Do family court judges need more training? A proposed Michigan bill says yes

DETROIT — A bill introduced in Lansing that would require family court judges in Michigan to receive training before taking the bench is dividing some in the legal system, with some saying it's needed to prevent judges from making consequential mistakes, while others say it's "unconstitutional" and "unnecessary."

Under the law right now, a potential judge only has to have five years of legal experience before they can be elected to a judgeship, said Calhoun County Family Court Judge Tina Yost Johnson. That experience can be anywhere, so a potential judge in family court — where divorces, custody matters, child neglect and abuse cases, adoptions and child guardianships are handled — does not need to have any family law experience.

But under a bill introduced in December by Reps. Doug Wozniak, R-Shelby Township, and Jamie Thompson, R-Brownstown Township, that would change. It would require that each circuit court with more than one judge shall have at least one judge permanently assigned to family division and would put teeth to an already existing law that says a family's case should be handled by one judge. It also would require 40 hours of domestic family law training, 40 hours of child protection law training and 16 hours of domestic violence training.

The bill was introduced because some in the legal system think family law judges don't have enough training, and it leads to mistakes, according to Liisa Speaker, a Lansing-based appellate attorney who specializes in family court cases. She said some have been pushing for this kind of training for nearly a decade.

"When a judge doesn’t follow the law, there’s a better chance it's going to be reversed on appeal," said Speaker. "If it's an erroneous decision, in all likelihood, the decision is going to be in place during the appeal. ... Children are living maybe under a different custodial environment under the appeal."

Yost Johnson said she supports the training, especially because some judges coming in have no experience with family law.

"I really think the public, they expect when you put on that black robe that you have a certain level of knowledge and expertise," she said. "Every day a parent is without their child, every day a parent has to wait to get a decision, that’s a day affecting the rest of their lives. We owe it to them to put good, experienced, ready-to-go people on the bench."

But Oakland County Family Court Judge Lisa Langton said it's a "fallacy" to think family court judges are not trained. Once elected, judges go to a new judge school, a type of training for new judges, which is held every two years to match judicial election cycles. The intensive two-week course teaches new judges about the areas of the law they'll need to be familiar with. In Oakland County, new judges are also appointed mentors and go through intensive in-house training, she said.

"If that bill passed today, it wouldn’t change our thing at all," Langton said.

She said the family courts handle so many types of cases and "no one is an expert in all those areas. I don’t care what area of practice you start off in. ... We are maybe not an expert in every area, but we become that quickly."

"It seems to me like they're trying to place the faults of the system dealing with families and kids on judges," Langton said. "There’s a false belief this is going to fix something. It's not going to fix anything. It's not."

Ingham County Family Court Judge Lisa McCormick, the co-chair of the Michigan Judges Association Family Law Committee, said the judge's association believes the bill is unconstitutional, because the only requirements laid out to become a judge in the state constitution are that a potential jurist has to have five years of legal experience, be in good standing with the bar and to not be 70 years old on Election Day or the day they are appointed.

"This bill adds additional requirements for a judge, which we believe is a violation of the Michigan constitution," McCormick said.

McCormick said the Supreme Court already requires training be done in the form of continuing education, which runs in two-year cycles. This means judges are constantly completing training, she said.

Wozniak and Thompson didn't respond to requests for comment.

Legal errors by judges create hefty bills, headaches for families

A 2025 survey found that 92% of Michigan voters support specialized training for family law judges and 51% supported a "one family, one judge" approach, which would require that a family's case not be split between multiple judges.

When a judge makes a legal error, the family involved has to appeal the case to have the error fixed, said Speaker, the appellate attorney who supports family court judges being required to get training. She sees judges make legal errors regularly throughout the state, she said. Paying for an appellate attorney and transcripts of the hearings can be expensive, Speaker said.

And even once the law is applied correctly, Speaker said, a judge has to look at where the children have been living most recently. Even if the placement was legally erroneous, it may now be the best place for them, she said.

"These judges — they think they're doing the right thing because they're going with their gut," Speaker said. "Things are more black and white when you work on criminal cases and you can go with your instinct. But you have a jury in criminal cases. There's no jury in family court, just a bench.

"Most judges want to do a good job. … some of them just don’t belong doing family court cases without any training in that area."

Speaker pointed to a case that was overturned by the Court of Appeals April 7 related to an adoption. A baby was given up for an adoption by his 13-year-old mother, but the 16-year-old father filed a paternity case about the child five months after he was born. There were several delays because the Wayne County judge said they lacked "extensive experience in adoption cases" and had to consult the court's general counsel.

Multiple parties, including the court's general counsel, said the judge could not halt the adoption proceedings to wait on the paternity results. The judge did so anyway and dismissed the adoption petition in September 2024 and declared the boy to be the baby's father in December 2024.

The judge ultimately dismissed the adoption petition and ordered the child be sent back to his mother.

The Court of Appeals found the judge did not follow the law when they allowed the paternity case to take priority over the adoption case, despite having already been told by the appeals court in a previous ruling on the case that the adoption should take priority. It ordered the case be sent back to Wayne County Circuit Court and for a different judge to handle it.

But Langton said every family judge she has met cares about their cases and wants to get it right.

"Our goal is not to do something so ridiculous the Court of Appeals is going to reverse us and send the case back to us," Langton said. "That’s not the role. Do we make mistakes? For sure. ... But the thinking we're like wild cowboys shooting from the hip, that couldn't be further from the truth. Mainly we’re just trying to do the best for the kids."

Keeping a family's case in front of one judge

Along with training, the bill, which has been assigned to the judiciary committee, would mandate all of a family's cases be heard in front of one judge.

But McCormick and Langton said this is already done through the family court plan each county is required to file with the State Court Administrator's Office and through the law already in place. She said the clerk's office searches the records each time a case is filed to see if there are other pending cases. If there are, the new case goes to the same judge, she said.

Several years ago, the State Court Administrator's Office required that the minimum time a judge has to serve in family court is six years, Langton said. A judge can only leave if there's an unexpected vacancy in the county.

But Speaker said some judges may run for a seat and be assigned to the family court, but have no intention of staying there. They may take the first circuit seat available, where they could handle criminal and civil cases. Family court is often seen as a lesser court; some call it "kiddie court," Speaker said.

Yost Johnson said if a judge knows he or she "is going to leave in two years, how much training and education do you think they're going to specialize in? They're training for their next thing."

This has left families having to have their cases heard in front of different judges year after year, delaying proceedings while the judge catches up on the background, Speaker and Yost Johnson said.

Having one judge sitting on a family's case or cases can save families and the court system money, reduce the trauma of having victims testify multiple times and reduce the possibility of having judges issue conflicting orders, Yost Johnson said.

She said this aspect of the bill basically "puts teeth in the law that already exists."

"You have to know the whole problem with the family," Yost Johnson said. "You can't do that if you're not doing one family, one judge."

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