Law Blogs

Arizona dependency and child welfare cases have a lot of court hearings and meetings. I have created a list of common dependency, guardianship, and termination of parental rights hearings to assist those who find themselves going through the system. I highly recommend reviewing this list and as well as reviewing this chart for Arizona's Dependency Process in Part 1 of…Read More

A large amount of our legal practice at Michael & Casey deals with the Arizona Department of Child Safety, commonly known as DCS. This is Arizona’s current child welfare agency, formerly known as CPS or Child Protective Services. Unfortunately, this agency is most well-known for removing children. When DCS believes significant intervention is required in a child’s life it will…Read More

In Dallas some members or law enforcement are advocating for the transfer of children to adult court in part because they believe it will make the children more accountable. Sadly, I’ve ran across this belief before. For some reason, people believe the adult court system will somehow make children “pay” for what they have done more than a juvenile court…Read More

We know that children who are removed from the home and placed in foster care suffer trauma due to the removal. In the child welfare agencies and courtrooms, efforts are made to mitigate this trauma. What is rarely talked about though is the effect of removal on the education of the child. We all know it does affect education, we…Read More

I’ve had a lot of calls in the last two weeks about Arizona Department of Child Safety’s Dependency Registry (also called the Central Registry). The Department of Child Safety is required to maintain a registry of people who have substantiated reports of reports of abuse or neglect. This registry is used to prevent people from working with children, getting fingerprint…Read More

Whether a child should or should not have a lawyer appointed in child welfare proceedings is an easy question for me to answer: yes! They are the most important person in the entire court case. In fact, they are the reason everyone is there. Unfortunately, Washington State disagrees. They decided against a child getting a lawyer automatically at the start…Read More

It's called failure to protect. The victim of domestic violence in a household with children is considered to have failed to protect the children from exposure to the abuse. Most the time it results in the children being removed, even if the victim has already escaped the situation. Usually, it takes a long time to get the kids back, sometimes,…Read More

In 2016, 13,132 children were taken away from their homes in Arizona alone due to abuse or neglect allegations. Thankfully, just about half of these children were able to move in with aunts, uncles, adult siblings, cousins, grandparents and other “kinship caregivers” who were able to step in an help out. Congresswoman Karen Bass said it right when advancing the…Read More

In Arizona, the Juvenile Court will not allow a juvenile delinquency case to go to trial if the child is not competent. What this means is that the child accused of the crime does not have the capability to assist in his representation. Often this is due to some cognitive disability. However, the Juvenile Court does not just dismiss a…Read More