Legal Authorities
- OAC 340:25-5-67.1.. Family violence
When a case is going to be heard by the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) it must be reviewed for domestic violence (FV/DV). The results of this review must be reported to OAH prior to the hearing.
The case must be reviewed for the following:
Is there family violence (FV/DV)?
If there is family violence (FV/DV) present what is the level?
o Level One: This case has a Family Violence Indicator (FVI)
o Level Two: Information has been reported to Child Support Services (CSS) that indicates a higher risk of lethality
Best practice procedures to follow on EVERY CASE being heard by the Office of Administrative Hearings:
- The CSS attorney will complete the Family Violence review process in OnBase. For more information on this please see Completing the Family Violence Step in OnBase for Hearings article.
- Hold hearings on the phone, with no video.
- Redact school, medical, employment, or any location information from pleadings and/or orders.
- Assess for coercion in judgement settlements and waiver of arrears.
- CSS/PATHS team will:
- Case note to CARE with asterisk***
- Email to CSS CARE management
- CSS/PATHS team will update the Potentially Dangerous (PD) field with one of two purposes.
- Y – threat against the office, no family violence (FV/DV)
- D – high level threat of family violence (FV/DV), no necessary threat to the office
- Refer Level Two cases to the PATHS (specialized domestic violence) team for further investigation and resources.
Practice Tips in the Court Room:
- Do not mention that family violence (FV/DV) is present in the case
- Do not inadvertently release school, medical info or employment information.
- Do encourage your client to attend virtual court hearings from a safe place, like Legal Aid, or an office.
- ALJs will no longer ask why someone is NOT appearing on video, as a safeguard.
- Participants outside of our network will only see a partial phone number for participants in the hearing. For an extra level of safety, the participants should change their phone number to a name.
For related articles, try clicking one of the tags at the bottom of this page.