Rule 42.0 One Family/One Judge Rule

If a family already has a juvenile case in court, any new juvenile case involving that same family goes to the same judge. This means if a child, or that child's mother or father, already has a juvenile matter open in court, a new case involving that family won't be sent to a different judge picked at random. Instead, it goes to the judge who is already handling the family's other case.

The idea behind this rule is to keep one judge in charge of all the juvenile matters for a single family. This helps the judge see the full picture of what's going on with that family, instead of having different judges handling separate pieces of the same family's situation. Some courts may have their own specific process for how this works, which would be listed in Appendix 42.0, but the general rule is that one judge stays with one family's juvenile cases.