Court Case Divisions

Ever wonder what kind of cases go to the different kinds of courts? Sometimes it can get confusing. There's family court, civil court, and criminal court. There are the types of cases that they typically deal with and there are also things that are referred through the court.

1. Family Court - this court deals with situations such as child custody, visitation risk assesments, gradnparent visitation risk, mediation of parental conflicts over children, child abuse evaluations, adoption readiness evaluations, development of family reunification plans, and evaluations to assess termination of partenal rights. Counseling and psychotherapy referred by the courts include parent-child family counseling, therapeutic supervised visitation, parenting skills training, anger management, divorce adjustment counseling for children and adults, and parental communication skills training.
2. Civil Court - this court deals with situations such as personal injury evaluations, assessment of emotional factors in sexual harassment and discrimination, worker's compensation evaluations, civil competency evaluations, and psychological autopsies. Through the civil court system, counseling is provided for those with post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, phobias related to traumatic events, psychological factors in cronic pain, anger management, adjustment counseling following trauma, couples counseling regarding trauma, and desensitization.
3. Criminal Court - this is the court that most are familar with. This court deals with situations such as evaluations of juveniles accused of criminal acts, juvenile pre-sentencing evaluations, juvenile probabtion evaluations, juvenile waiver evaluations, evaluating the credibility of of child witnesses, assessment of juvenile and adult sexual offenders, competency and diminished capacity evauluations, and adult pre-sentencing evaluations. The issues addressed inclue counseling of individuals who violate restraining orders, counseling juveniles on probation, supportive counseling for victims of crimes, counseling of individuals awaiting trials, counseling for adults on probation, anger management skills training for violent offenders, counseling and psychotherarapy for sexual offenders.