a public post at your request, falls inside the same sentence.

One word AAMFT left out

Read the four professions’ clauses side by side and AAMFT’s is the plainest of them, in a way most summaries miss:

• AAMFT 9.2: “current clients or from other persons who are vulnerable to undue influence.”
• APA 5.05: “current therapy clients/patients or other persons who because of their particular circumstances are vulnerable to undue influence.”
• NASW 4.07(b): “current clients or from other people who, because of their particular circumstances, are vulnerable to undue influence.”
• ACA C.3.b: “current clients, former clients, or any other persons who may be vulnerable to undue influence.”

APA and NASW both narrow the second group to people made vulnerable by their particular circumstances. AAMFT has no such limiter. Its clause asks a flat question, is this person vulnerable to undue influence from you, with nothing tying the answer to a specific situation. We can’t tell you whether the drafters meant that, and AAMFT hasn’t published a commentary saying so. But if you were relying on advice written from APA’s wording, you were reading a narrower sentence than the one that governs you.

What the 2015 Code Said Instead

Here is the same standard, 9.2, from the Code that was in force from January 1, 2015 until the end of 2025:

Marriage and family therapists ensure that advertisements and publications in any media are true, accurate, and in accordance with applicable law.

That’s the whole thing. No testimonials, no solicitation, no vulnerability test. Search the entire 2015 Code for the word “testimonial” and you find nothing. The word doesn’t appear. Neither does “solicit” or “endorse.”

This matters for two reasons. If you built your website or review process before 2026 on advice that “AAMFT doesn’t have a testimonial rule,” the factual half of that was right. The safety half was never as solid as it sounded, because 1.3 Multiple Relationships told therapists to “avoid exploiting the trust and dependency” of clients, and 3.8 Exploitation was in force the whole time. Either could reach a therapist leaning on a current client for a review. Anything on your site that came from a solicited client endorsement is worth a fresh look.

It also explains a real gap in the guidance you’ll find online. Marketing advice for therapists tends to lump all license types together and quote APA’s or ACA’s rule as though it covers everyone. For MFTs before 2026 it didn’t. Now something close to it does, but not identical, and the differences are where the decisions sit.

Why "Who Is the Client" Is Harder for MFTs

Every one of the four codes handles multi-person work somewhere. APA 10.02 makes psychologists clarify at the outset which individuals are clients. ACA B.4.b makes counselors define who the client is and document a written confidentiality agreement among all involved parties. NASW 1.07(f) makes social workers seek agreement among the parties about each person’s right to confidentiality.

What AAMFT does differently is put it first and make it operative. The multi-person client is the opening premise of the entire confidentiality standard:

Marriage and family therapists have unique confidentiality concerns because the client in a therapeutic relationship may be more than one person. Marriage and family therapists respect and guard the confidences of each individual client in the client system.

Think about what that does to a testimonial. A husband writes a glowing review of the couples work you did. He’s describing therapy that a second person was in. Her participation, and the fact she was in treatment at all, is now public because of something he wrote. She never agreed to that.

Then Standard 2.2 turns the premise into a rule, and it is the one sentence in this whole Code that lands most directly on republishing a testimonial:

When providing couple, family, or group treatment, the marriage and family therapist does not disclose information outside the treatment context without a written authorization from each individual competent to provide written authorization.

Putting a couple’s testimonial on your homepage is a disclosure outside the treatment context. 2.2 doesn’t have to be stretched to reach it. Note the standard’s own phrase, “each individual competent to provide written authorization,” which is not the same as every person who sat in the room. A child in family therapy usually cannot give it; a parent or guardian’s authorization is the relevant one. 2.2 also carries a second requirement, that you “must not reveal any individual’s confidences to others in the client unit without the prior written permission of that individual.”

Standard 2.4 covers what you write publicly, and it leaves one door open. Client and clinical materials may be used in “teaching, writing, consulting, research, and public presentations” only with written authorization under 2.2, or when appropriate steps have been taken to protect client identity and confidentiality as permitted by law. So authorization is not the only route the Code names. Genuine de-identification is the other one.

Two caveats on that door. Marketing isn’t named in 2.4’s list, and reasonable people can argue about whether a website counts as writing or a public presentation. That ambiguity is not a green light. It’s a reason to get the question answered before you publish, not after. And de-identifying a couple’s testimonial is harder than it sounds. Strip the names off “my husband and I came in after his affair” and the partner still knows which client wrote it, as do the friends who knew they were in therapy.

What Standard 9.2 Leaves Unanswered

The new rule is clear about the ask. It’s silent on two questions that come up constantly.

Former clients. 9.2 names current clients and other persons vulnerable to undue influence. It never mentions former clients. Neither does APA’s rule. ACA’s does, explicitly. Here’s how the four codes line up:

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Silence isn’t permission, and AAMFT has said so in its own words. The 2015 Code’s preamble stated plainly that “the absence of an explicit reference to a specific behavior or situation in the Code does not mean that the behavior is ethical or unethical.” The 2026 Code carries the same idea, noting that it “seeks to be comprehensive” but “is not exhaustive.”

So the test that remains is the second half of the sentence, whether this person is vulnerable to undue influence from you. Someone who finished six sessions two years ago and someone whose custody evaluation you contributed to last spring are not in the same position, and the standard makes you think about which one you’re looking at.

Unsolicited testimonials. 9.2 says nothing about a review that arrives on its own. ACA built a route for that, requiring counselors to discuss the implications and get permission first. NASW closed the route, banning even the request for consent. AAMFT does neither, which in our reading leaves the answer sitting in Standard II rather than Standard IX. For couple and family work, that’s the stricter place for it to sit.

Our companion guide to ACA C.3.b for counselors goes through that route in detail, and a guide to NASW 4.07(b) for social workers is coming. If you’re dually licensed, you have to satisfy both sets of obligations, not pick one.

What to Put on Your Website Instead

Take client testimonials off the table and you still have most of what actually persuades someone to book. It just isn’t quotes.

Colleagues and referral partners are usually the cleanest option. A peer, a pediatrician who sends you families, or an attendee from a workshop you taught can often speak to your work without being vulnerable to undue influence from you. Note the “usually.” 9.2 defines the group by vulnerability, not by job title, and the Code’s own 3.8 opens by “recognizing the potential for power imbalances” before naming students, trainees, supervisees, employees and colleagues in the same breath as clients. So ask what leverage you hold over the person. A supervisee whose hours you sign off, an employee, someone whose referrals you reciprocate, or anyone in an evaluative relationship with you is inside the risk zone, not outside it.

Aggregate data can do the same job as a testimonial without naming anyone. Completion rates, pre and post scores on a standard measure, average wait to a first appointment. Two things make this safe rather than clever. A published outcome figure is itself an advertisement, so 9.2’s first sentence applies in full and the number has to be “true, accurate, and comply with applicable law and professional standards.” Publish the denominator, the period and the measure, and be able to show your working.

And small numbers stop being anonymous. “Four of five couples completed treatment” in a practice where the local referral network knows who your couples are is a disclosure wearing a percentage sign. If your n is small, say so, or don’t publish it.

Then there’s the writing. Describing your model plainly, being specific about what you take and what you refer out, showing what a first session looks like. Our guide to building trust without client testimonials covers what moves people to pick up the phone.

Checklist

Reviews You Never Asked For

Someone leaves you a five-star Google review describing the couples work you did with them. You didn’t ask. What now?

Leave it where it is. That’s the low-risk answer and usually the right one. The review existing is not your act. Screenshotting it onto your homepage is.

Don’t reply publicly, even to say thank you. A reply confirms that the person was in treatment with you, and in couples work it can confirm the same about a partner who never posted anything. That’s a confidentiality problem living entirely outside Standard IX.

In the United States it is also a HIPAA problem, which is the version with a price on it. If you’re a covered entity, the Privacy Rule governs this conduct independently of anything AAMFT writes. In June 2023 the HHS Office for Civil Rights settled with Manasa Health Center, a New Jersey adult and child psychiatric practice, after it posted a response to a patient’s negative online review that included specific information about that person’s diagnosis and treatment. Three other patients had been treated the same way. The practice paid $30,000 and took a corrective action plan monitored for two years.

The OCR director’s statement was not subtle: “OCR continues to receive complaints about health care providers disclosing their patients’ protected health information on social media or on the internet in response to negative reviews. Simply put, this is not allowed.” The AAMFT Ethics Committee can act on your membership. OCR can fine you.

If the review carries details that could identify someone, you can reach out privately and ask whether they’d soften or remove them. You can’t require it. And if the reviewer is a current client, that conversation belongs inside the clinical relationship, handled as clinical work, not sent as a marketing message. Our guide to getting Google reviews ethically covers the mechanics.

One more thing, plainly. The AAMFT Code binds AAMFT members and is enforced by the AAMFT Ethics Committee. Your board decides whether you keep practicing. Where the two differ you generally have to satisfy both, and the Code tells members that “if the AAMFT Code of Ethics prescribes a standard higher than that required by law, marriage and family therapists must meet the higher standard.” That is an obligation of membership, not a rule your board is bound by. This guide explains the national Code. It isn’t legal or ethics advice, and it isn’t a substitute for your board’s regulations.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and references

The ethics codes and enforcement records cited here are primary sources, publicly available from each governing body, and were fetched and read directly before publication rather than summarized from search results. This guide explains and compares the relevant provisions. It is not legal or professional ethics advice. For guidance specific to your license and jurisdiction, consult a professional ethics consultant or your state board.