Under Fla. Stat. 916.115, when a court-appointed expert’s evaluation covers more than competency to proceed, the court pays only the competency portion and the balance is chargeable to the defense. That one clause is how a Haverhill defense attorney gets a public contribution toward a privately scoped workup instead of paying for all of it.
Most defense attorneys in the 15th Circuit don’t split the bill that way. They either accept a court-appointed evaluation that answers one narrow question, or they pay privately for the whole thing.
FC PsychExperts has conducted forensic psychological evaluations across Palm Beach County since 2008. Our nearest office is in Jupiter, 15.77 miles from Haverhill. The county’s evaluator sits 4.23 miles away. Below is what each route pays for, what neither route covers, and how to tell which one your case needs.
What The Court Pays For In A Haverhill Case, And What It Never Pays For
The court funds a fixed answer to a fixed question. Everything past that question is yours to fund.
Three rules from Fla. Stat. 916.115 set the boundary, and they matter more than any fee number:
The court appoints no more than three experts to determine a defendant’s mental condition in a criminal case. That is a hard statutory ceiling, not a budget guideline.
Every appointed expert must be a psychiatrist, licensed psychologist, or physician who has completed initial and annual forensic evaluator training provided by the department. Annual. Not once. A psychologist who completed the training in 2019 and never renewed is not statutorily qualified today, and almost nobody asks for the date.
If the defense or the state retains its own expert and waives confidentiality of that expert’s report, the court may pay for no more than two additional experts. That waiver drops the court-funded ceiling from three experts to two. Price it before you file.
Then the funding split. When an appointed expert’s fees cover work beyond competency to proceed, the statute directs the court to pay only the competency-related portion. The rest is chargeable to the defense. Read as a strategy rather than a limitation, that means a single evaluation can carry a competency component the court funds and a mitigation or malingering component you fund, produced by one evaluator working from one records review instead of two evaluators duplicating it.
That $300 testimony ceiling is the number to sit with. It does not move for a four-hour cross-examination. The full fee schedule and both paths side by side are broken out on our Westlake page.
AO 2.601 covers every court matter except probate and guardianship. Those run under a separate order, AO 6.301, which governs compensation for attorneys, examining committee members, and other experts in the Probate and Guardianship Division. If your Haverhill matter is a capacity or guardianship question, the fee framework you are working under is 6.301, not 2.601, and the two are not interchangeable.
The County's Evaluation Network Is Closer To Haverhill Than We Are
Haverhill is 0.61 square miles and 2,324 people, and it happens to sit inside the densest cluster of court-evaluation infrastructure in Palm Beach County. Ten of the sites where the county conducts court-ordered psychological evaluations are within 21 miles. Two are within five.
| Site | Role | Straight-line miles from Haverhill |
|---|---|---|
| Criminal Justice Complex, 3228 Gun Club Rd | Criminal courthouse and Main Detention Center | 1.67 |
| Main Judicial Complex, 205 N Dixie Hwy | Courthouse plus the Forensic Psychology Services Office, Suite 5.1130 | 4.23 |
| JFK Medical Center North, 45th St | Community evaluation site | 4.98 |
| Jerome Golden Center, 45th St | Community evaluation site | 5.59 |
| St. Mary’s Medical Center, 45th St | Community evaluation site | 5.68 |
| North County Courthouse, 3188 PGA Blvd | Courthouse | 10.40 |
| FC PsychExperts, Jupiter | Private practice | 15.77 |
| South County Courthouse, 200 W Atlantic Ave | Courthouse | 16.26 |
| South County Mental Health Center | Community evaluation site | 20.38 |
| West Detention Center, Belle Glade | Detention evaluation site | 31.60 |
| West County Courthouse, 2950 SR-15 | Courthouse | 33.75 |
Read that table honestly and it argues against hiring us for a routine court-ordered competency evaluation. If a judge has signed an order and the question is narrow, the county evaluator is four miles from Haverhill, the psychologists there hold Florida licenses and have completed the Florida Forensic Examiner trainings, and the cost is set by the presiding judge and taxed through the case. Paying privately for that is a waste of your client’s money.
Scheduling runs through the Forensic Psychology Services Office at (561) 355-2108 or PSD-CourtPsychology@pbcgov.org, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Nicole Bishop runs the program. Fax is (561) 355-4004. The office will consult before you refer if you are unsure whether a referral fits, and it handles emergency evaluations on request. No referral moves without a signed order attached.
One detail worth knowing if you practice here. The office that schedules court-ordered evaluations sits in Suite 5.1130 at 205 North Dixie Highway. The office that pays privately retained court-appointed experts sits in Suite 5.2500 of the same building. Same floor, two suites apart, two entirely separate processes.
How An Expert Gets Appointed And Paid In The 15th Circuit
The circuit runs court-appointed expert compensation through a named office with a published contact, and the process is separate from the county’s evaluation office.
Expert Witness Services sits inside the Administrative Office of the Court. Debra Oats is Program Manager. Direct line (561) 355-4495, email doats@pbcgov.org, mail to Administrative Office of the Court, 15th Judicial Circuit, Attn: Expert Witness Services, 205 North Dixie Highway, Suite 5.2500, West Palm Beach, FL 33401.
Two administrative orders govern payment, and which one applies depends on your division:
| Order | Covers |
|---|---|
| AO 2.601 | Selection and payment of court-appointed experts, all court matters except probate and guardianship |
| AO 6.301 | Probate and Guardianship Division compensation for attorneys, examining committee members, and other experts |
Invoicing runs on a Uniform Invoice for Expert Services. The circuit publishes that form and the two orders. It does not publish an application process for getting onto an appointment list, which is worth knowing before you assume one exists. Call Ms. Oats.
Why this matters to you rather than to us. When you retain an expert privately and later ask the court to fund part of the work under Fla. Stat. 916.115, the payment mechanics run through this office and this invoice, on these two orders. An expert who has never invoiced the 15th Circuit will learn that process on your case.
Four Checks To Run Before You Retain Any Florida Forensic Evaluator
Four checks, about four minutes, and they eliminate most of the risk of a Daubert challenge landing on your expert instead of the other side’s.
Check the license, not the title.
Florida doesn’t license “forensic psychologists.” There is no such credential. Chapter 490 licenses psychologists, and their license numbers carry a PY prefix. Anyone describing themselves as a forensic psychologist in Florida is a Chapter 490 psychologist who practices forensically. Look the number up on the Florida DOH MQA license verification portal and confirm it is active and clear. Dr. Colet’s is PY9058.
Ask for the date of the last forensic evaluator training.
Fla. Stat. 916.115 requires initial and annual training for court appointment. Juvenile work requires a separate annual juvenile forensic competency evaluation training. Ask for the month and year of the most recent completion. An evaluator who cannot produce a current date is not appointable, whatever their CV says.
Count the appointments already made.
The statutory ceiling is three experts. If the state has two and you retain a third and waive confidentiality on the report, the court may fund no more than two additional appointments. Do that math before you retain, not after.
Ask which circuits the evaluator has testified in, then ask about exclusions.
Testimony experience is a claim every expert makes. An exclusion record is a claim almost none volunteer. Ask directly whether any court has ever excluded or limited their testimony, and on what basis.
What A Competency Report Has To Contain
A Florida competency report that omits any of six statutory capacities is incomplete on its face, and opposing counsel will say so.
Fla. Stat. 916.12(1) sets the legal standard: whether the defendant can consult with counsel with a reasonable degree of rational understanding, and has a rational and factual understanding of the proceedings. Subsection (3) then requires the examining expert to address six specific capacities. Appreciating the charges. Appreciating the range and nature of possible penalties. Understanding the adversarial nature of the legal process. Disclosing pertinent facts to counsel. Manifesting appropriate courtroom behavior. Testifying relevantly.
Six capacities, every report, no exceptions. When we review an opposing competency report, that is the first thing we check, and it is missing more often than you would expect.
Criminal responsibility evaluations reconstruct mental state at the moment of the offense. That is a harder evidentiary problem than competency and it takes roughly double the hours. Miranda waiver evaluations assess capacity at the moment of waiver and can decide whether a confession survives. Mitigation work documents trauma history and developmental factors supporting a downward departure. Dr. Colet performs all four categories, for defense and for the state.
Get Expert Support Today
Custody, dependency, and juvenile work
Florida custody recommendations are graded against a 20-item statutory checklist, and a report that doesn’t organize its findings against it makes the judge do the mapping.
Fla. Stat. 61.13(3) enumerates 20 best-interest factors, lettered (a) through (t). A custody evaluation assesses both parents, the children, and each parent-child interaction through interview, testing, observation, and collateral records, on identical terms for every party. That symmetry is the reason the report carries weight at all.
Parental capacity assessments examine each parent’s functioning against a child’s developmental needs, and they become central when abuse allegations, substance use, or mental health questions enter a dependency case. FC PsychExperts has conducted family evaluations for the Department of Juvenile Justice, ChildNet, and Communities Connected for Kids.
Juvenile evaluations weigh adolescent development against legal standards written for adults. Juvenile competency runs under Fla. R. Juv. P. 8.095 and Fla. Stat. 985.19, a separate framework from the adult chapter, and the annual training requirement is separate too.
Civil damages, neuropsychology, and guardianship
Civil courts award on function, not diagnosis. A personal injury evaluation that stops at a diagnosis has done half the work.
Personal injury and emotional damages evaluations document functional limitations, treatment needs, diminished earning capacity, and prognosis, and they address causation and pre-existing conditions before the defense does. Dr. Colet’s Level 1 Trauma Center experience covers traumatic brain injury, motor vehicle cases, medical negligence, and catastrophic injury, including assessment of malingering and deception.
Dr. Lauren Miller handles forensic neuropsychological testing where cognition is the disputed issue. Her work quantifies what a brain injury changed and what the prognosis supports.
Guardianship. The county’s Forensic Psychology Services Office refers guardianship matters to the Clerk of the Circuit Court, so contested capacity questions in Haverhill are privately retained by default.
When We Decline A Referral
We turn work down, and publishing the reasons is more useful than another paragraph of credentials.
We decline when we’ve treated the evaluee or a family member. A prior treatment relationship disqualifies the evaluator, and opposing counsel will find it.
We decline when the retaining attorney wants a conclusion decided in advance. The evaluation goes where the data goes, including when that damages the case paying for it.
We decline when the deadline can’t support the protocol. A custody evaluation compressed into ten days produces a report that gets excluded, and taking that work would burn your retainer for nothing.
And we tell you when the county office at (561) 355-2108 is the better route, which happens more often than a private practice publishing a page like this would prefer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can the court pay for part of a private evaluation?
Yes, and this is the least-used provision in the statute. Fla. Stat. 916.115 directs the court to pay only the portion of an appointed expert’s fees relating to competency to proceed, with the balance chargeable to the defense. One evaluator, one records review, split funding. Raise it with the court when you move for appointment, not after the invoice.
How many experts will the court appoint?
No more than three to determine a defendant’s mental condition in a criminal case. If the defense or the state retains its own expert and waives confidentiality of that expert’s report, the court may pay for no more than two additional appointed experts. Count the existing appointments before you retain.
Where would the evaluation take place?
The county conducts evaluations at the Main, North, South, and West County courthouses, at the Palm Beach County Main Detention Center and West Detention Center, and at the Jerome Golden Center, JFK Medical Center North, South County Mental Health Center, and St. Mary’s Medical Center. For a Haverhill resident the two closest are the Criminal Justice Complex on Gun Club Road at 1.67 miles and the Main Judicial Complex at 4.23 miles.
How do I check whether an evaluator is qualified?
Look up the PY license number on the Florida DOH MQA portal and confirm it’s active. Then ask for the month and year of their most recent forensic evaluator training, because Fla. Stat. 916.115 requires it initially and annually, and juvenile work requires a separate annual training. Then ask whether any court has excluded or limited their testimony.
Does insurance cover a forensic evaluation?
No. Forensic evaluations answer a legal question rather than a treatment question, which puts them outside medical necessity by definition. Expect to pay privately or have the cost taxed through the court.
Can FC PsychExperts testify in the 15th Judicial Circuit?
Yes. Dr. Colet has been court-appointed and has testified in the 15th, and in Florida’s 1st, 17th, 19th, and 20th circuits, for both prosecution and defense. Reports are written on the assumption that testimony follows.