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...
November 21, 2016

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...
October 27, 2016

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...
December 14, 2015

Child Support Enforcement and the Function of Family Courts

This week, the New York Times published a story about how the child support enforcement systems and policies in U.S. court create a cycle of non-payment by middle and low income parents: Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat. Unpaid child support became a big concern in the 1980s and ’90s...
April 22, 2015

Upcoming Events

Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers will be putting on a free CLE panel discussion about the administrative process for child support enforcement. Latham & Watkins have generously offered to host the event, February 27th from 2:30 to 5:30, while Badesch Abramovitch is generously...
February 2, 2015
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