Which court hears a victim child protection order case, and what changes where no family court sits in that area?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
For this exercise, the file to read is the application for the protection order, any incident or police record showing where the child abuse perpetrator's act took place, and papers establishing the residence or current location of both the perpetrator and the victim child, since jurisdiction rests on those places.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading takes each connecting factor on its own terms: jurisdiction lies with the family court that has jurisdiction over any one of them, the child abuse perpetrator's act place, residence or current place, or the victim child's residence or current place, and where no family court is installed in that region, the case goes instead to the district court of that region.
Another reading notes that the provision lists the connecting places without giving any of them priority, so it does not settle which court hears the case where several courts are competent at once, while the separate rule that the hearing and the decision are conducted by a judge says nothing about other parts of the court's procedure.
Your judgment
Where the act place and the victim child's current location fall in different court districts, how should the file show which of the competent courts was asked to act?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look at this again if the provision is amended to rank the connecting factors or to add a transfer rule, or if a court decision addresses concurrent jurisdiction over these cases.