Family Violence and Domestic Relations
The Family Violence and Domestic Relations (FVDR) program at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) works to enhance how courts and related systems address cases involving domestic and family violence.
Through education, training and technical assistance, and policy leadership, the FVDR supports judges and court professionals in handling these complex cases with consistency, fairness, and a focus on safety. The FVDR’s work also helps strengthen judicial understanding of domestic violence dynamics, encourages trauma-informed approaches, and promotes collaboration among courts, communities, and service providers.
The NCJFCJ has advanced social change in courts and communities nationwide by providing robust training, technical assistance, and policy development on issues related to the effects of abuse across a person’s lifespan. The NCJFCJ’s projects have enhanced the safety, well-being, and stability of domestic violence victims and their children by improving the responses of criminal, civil, and social justice systems.
Family Violence and Domestic Relations
Key Initiatives
Judicial Education on Domestic Violence
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The NCJFCJ provides education and resources to judges seeking to change practice in their courts and communities around how domestic violence cases are adjudicated. All of the NCJFCJ’s judicial education programs focus on the principles of adult education and on an understanding of the learning styles of judges. Educational topics and resources include criminal and civil cases involving domestic violence, child custody decision-making in domestic violence cases, protection order practices, including the seizure and storage of firearms, the overlap of domestic violence and child maltreatment, immigration issues, working with self-represented litigants, and judicial leadership, including judicial ethics. In addition, the FVDR encourages and facilitates judicial leadership around domestic violence through jurisdiction-specific training and the Judicial Engagement Network.
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Custody Decision-Making and Domestic Violence
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Custody and visitation decisions are among the most difficult that judges make. Whether by statute, case law, or custom, all state and tribal courts employ some form of the best interest of the child standard in making these decisions. The FVDR has had decades of experience collaborating with legal and child development experts to offer training to judges, custody evaluators, and GALs, and to support jurisdictions in innovative approaches to child custody decision-making when domestic violence is a factor. Most recently, the FVDR led a national, multi-year initiative to revise Chapter 4 of the Model Code on Domestic Violence and created a complementary resource on considerations for tribal courts.
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Administrative Court Leadership
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Recognizing that many judicial officers are in court administration roles, with concerns about the physical safety and well-being of their teams, the FVDR has developed multiple programs to assist judges as leaders of a court staff. FVDR programs for administrative court leaders are built with sensitivity to the judges’ unique limits and an emphasis on multidisciplinary collaboration, accountability, and enhanced communication.
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Civil Protection Orders
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Court-issued civil protection orders (CPOs) provide domestic violence victims with important options while influencing batterers to stop the abuse. An integrated and consistent protection order system that coordinates issuing, serving, and enforcing court orders promotes victim safety and helps save lives. The NCJFCJ recognizes that an effective civil protection order system relies upon the interplay and interdependence of each profession’s work: judges, law enforcement, prosecutors, advocates, civil attorneys, and others. The FVDR seeks to increase the capacity of communities, courts, judges, and related professionals to enhance victim safety and offender accountability through effective protection order practices and through the development of resources that provide guidance and resources specific to firearms prohibitions and relinquishment protocols and acknowledge the tremendous risk firearms pose to survivors, offenders, their children and communities.
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Children and Youth Exposed to Violence
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Judicial officers making custody decisions, whether in the family court, juvenile court, or child abuse and neglect proceedings, have the unique opportunity to identify the effects of family violence and to make orders that protect the physical and emotional well-being of victimized parents and their children. For decades, the FVDR has provided leadership to courts and their community stakeholders in building effective collaborations, with particular interest in supporting court responses and systems of care which improve the safety and resiliency of children and youth exposed to violence.
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Supporting OVW Technical Assistance Providers
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The FVDR has partnered with the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) for decades to support OVW technical assistance (TA) providers with the training, expertise, and problem-solving strategies needed to meet the day-to-day challenges of addressing domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. This partnership has grown such that the FVDR has become a logistical leader in planning and facilitating professional, engaging, and accessible meetings, whether in-person or through ever-evolving web-based technologies, which allows TA Providers and other field experts to focus on the content of their training and TA, rather than the logistics needed to deliver it.
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