Carol Bealor is the director at the Cass County Friend of the Court.

This year, the Friend of the Court turned 100 years old and as we prepare to celebrate this milestone with an open house on Nov. 7, I can’t help but stop and think about how far the FOC has come in 100 years.

In 1917, if a person failed to follow a court order regarding child support, the other party could file a motion to show cause to have the order enforced through the court’s contempt powers.  However, poorer families who could not afford to hire an attorney to help them with filing and pursuing this motion were left at a disadvantage as attorneys willing to take such a case — let alone for free — were scarce.  This left vulnerable families without the support they needed and without an avenue to access the courts to get the support.

Judges in Wayne County decided to address this issue head on in 1917 by appointing a special prosecutor — a “Friend of the Court” — who would bring to the court’s attention a person’s failure to follow its orders and to bring other actions before the court to ensure that Wayne County children were properly cared for.

The efforts of Wayne County were so successful that in 1919, the Michigan Legislature passed legislation to establish a Friend of the Court in every county to ensure that children across the entire state were being cared for and supported.  In 1982, the Friend of the Court moved into the judicial branch of government, and it has been exclusively a circuit court office since then with an official Friend of the Court director, such as me, being appointed by the Chief Judge.

There have been many changes over the last 100 years regarding the services that are provided by the Friend of the Court.  Just in the Cass County FOC alone, we have gone from primarily enforcing child support orders to doing so much more for families such as investigating and making recommendations to the court regarding custody, parenting time, child support and medical support; providing access to voluntary alternative dispute resolution services to help settle disagreements about custody and parenting time; providing access to forms for parties to represent themselves; providing access to a free Parenting Academy Class for parents to learn methods to co-parent; funding parenting time evaluations, psychological evaluations, and therapeutic and/or supervised parenting time sessions to assist in custody and parenting time disputes; and providing access to low cost DNA testing for Revocation of Paternity Cases.  All of these new services are in addition to the continued service of enforcing child support orders.

I am sure in the next 100 years the services that are provided by the FOC will continue to change and evolve as the needs of the families we serve change and evolve.  However, I know that no matter how the services provided evolve in the future, our mission at the Cass County FOC will always remain to serve and empower families to make children’s lives better.

I hope you can join us on Nov. 7 in the courtroom of the Honorable Susan L. Dobrich at the Law and Courts Building for an open house to celebrate 100 years of the FOC serving families and children across the State of Michigan.  The open house is from 3 to 4:30 p.m. and is open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided, and display boards will be set up to highlight some of the services provided by your local FOC.

If you have questions about the FOC that you think would be helpful to address in future columns, please send them to the FOC email address at foc@cassco.org