Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, 2024 Annual Report
Family filings, reinstatements, dispositions, clearance rate, and pending caseload. Used with reporting-definition caution.
Where the information came from
Follow every important claim to its source.
The register contains 52 research, legal, court-data, documentary, and design sources, plus separately credited public-domain photographs. Official court records, laws, government data, original research, and first-party standards receive priority.
How to read the register
A source may support one sentence without supporting the entire FJP proposal. Each entry explains what we used it for and what it cannot establish. “Jurisdiction” means the court system and law that apply; “sample” means the people or cases included in a study. More terms explained →
A link is not an endorsement.
Each source supports a limited claim. Its location, method, sample, publication status, and limits stay attached. Dates below are publication or current-version dates where identifiable; research current through 14 September 2026.
NCSC & IAALS, The Landscape of Domestic Relations Cases in State Courts
147,436 disposed cases from 11 urban courts; reopening, representation, timing, and data-quality findings. Not a nationally representative probability sample.
UK Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly
Current private-law children starts, disposals, case duration, open-caseload aging, and representation. Comparator only; not a U.S. estimate.
Legal Services Corporation, The Justice Gap
National survey of low-income Americans’ civil legal needs and barriers. Broad civil scope, not family-court-specific.
In re Marriage of White, 2023 IL App (2d) 120720-U
One documented high-cost illustration. Rule 23 order; unpublished and nonprecedential; not a typical-cost estimate.
van Dijk et al., Interparental conflict and child adjustment in divorced families
115 samples, 24,854 participants, 2,257 correlations. Associations and mediation; does not isolate court-process causation.
Sbarra & Emery, Coparenting conflict, nonacceptance, and depression among divorced adults
Twelve-year follow-up of 109 parents assigned to mediation or adversarial settlement. Small, older, context-specific study.
OJP, IPV and Family Dispute Resolution: One-Year Follow-Up Findings
Reported no significant one-year group differences across shuttle mediation, videoconference mediation, and litigation on selected outcomes. Important null result and scope caution.
CDC MMWR, Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences
Cross-sectional, self-reported ACE associations and population-attributable fractions. Not family-court-specific and not proof of causation.
I.M. and Others v. Italy, Application no. 25426/20
Official legal summary of the Article 8 judgment concerning protected contact, implementation failures, and parental-responsibility measures.
M. and M. v. Croatia, Application no. 10161/13
Custody delay, allegations of ill-treatment, child participation, representation, and state response. Includes nuance about steps authorities did take.
Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431
Due-process safeguards when ability to pay is a critical issue in civil-contempt incarceration. Does not establish automatic counsel in every case.
M.L.B. v. S.L.J., 519 U.S. 102
Access to appellate review after parental-rights termination could not be conditioned on prepayment of record fees.
Pennsylvania Senate co-sponsorship memorandum concerning Kayden’s Law
Official legislative characterization of the Kayden Mancuso case. Not a judicial finding and not a substitute for the underlying family record.
New York Senate Bill S5998B, Kyra’s Law
Sponsor memorandum and bill text. The Assembly reported passage by both chambers in June 2026; this register does not call it enacted without a later official enactment record.
750 ILCS 5/604.10, Interviews; evaluations; investigation
Scope and report requirements for court-appointed evaluators and related professionals.
750 ILCS 5/506, Representation of child
Roles, fees, detailed invoice requirements, and court review for child representatives and attorneys.
APA, Guidelines for Child Custody Evaluations in Family Law Proceedings
Competence, methods, data sources, relevance, interpretation, and attention to violence, maltreatment, and substance use.
NCSC, Family Justice Performance Measures
Timeliness, pending-age, hearings, postjudgment activity, procedural fairness, and court/party cost. NCSC does not endorse FJP.
UK Ministry of Justice, Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases
More than 1,200 responses; qualitative themes and sample analyses. Not a population prevalence study.
Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Practice Guidelines
Parenting-plan evaluation, research use, and parenting-coordination guidance. AFCC does not license or regulate practitioners and does not endorse FJP.
NCSC, National Open Court Data Standards
Data definitions and governance for comparable court administrative data. Reference vocabulary, not an FJP endorsement.
NIST Privacy Framework
Voluntary privacy-risk management framework. General reference, not a family-court implementation specification.
NIJ, Beliefs and Recommendations in Custody and Visitation Cases
Survey of 1,187 professionals; associations among professional role, knowledge, beliefs, and recommendations. Not an outcome-accuracy study.
34 U.S.C. §10446, Grants to support families in the justice system
Current codified state-incentive framework associated with Kayden’s Law, including safety and training conditions.
750 ILCS 5/508, Attorney’s fees
Fee awards and consequences for improper-purpose hearings, including harassment, unnecessary delay, or needless cost.
Illinois Supreme Court Rule 8, Case and Document Accessibility
Definitions and access treatment for public, impounded, confidential, and sealed court records.
NCSC Family Justice Initiative, Principles for Family Justice Reform
Pathways, triage, process simplification, and data principles. The similar name predates and is not affiliated with FJP.
Tannenbaum et al., Appealing to Fear
127 papers, 248 independent samples, 27,372 participants. Threat messages had greater average effect when paired with efficacy information; not specific to legal reform campaigns.
Fogg et al., What Makes Web Sites Credible?
Study of more than 1,400 participants; credibility factors included real-world feel, usability, expertise, trustworthiness, and tailoring. Older study; used as a baseline design reference.
Rumbul et al., The design of civic technology
Mixed-methods study emphasizing ease of participation, reduced process complexity, conversation, emotion, feedback, and community. Context-specific.
GOV.UK Design System, Start using a service
Recommends enough context to know whether a service meets the need, then an action-consistent primary button and secondary link.
Washington Courts, Superior Court Cases Filed by Type
Published statewide total of 24,113 domestic filings. King County is shown as zero; incompleteness is preserved as a material limitation.
Judicial Council of California, 2025 Court Statistics Report
108,403 marital filings and 210,326 other family-law filings. Measures volume, not timeliness or outcome quality.
Judicial Council of California, Shortage of Court Reporters
Reports that 71.3% of 4,214,365 combined family-law, probate, and unlimited-civil hearings had no verbatim record from April 2023 through March 2026.
Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745
Due process requires at least clear and convincing evidence before a state permanently terminates parental rights.
Nicholson v. Scoppetta, 3 N.Y.3d 357
Domestic-violence exposure is not presumptively neglect or grounds for removal; courts must assess imminent risk, context, alternatives, and removal harm.
U.S. Department of Justice, appellate court upholds Ciavarella conviction and sentence
Official account of Mark Ciavarella’s racketeering-related convictions and 28-year sentence, Michael Conahan’s guilty plea and 17-year sentence, and corrective action following the Luzerne County juvenile-court scandal.
Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, findings and recommendations
Official commission summary addressing detention without meaningful safeguards, children as young as 11, institutional silence and inaction, and recommended juvenile-justice reforms.
U.S. Government Accountability Office, Juvenile Courts: Reforms Aim to Better Serve Maltreated Children
Historic Cook County case study describing fragmented hard-copy information, continuity and caseload problems, and an independent committee’s finding of a major systemic information failure. Child-protection context; not a current private-custody performance measure.
NCSC, Courts selected for family case management initiative
Official description of a 12-court initiative using training, tools, triage, tracking, data coaching, and peer learning without requiring wholesale system replacement. It does not evaluate or endorse FJP.
NCSC, Managing court technology
Current collection of planning, procurement, implementation, evaluation, accessibility, security, and responsible-exit guidance for court technology. General implementation reference; not an FJP specification.
U.S. Department of Justice, Language Access in State Courts
Official federal guidance explaining meaningful language access in state courts. Used to identify inclusive access as an implementation requirement, not as a complete accessibility standard.
Cassie Jaye, The Red Pill
First-party description of the film as an exploration of the Men’s Rights Movement and gender inequality from men’s perspectives. Establishes the film’s framing, not the accuracy of each interview claim.
The Red Pill, full film via YouTube Movies & TV
Primary audiovisual source for the documentary’s content. Personal accounts and statistics in the film remain attributed claims unless separately verified.
CDC, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: Intimate Partner Violence Data Brief
Current sex-separated estimates for contact sexual violence, physical violence, stalking, psychological aggression, and reported impacts. Self-report survey; response rate 16.5%; the method changed, so CDC cautions against comparison with earlier survey years.
U.S. Census Bureau, Custodial Parents and Their Child Support: 2022
Estimates parents living with children while the other parent lives elsewhere. The report expressly does not measure legal custody, contested-court outcomes, parental requests, or judicial bias.
750 ILCS 5/602.7, Allocation of parental responsibilities: parenting time
Requires parenting-time decisions based on the child’s best interests, presumes both parents fit, lists relevant factors, and limits consideration of unrelated conduct. The text does not prove uniform implementation.
Costa et al., Gender stereotypes underlie child custody decisions
Across tightly matched hypothetical cases, participants allocated more custody to good mothers than good fathers; shared-custody endorsement reduced the difference. Vignettes test judgment under controlled conditions, not actual U.S. court outcomes.
Alexander v. Michigan, No. 2:16-cv-11385, Document 22
Records a 1989 default filiation and support order, later felony non-support proceedings, 2013 DNA exclusion, and 2015 dismissal of the felony case. The later civil suit was dismissed on jurisdiction, standing, and immunity grounds; the order did not find systemic anti-male bias.
Little v. Streater, 452 U.S. 1
Held that denying an indigent alleged father state-funded blood testing in the specific paternity proceeding violated due process because it denied a meaningful opportunity to be heard.
NCSC Trends in State Courts 2025, family mediation and abuse screening
Describes Maryland’s response to inconsistent and incomplete family-mediation abuse screening, including expansion to coercive control and a pilot of an empirically validated tool. It is an implementation account, not an evaluation of FJP.
Carol M. Highsmith, Courtroom at the U.S. Courthouse in Augusta, Georgia
Real architectural photograph from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress. Wikimedia Commons records the work as public domain with no known copyright restrictions.
Carol M. Highsmith, Courtroom doors, C. Bascom Slemp Federal Building
Real architectural photograph from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress. Rights advisory: no known restrictions on publication.