What this is
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.
The Proposal
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:
- Disposition statistics by judicial officer (custody, visitation, modification outcomes — aggregated, no minor identification)
- Guardian ad litem and custody evaluator appointment frequency and aggregate fees paid
- Time-to-disposition statistics
- Modification grant/deny rates by judicial officer
2. Annual publication, by the state IV-D / child support enforcement agency, of:
- Cases opened for state enforcement absent any missed payment, broken out by county
- Default order entry rates and service-of-process methods
- County-level breakdowns of all federally reported metrics
3. An independent five-year longitudinal study, commissioned by the legislature, of child outcomes following contested custody determinations.
4. Publication against a common, machine-readable schema — the provision that decides whether items 1 through 3 are worth anything. Specifically:
- Publication of the data dictionary, field definitions, and code tables for each system of record — so the published numbers can be interpreted at all
- Publication in an open, machine-readable format, and not exclusively as page images or fixed-layout documents
- Adoption by rule, after public comment, of a common schema for the published data, giving preference to an existing national standard where one applies
- A logged statutory basis for every withheld or redacted field, so that a redacted dataset and an incomplete one are distinguishable
- Any claim that data cannot be produced in the required format to be made in writing, signed by the agency head, identifying the specific technical limitation and the cost of remedying it
Without this section the bill is satisfiable with a quarterly PDF. That is not a hypothetical failure mode — it is the standard outcome of transparency legislation that specifies what must be published and stays silent on how. Data published in an unspecified format, under undocumented field names, cannot be compared across counties, across years, or against any other state. It produces the appearance of compliance and none of the accountability, and it is the shape every experienced agency counsel will steer the bill toward in markup. Expect this section to draw the most amendment pressure of anything in the bill, and understand that pressure as a signal rather than a setback. The full argument and ready statutory language are in The Schema That Never Gets Written.
That is the entire bill. It is two to four pages of statutory text.
What the Bill Does NOT Do
This is the part that wins the argument, so it deserves explicit attention.
- It does not disclose any minor child's identity. This is an express prohibition in the bill text, not a matter of agency discretion.
- It does not modify substantive family law. No change to custody standards, no change to support guidelines, no change to procedural rules.
- It does not modify judicial immunity or the standard of appellate review.
- It does not create a new private right of action. Nothing in the bill enables a litigant to sue based on the published data.
- It does not require new data collection. The data already exists in agency case management systems. The bill requires publication, not collection.
- It does not require anyone to replace a case management system. The schema section governs the format of what is published, not how agencies store their records internally. Any system capable of producing the extracts it already sends to the state and federal government is capable of complying.
- It does not invent a new standard. The bill directs the administrative office to adopt one by rule and to prefer an existing national standard. National exchange and court reporting standards already exist; what has never existed is any obligation to use them.
Why This Bill First, and Not a Bigger One
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.
Initial Email to a Legislator
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]
The One-Pager (Leave-Behind Document)
Format on plain letterhead or as a clean PDF before delivering.
FAMILY COURT TRANSPARENCY ACT — Proposal Summary
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:
- How disposition patterns vary among judicial officers handling similar cases
- Which guardians ad litem and custody evaluators are appointed, how often, and at what cost
- How long contested cases take to resolve, and how that timeline varies by court and judge
- How children fare, longitudinally, after contested custody determinations
- How state child support enforcement varies in pattern by county
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:
- Quarterly publication of de-identified family court administrative data by the AOC.
- Annual publication of IV-D enforcement metrics by [STATE AGENCY].
- A five-year longitudinal outcomes study commissioned through the [STATE] legislature.
What the Bill Does NOT Do
- Does not disclose any minor child's identity (express prohibition in bill text).
- Does not modify substantive family law.
- Does not modify judicial immunity or the standard of review.
- Does not create a new private right of action.
- Does not require any new data collection — only publication of data already maintained.
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]
Talking Points if You Get a Meeting
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."
If someone offers to "simplify" the publication-format section:
"I'd want to keep that section, and here's the plain reason why. If the bill says what to publish but not how, the agency satisfies it with a quarterly PDF, and a PDF cannot be compared to last year's PDF or to the county next door. The legislature would have passed a bill, the agency would be in full compliance, and nobody would be able to answer a single question the bill was written to answer. Publishing a field list and using an open format is the cheapest part of the bill — it's what the agency already sends to the federal government. The section is not extra scope. It's the part that makes the rest enforceable."
If told a common schema is technically infeasible:
"Respectfully, the engineering was finished years ago. National exchange standards for justice-system data have existed for two decades, the National Center for State Courts publishes court reporting standards, and federal agencies have operated under a machine-readable open-data default since 2019. What has never existed is a requirement. The bill supplies the requirement and lets the administrative office pick the standard by rule, with public comment. And if a specific system genuinely cannot export, subsection (e) simply asks the agency to say so in writing and tell us what fixing it would cost — which is information the legislature should want regardless of this bill."
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."
Coalition Partners to Consider
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:
- State chapters of the National Parents Organization
- Domestic violence advocacy organizations (the bill is helpful to them, too — published data exposes the cases where DV allegations are dismissed without process as well as those where protective orders are entered without process)
- Open government and transparency advocacy organizations (League of Women Voters, state-level open-records nonprofits)
- Veterans' service organizations (family court disproportionately affects deployed and post-deployed servicemembers)
- Law school clinics with a family law or civil rights focus
Each organization makes its own decisions. Approach them with the bill summary, not with your case.
A Final Reminder
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 explains why this discipline matters more than any other choice in this work.