By: Tony McDowell, Staff Attorney Genesee County FOC

The traditional view that a family consists of a married couple and their children is no longer accurate.   This is especially true in Flint, where nearly 80 percent of the births are to unmarried parents. As the nature of families change, our courts are working to adapt to their needs. For over 20 years, Judge Duncan Beagle lived through the impact that changes in families had on the family court’s ability to reach a timely and just result. He saw the number of divorces fall and the number of paternity and support cases rise.  But the paternity and family support cases were now different – no longer involving an absent parent who left the family or sought to avoid responsibility for his role in a child’s conception. 

Now many of these cases involved the dissolution of a family relationship similar to a divorce while others involved parents who were on the threshold of deciding whether to establish or end a budding relationship. All the while, Judge Beagle grew increasingly frustrated by the limitations of traditional court processes to serve nontraditional families.  Knowing change was necessary, in 2012, Judge Beagle reached out to colleagues in the area of family law to discuss possible solutions. 

Developing a Specialty Court

John Battles, Director of the Genesee County Friend of the Court, shared Judge Beagle’s vision of an updated process for addressing family law cases with unmarried parents. Fortunately, a few years earlier, Mr. Battles and the Genesee County FOC had played a vital role in the Parents and Children Together (PACT) specialty court. An independent evaluation indicated that of all of the services that the PACT court offered, early order entry was by far the most important – and the FOC had found a nontraditional way to work with the parents to secure expedited orders.

Building on what they learned from the PACT court, Judge Beagle and Mr. Battles worked together to build a team of partners to improve paternity establishment in Genesee County. This partnership included reaching out to the State Court Administrative Office (SCAO), the Office of Child Support (OCS), the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (PA), the local Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Office (MiDHHS), and Hurley Medical Center. Once a team of partners was assembled, the group immediately began determining how to accelerate order entry. 

Establishing a way to resolve children’s issues in nontraditional families within the procedural constraints of traditional court processes was the first issue. Learning from the PACT Court, the SCAO and FOC developed a stipulation and waiver form for mothers and alleged fathers to complete if they wished to bypass the traditional adversary court process. The form allows the parties to stipulate to entry of a court order and allow the document to serve as a summons, complaint, answer, and proof of service. Upon signing the document, a settlement conference and hearing date can be scheduled within four weeks.

The next question was how best to make the court more available when and where the parties needed it. Many options were identified, including establishing paternity and support from child protective proceedings, using forms to waive certain legal processes, and establishing paternity at the birthing center or hospital. Ultimately, with the assistance of Hurley Medical Center, it was decided there was a way to meet with families earlier – at their prenatal appointments. Education was already a major component of prenatal care, so adding education about paternity establishment was an easy addition.

The final and largest hurdle was determining how the work would be divided. The FOC, the PA’s office, and the OCS all wanted to be involved in the project and all of the offices wanted to maintain their independence. The final resolution was a hybrid establishment process. Under the hybrid process, the FOC would meet with families at the hospital and help them understand how their case will be addressed in court and what court processes they can bypass through their voluntary agreement. If they want genetic testing, an FOC caseworker would even collect genetic samples for testing at the hospital.

Once the case is ready to be filed, the FOC would send the documentation to the PA’s Office, which would obtain a Court Action Referral number from the OCS to start a court case. The PA’s office would verify income information and prepare the judgment of support or order of filiation. The FOC office would work with the parties to provide parenting time and custody information for the orders. Together the FOC and the PA’s office would be present in court to provide background information to Judge Beagle as necessary. By working together, orders would enter less than two months after the birth of the child, would nearly always be consent orders, and would include specific parenting time provisions.

Ultimately, the ADAPT (Acquiring DNA and Paternity Timely) Project was born.

The ADAPT Process

The first step of the ADAPT project begins with community outreach and education for unmarried parents. FOC staff members conduct weekly informational sessions during the prenatal clinic at Hurley Medical Center and have become a resource for Hurley Medical Center staff looking for information regarding paternity establishment. At these sessions, families learn the basics of paternity establishment and support order entry, including information about affidavits of parentage, orders of filiation, the traditional court process, and the expedited ADAPT process. 

If families are interested in participating in the ADAPT process, they can apply in the prenatal clinic before the baby is even born. Some families prefer to wait until after the baby is born, and in that situation, Hurley staff or the family will contact the FOC at the time of birth. Once the baby is born, FOC staff members often go to the hospital to work with the family to assist them in either completing DNA testing or signing an Affidavit of Parentage. FOC staff will also help the family understand the stipulated form waiving the traditional process of a summons and complaint to start a paternity or support case with Judge Beagle. The parties will receive a date to appear before the judge to address all of the issues regarding their family, which is four to six weeks after the birth of the child. At the hearing before Judge Beagle, the PA’s office and the FOC will be present to address custody, parenting time, support, and refer the family for other holistic services.

Evaluating ADAPT

When evaluating a program like ADAPT, it is important to review both qualitative and quantitative data. The ADAPT program is relatively new, however, certain trends beginning to emerge.

The FOC has been conducting the educational sessions at the Hurley Medical Center Prenatal Clinics since June 2014, and have met with nearly 500 families at these sessions. While the volume of feedback has not been great all of the responses over the past year have been positive. The families who receive the information that tend to be the most receptive are those who have prior experiences with the child support system. Their favorite components of the ADAPT program are the expedited process and the genetic testing at the hospital. 

An unexpected development from these sessions is the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the hospital staff. It appears that hospital staff members have wanted someone to explain paternity establishment and child support information to their patients for some time.

Families have been appearing before Judge Beagle for the ADAPT program since September 2014. From September 2014 to June 2015, 50 ADAPT cases have been filed with Judge Beagle. All 50 cases had an order within six weeks of the creation of the case. The result of removing unnecessary delays is of particular importance to Judge Beagle. He states, “There are some cases that have taken as long as two to three years before an order is finalized.” Of the 36 cases that have requested and completed genetic testing, 16 have been dismissed because the alleged father was not the biological father. The remaining cases resulted in orders with specific parenting time and custody. 

The limited data from these first few cases indicates the public’s desire for an expedited process that engages parents to build a court order for the care and support of their children. The limited data also suggests the importance of genetic testing, as 44 percent of the time when genetic testing is requested, the alleged father is excluded as the biological father.

The Future of ADAPT

Working off the success of the ADAPT Program at Hurley Medical Center, there are plans to begin offering the same ADAPT services to families who apply for Medicaid during the mother’s pregnancy. Under this second phase of ADAPT, FOC staff will work with MiDHHS to identify pregnant mothers who could benefit from education about paternity establishment and the ADAPT services. This phase promises to increase the number of families in the ADAPT program. This will allow for further evaluation in partnership with the OCS which has arranged for Applied Predictive Technologies, in cooperation with the Brookings Institute, to complete a comprehensive quantitative evaluation.   

Ultimately, the ADAPT project is about providing an opportunity for unmarried parents to start their families on a strong foundation. For some families, ADAPT provides education to make sound decisions about becoming legal parents. For others, ADAPT is an opportunity to have an order defining their rights and roles as parents. For others still, ADAPT is an opportunity to allow both parents to care and support their children from birth.

Moving forward, the Genesee County FOC hopes to continue to improve the services offered by finding the best ways to evolve and serve the new dynamics of families.