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. In a very exciting development, Judge Dickler has announced she hopes to move the Domestic Relations Division to a consolidated docket within the first half of 2016.
Chicago Appleseed’s involvement with the task force began when we—with pro bono assistance from Skadden Arps—conducted an assessment on the constitutionality of Cook County’s bifurcated family courts. In addition to necessary legal research, we conducted hours of interviews with practitioners and court personnel to get an accurate sense of how the division operates. Our report concluded that—while the division has been improving—there remained a real risk that the division was operating unconstitutionally in keeping cases in separate division based upon prior marital status of parents seeking child support.
Following our report, Judge Dickler asked Chicago Appleseed to join her task force and make recommendations to improve the division. Chief among those recommendations was the consolidation of the division into a unified Domestic Relations court, where all cases (whether involving divorce or parents who were never married to each other) are heard in the same courtrooms.
The task force and Chicago Appleseed also devised a pilot courtroom, based upon innovations in family courts in California, Michigan and Minnesota and research conducted with pro bono assistance from Baker & McKenzie and Latham & Watkins. The pilot courtroom proposal received the approval of both Presiding Judge Dickler and Chief Judge Evans and is also expected to launch in early 2016.
This has been a long and rewarding process and there remains work to do to ensure the success of the consolidated division and the pilot courtroom. The court’s investment in reforming the Domestic Relations Division is commendable; we are proud to have been part of the process and look forward to seeing the consolidated court in action.