November Election Impacts Family Court Services

King County Family Court Services has suspended all evaluation case assignments. In related news, Caroline Davis, Executive Director of Family Law CASA of King County, published the following open letter to the community:

Family Law CASA is aware that Family Court Services (FCS) has stopped accepting new referrals for parenting evaluations pending the outcome of the vote in November to increase the sales tax. (They are continuing to perform domestic violence evaluations and mediations). This leaves us as the only agency providing advocacy for low and moderate income families in contested custody cases in King County. Unfortunately, we simply do not have the staff to absorb the volume of cases that FCS has handled in the past. We are at full capacity with our current caseload. To increase our caseload we would need to hire another supervisor and we do not presently have the funds to do so. The recession has made fundraising more challenging and we have had to trim our budget.

What can the community do to help? First be aware that we only accept cases with a combined gross income of $70,000 or less. For families above that income range, a guardian ad litem should be appointed if needed. Secondly we have asked our advocates to respond to us as quickly as possible when we are in the process of assigning a case so that we can shorten the time from when the court appoints CASA to when an investigation begins. We ask attorneys to properly notify us of all scheduling changes for motions, trials, and settlement conferences. Family law attorneys should educate their staff about the court rules and requirements of notice to Family Law CASA on cases in which we have been appointed. We also ask attorneys to timely complete the final papers for cases that have settled or gone to trial, reminding them that we need to review all agreed or final orders.

Finally I will point out the obvious. If we receive more donations, more corporate support and more grant funding, we can hire an additional advocate supervisor and increase our case load. Every donation helps so if you are concerned about the loss of an important service for children in this community, please donate.

Caroline D. Davis,
Executive Director
Family Law CASA