how do I add “home” menu item conditionally to custom menus?

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So, based on your comment:

wp_nav_menu is what I’m using now. But now I have to add ‘home’ menu item depending on certain criteria

I’m going to propose a solution that will allow you to add a “Home” menu item to any menu, based on arbitrary conditions, using the wp_nav_menu_items filter (see tutorial here):

<?php
function wpse45802_add_nav_menu_home_link( $items, $args ) {
    $home_link = '';
    if ( INSERT CONDITIONALS HERE ) {
        // Determine menu item class
        $home_link_class = ( is_front_page() ? ' class="current-menu-item"' : '' );
        // Build home link markup
        $home_link = '<li' . $home_link_class . '>';
        $home_link .= $args->before;
        $home_link .= '<a href="' . home_url() . '">';
        $home_link .= $args->link_before . 'Home' . $args->link_after;
        $home_link .= '</a>';
        $home_link .= $args->after;
        $home_link .= '</li>';
    }
    // Merge home link menu item with nav menu items
    $modified_items = $home_link . $items;
    // Return the result
    return $modified_items;
}
add_filter( 'wp_nav_menu_items', 'wpse45802_add_nav_menu_home_link', 10, 2 );
?>

If you need to limit the filter further, perhaps to filter only certain theme_location outputs, let me know, and I’ll update. Also, if you can describe your actual conditionals, I’ll add those as well.