Before you use this: please read Before You Use These Materials — particularly if you are currently in a family court matter. Lobbying your representative based on your active case will hurt your case and hurt the broader effort. These materials are for structural reform.
A specific, narrow, defensible piece of legislation that any state legislator can introduce — and that any citizen can ask their representative to introduce. The bill does one thing: it requires the state’s family court system to publish performance data the way every other publicly funded institution already does.
The reform conversation about family court has been deadlocked for thirty years because nobody has the data to make the case empirically. This bill fixes that. After it passes, every other reform conversation becomes possible.
A Family Court Transparency Act, requiring:
1. Quarterly publication, by the State Administrative Office of the Courts, of de-identified family court administrative data, including:
2. Annual publication, by the state IV-D / child support enforcement agency, of:
3. An independent five-year longitudinal study, commissioned by the legislature, of child outcomes following contested custody determinations.
That is the entire bill. It is one to three pages of statutory text.
This is the part that wins the argument, so it deserves explicit attention.
The reform agenda for family court is much larger than transparency: GAL and evaluator certification standards, immunity reform, IV-D restructuring, presumptive equal parenting, mandatory mediation. All of those reforms have been proposed, repeatedly, in many states, over many decades. Almost none of them have passed.
The reason they have not passed is not that the arguments are wrong. The reason is that none of those reforms can be empirically grounded against published outcome data, because no published outcome data exists. The bar opposes each reform individually with the same argument: “you don’t have evidence that the current system is broken, and the change you propose would harm children.”
A transparency bill takes that argument away. It is small enough to pass. The bar’s standard objections — judicial independence, child privacy, fiscal cost — are answerable in the bill text directly. And once published, the data does what the data does. Every subsequent reform stands on it.
Customize the bracketed fields. Send to your own representative first; you have the strongest standing with your own district’s legislator.
Subject: Transparency legislation for family court administration — brief proposal
Dear Representative/Senator [LAST NAME],
I am a [STATE] resident in [DISTRICT/CITY] writing to propose a piece of transparency legislation that I believe deserves your committee’s attention.
[STATE]‘s family court system spends [APPROXIMATE STATE FAMILY COURT BUDGET] in public funds annually and decides matters of consequence in tens of thousands of cases. Unlike nearly every other publicly funded institution in [STATE] government, it publishes essentially no performance data. There is no public reporting of disposition patterns, no tracking of guardian ad litem or custody evaluator appointments, no longitudinal data on outcomes for the children whose cases the system decides.
I am proposing a narrowly drafted Family Court Transparency Act that would require quarterly publication of de-identified administrative data — caseload, dispositions, appointment patterns, time-to-disposition — by the [STATE] Administrative Office of the Courts. The bill would expressly prohibit any disclosure that could identify a minor child and would not touch substantive family law.
I have attached a one-page summary and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with you or your staff. I can be reached at [PHONE] or by reply to this email.
Thank you for your time and your service.
Sincerely, [YOUR NAME] [CITY, STATE] [CONTACT INFO]
Format on plain letterhead or as a clean PDF before delivering.
The Problem
[STATE]‘s family courts decide custody, visitation, and child support matters affecting tens of thousands of [STATE] children every year. The administrative performance of this system is not measured, not published, and not subject to the routine empirical scrutiny that governs every other public institution.
There is no public data on:
Comparable institutions in [STATE] publish this kind of data routinely. State agencies publish performance metrics. Public schools publish outcome data. Hospitals publish quality measures. The [STATE] judicial branch operates without the corresponding transparency.
The Proposal
A narrowly drafted Family Court Transparency Act requiring:
What the Bill Does NOT Do
Estimated Fiscal Impact
Minimal. The data is already collected and stored in existing case management systems. Implementation cost is publication infrastructure and a part-time data analyst FTE within the AOC.
Why It Matters
A system that does not measure its own outcomes cannot be held accountable for them. The publication of this data is a precondition for every other reform conversation — it does not pre-decide those reforms, but it makes them possible.
Contact
[YOUR NAME] | [PHONE] | [EMAIL] | [CITY, STATE]
The legislator’s staff will likely take the meeting, not the legislator. Adjust accordingly — staff are often substantively engaged and want concrete material.
Opening (90 seconds):
“I’m proposing a transparency bill, not a reform bill. The reform conversation about family court has been deadlocked for thirty years because nobody can agree on what’s actually happening in the system. This bill puts the data in front of everyone. After that, the policy debate can be empirical instead of anecdotal. Both sides of the typical family court debate would probably be surprised by what the data shows — but neither side has the data to make their case.”
If asked “what are you trying to accomplish”:
“Three things. One, give the legislature the empirical foundation it needs to legislate in this area instead of relying on advocacy testimony. Two, give the public the same kind of transparency we already have for schools, hospitals, and state agencies. Three, give the courts themselves the operational visibility that any well-managed institution needs to improve.”
If the bar’s likely opposition comes up:
“The question for the legislature is not whether the affected professionals like the bill — it’s whether the public has a right to know how a publicly funded system is performing. Every other institution has answered that question yes. The bill brings family court administration into alignment with how the rest of state government already operates.”
If judicial independence is raised:
“The bill doesn’t touch judicial independence. It doesn’t change a single substantive rule of decision, it doesn’t create any review of decisional reasoning, and it doesn’t expose any judge to liability. It publishes administrative data — caseload, dispositions, time-to-resolution. Every appellate court in the country already publishes equivalent data about itself. This brings family court into line with that norm.”
If minor privacy is raised:
“The bill expressly prohibits any data publication that could identify a minor child. The data is aggregated and de-identified. That’s a line we can write into the bill text directly so it’s not a matter of agency discretion.”
The closing ask:
“Two things. First, would the legislator be willing to introduce or co-sponsor this bill in the [NEXT SESSION]? Second, can your office connect me with [LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL / RESEARCH STAFF] who could help with drafting? I have a working draft, but I want it to fit your state’s existing statutory framework cleanly.”
A bill with three to five organizational endorsements at introduction lands very differently from a bill introduced by a single legislator with a single citizen advocate. Organizations to consider approaching for support:
Each organization makes its own decisions. Approach them with the bill summary, not with your case.
This bill is about the system, not about any individual judge, evaluator, or attorney. Approach legislators with the structural argument and the data gap, not with grievances about specific officials. The use policy at the top of this page explains why this discipline matters more than any other choice in this work.