Amicus Brief in People v. Gray in the Illinois Supreme Court

Chicago Appleseed and Chicago Council of Lawyers have joined an amicus curiae brief in the Illinois Supreme court case of People v Matthew Gray. The brief was authored by LAF and Dentons US LLP and we are grateful for their work and the opportunity to join the brief.   The Defendant, Matthew...

Hearing Officers in a Consolidated Domestic Relations Division

Three years after our Constitutionality analysis of the child support courts in the Cook County Domestic Relations Division, Presiding Judge Grace Dickler has issued an operations plan for consolidating the division. We are excited to announce that beginning in January 2017, the Domestic Relations D...

Anticipated Changes to Child Support Enforcement Guidelines

The Obama administration reportedly plans to make changes to regulatory rules governing child support obligations of incarcerated parents. The rule changes are designed to prevent large debt accumulation and ease the re-entry of parents upon release so they can fully meet parental responsibilities a...

Ruling in Sanchez v. Torres in the Illinois Appellate Court

In August, Chicago Appleseed joined an amicus authored by the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project of the George Washington University Law School and attorneys at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP filed before the Illinois Appellate court in Sanchez v. Torres. At issue in the case w...

Cook County Domestic Relations Court Changes

Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice has been working with a task force for the Presiding Judge of the Domestic Relations Division, Grace Dickler, for several years to improve the court. The work has been very rewarding and plans for a pilot courtroom based upon our work have been approved for 2016. I...