Good Day.
As the new Co-Presidents of the AFCC – New York Chapter, we are writing to introduce ourselves and to share certain developments and information with you.
We wanted to share with you the new Court Rules regarding Mental Health Professional Panels and Oversight Committees, which were promulgated by all four departments of the Appellate Division. These Rules address mental health professional evaluations in custody and visitation cases in Supreme and Family Court, as well as evaluations in Family Court juvenile delinquency, persons in need of supervision, child abuse and neglect, termination of parental rights, family offense and adoption cases.
The Rules for all four departments are identical in content, except as follows:
The Rules in the First and Second Departments continue the past practice of convening a joint oversight committee that administers a joint Mental Health Professionals Panel.
The Rules in the Third and Fourth Departments are entirely new and contemplate that each of the departments will establish separate oversight committees and Mental Health Professional Panels.
You may download a brief summary of the Rules here, as well as a complete copy of the Rules for each of the four departments.
Also, three distinguished members of AFCC-NY have written articles that relate to these new Rules. Please look out for emails from AFCC-NY in the next few weeks for these articles.
Our goal is to share relevant articles written by mental health professionals, judges, lawyers, mediators and others who work in and with the family law systems with insightful information that we hope will support your efforts to assist families and children in conflict. Our hope during our term is to increase our contact with and involvement of AFCC-NY members throughout the year. To that end, we welcome the submission of articles for publication on the website or suggestions for topics of interest for future articles.
Thank you for your support of the New York Chapter and AFCC.
Tomoko Kataoka, Esq
Robert Grossman, Esq.
New York Chapter Co-Presidents