Abstract

The Family Justice Initiative (FJI) Landscape study represents the first large, aggregate examination of how family court cases are litigated in the state courts. Much of the findings confirmed conventional wisdom about family court litigation, though several offered new insights into the typical domestic relations case. The study findings also raise questions both of how domestic relations cases should be managed and whether the judicial branch is still the most appropriate forum for such cases.

This report documents the caseload characteristics of domestic relations cases disposed between July 1, 2016, and June 30, 2017, across eleven large, urban courts. Three levels of analysis were used to examine the landscape of litigation in domestic relations cases: case-level, court procedures and operations, and community characteristics. The sample of 147,436 cases represented approximately 8 percent of domestic relations caseloads nationally.

This abstract has been taken from the report's executive summary.

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2018

Publication Information

National Center for State Courts (2018)

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