NCJ Number
188896
Journal
Journal of the Center for Children and the Courts Volume: 1 Dated: 1999 Pages: 161-168
Date Published
1999
Length
8 pages
Annotation
The California courts described in this article have embarked on ambitious overhauls of their family, juvenile, and probate departments without any additional expenditures of money; their efforts and the national momentum should renew discussions in the California Legislature on the need for unified family courts.
Abstract
The efficacy of the traditional court structure, which routinely assigns a family's divorce case to the family law judge while a juvenile judge presides over their teenager's delinquency case, continues to be questioned by legal scholars. The traditional court's legacy for families coming before it consists of conflicting orders, multiple appearances, uncoordinated treatment plans, unnecessary delays, repeated interviews with the children, lopsided resources, and incomplete information, all of which impede informed decision making. The central principle of a unified family court is that a single, highly trained and committed judge hears the family's multiple cases under a comprehensive jurisdiction. A significant corollary to the unified family court is that a multidisciplinary team of therapeutic and dispute resolution professionals makes recommendations to the judge and provides therapeutic support to the family throughout all proceedings. California courts have not been in the forefront of this effort to create unified family courts; however, some California counties have taken the initiative and reorganized their family courts. Yolo, Butte, and San Francisco counties have all created some type of a unified family court that allows them to track families with multiple cases in the judicial system. This article describes the unified family court in each of these counties. 1 figure and 42 notes