Best image I could find...that was clean!!
So...I work in Juvenile Court and I handle both delinquency and dependency cases. Delinquency cases are those juveniles who get in trouble with the law and are prosecuted in Juvenile Court due to their age (less than 18). Dependency cases involve Child Protective Services (CPS) where the kids have been removed from the home of the parents due to allegations that they are unfit parents. However, due to the fact that nowadays, most mothers just have kids with whomever...without the benefit of marriage and sometimes, without the benefit of even knowing the Dad's name, we (Juvenile Court attorneys) end up doing lots of family law and custody stuff. For those who have kids without marriage, we end up (if we are lucky enough to get the decent parent) doing custody orders so that the decent parent can protect the child/ren from the non-decent parent. For those who are married and have kids with the spouse (fairly rare), we might do a legal separation or divorce work. We don't actually draft the divorce paperwork (because we don't get paid through our contract to do so), but we end up reviewing the paperwork and then after it is filed, we join the case with the dependency case, arrange for the custody and parenting time orders and then make sure that all appropriate paperwork is done. For those who are having babies without benefit of marriage, we need to generate special orders of paternity, join them to the dependency, and then arrange the custody and parenting time orders and custody paperwork to be able to end the case. I have had all sorts of "wonderful" issues from parents swearing that he was the father despite them both swearing in other courts that he wasn't the father (the dependency judge was HIGHLY annoyed when he discovered that little gem) to mothers who have babies and then disappear so that the father (the decent one, so to speak) had to have me publish in the paper so that I could get custody orders obtained...bleh!!
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