Forensic Psychologist In Palm Beach Shores, FL
Comprehensive psychological evaluations and expert testimony providing clarity and justice for legal professionals and families.
No forensic psychology practice keeps an office in Palm Beach Shores. The town covers roughly 0.3 square miles at the southern tip of Singer Island, bounded by the Atlantic on the east, Lake Worth on the west and the Lake Worth Inlet on the south. About 1,338 people live there year round. Every forensic case from this town gets worked from somewhere else, and ours run out of Jupiter, about 10 miles up the coast.
Before you retain anyone, check one date: July 1, 2026. A Florida statute took evaluators off the state forensic evaluator list that day. Most practices will not raise it with you.
Check One Date Before You Retain Any Florida Evaluator
On July 1, 2026, Florida dropped from its forensic evaluator list every evaluator who had not completed the Department of Children and Families annual training. Section 916.115, Florida Statutes, sets the rule in plain words: “Existing evaluators as of July 1, 2024, shall complete department-provided annual forensic evaluator training by July 1, 2026, to remain active.”
That date has passed. Three things follow, and each one changes what you ask on a first call.
- Training is annual now, not once. The statute requires an expert to be a psychiatrist, licensed psychologist or physician, and to “have completed initial and annual forensic evaluator training, provided by the department.” Juvenile competency work carries its own track. An expert who says they completed the state training, without saying when, has answered a question you did not ask. Ask for the month.
- For a court appointment, the list is the check. The resume is not. Section 916.115 caps the court at no more than 3 experts on a defendant’s mental condition, and each one has to clear the training requirement. A long CV does not substitute for current status on the list.
- Payment is now tied to the contents of the report. The statute reads: “In order for an expert to be paid for the services rendered, the expert’s report and testimony must explicitly address each of the factors and follow the procedures set out in this chapter and in the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure.” Those factors sit in Rule 3.211(a)(2)(A) of the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure: whether the defendant can appreciate the charges, appreciate the range of penalties, understand the adversarial nature of the process, disclose relevant facts to counsel, behave appropriately in court, and testify relevantly. A report that delivers a diagnosis and skips those 6 factors is non-compliant on its face.
Ask us for our current status and the date of our last annual training. Ask the same of anyone else you are weighing.
Ten Situations That Send Palm Beach Shores Cases To A Forensic Psychologist
- You are defending a criminal case where competency to proceed is in question and you need a clinical psychological evaluation that a judge will accept.
- You need a court-qualified expert witness for civil litigation, the same work our forensic psychologist serving Pahokee handles at the western end of the county.
- You are in a contested custody matter and the court wants a parental capacity or child custody evaluation before it rules.
- Your client gave a statement to police and you need a competency to waive Miranda rights evaluation.
- Someone has a head injury, a stroke or a suspected dementia and the question is cognitive: that is a neuropsychological evaluation, not a clinical interview.
- You are pursuing damages for psychological harm and need a personal and emotional injury evaluation, with malingering and symptom exaggeration addressed head on.
- A guardianship petition under Chapter 744 is pending and the capacity question has to be answered with data, not impressions.
- You need a violence risk assessment or a sexual behavior risk assessment for an adult or a juvenile.
- You need mitigation for sentencing, or a risk assessment for a parole hearing in one of the older Florida cases where parole still applies.
- Your client is filing for extreme hardship, asylum or a VAWA petition and needs an immigration psychological evaluation.
The parole item needs a footnote. Florida mostly does not have parole. Sentencing guidelines enacted in 1983 ended it for crimes committed on or after October 1 that year. What remains is a shrinking pool: the Florida Commission on Offender Review counted 3,267 parole-eligible inmates as of June 30, 2025, with 329 under supervision. Any page advertising Florida parole risk assessments without saying that has not checked. The live work sits in conditional release, conditional medical release, clemency, and mitigation at sentencing.
Two Routes Into A Forensic Evaluation, And The Court Only Pays For One
Palm Beach County runs its own Forensic Psychology Services Office inside the 15th Judicial Circuit, and it costs a party nothing to use. Commercial pages skip this, because pointing a reader at a service the court pays for is bad for business. If your case qualifies, start there.
The county office takes court referrals only. An individual cannot call and book one; a judge has to sign an order first. What it covers is specific: juvenile threat assessments, competency evaluations, domestic violence risk assessments, intellectual disability evaluations, and parental and child assessments in dependency cases. It works out of 4 locations, with the main office in Room 5.1130 at the Main Judicial Complex, plus North County, South County and West County. The phone number is (561) 355-2108 and the office is open Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM. On money the office is blunt: “All costs associated with the court’s ordered assessment/evaluation are determined by the presiding judge and taxed accordingly.”
Now the part that decides which door a Palm Beach Shores reader walks through. Look at what is not on that list. Guardianship and incapacity under Chapter 744. Retrospective testamentary capacity. Undue influence. Civil personal injury and emotional damages. Immigration hardship, asylum and VAWA. Criminal responsibility and the insanity defense. Competency to waive Miranda rights. Attachment and bonding assessments. Psychoeducational testing. None of those are county services. For a town with a median age of 60.4, that matters, because capacity and probate questions are the ones this population generates most, and for those the public door was never open.
So the first question is not what an evaluation costs. It is whether a judge has signed an order, and whether the referral question sits on the county’s list. If both answers are yes, call (561) 355-2108 before you call us.
Where A Palm Beach Shores Case Is Actually Heard
Palm Beach Shores sits in Florida’s 15th Judicial Circuit, which covers all of Palm Beach County. For most cases out of this town, the building is the North County Courthouse at 3188 PGA Blvd in Palm Beach Gardens. You get there across the Blue Heron Bridge and north up the mainland.
The Clerk of the Circuit Court lists probate, guardianship, mental health, family court, domestic violence injunctions, small claims, county civil, eviction, and misdemeanor and traffic matters among the case types handled at North County. That list maps almost exactly onto what an aging barrier-island town produces. Circuit criminal matters and the county’s main forensic psychology office sit at the Main Judicial Complex at 205 N Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach.
Which building your matter lands in decides 2 practical things: whose scheduling order governs your deadline, and where an in-person examination can be arranged if the examinee cannot travel. We evaluate at our office, at a courthouse, at a facility, or at the residence.
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A Town That Doubles In Winter, And What That Does To An Evaluation Calendar
Palm Beach Shores says on its own town site that its population “more than doubles during the winter months due to returning residents and tourists.” No competing page mentions it. It changes a forensic case out of this town more than anything else here does.
Four consequences we plan around.
Collateral interviews have a season. A capacity or custody evaluation leans on people who see the examinee regularly: neighbors, a building manager, an adult child, a treating clinician. A collateral list assembled in February and worked in June is a different list. We schedule collaterals early, by phone or video once the person has gone north.
Records sit out of state. Seasonal residents carry 2 sets of providers. The medical chart that answers the capacity question is often held by a physician in another state, and a release signed in month 1 saves a month later. We request from both sides at intake rather than after the first session.
Residency is a legal question before it is a clinical one. If an alleged incapacitated person winters here and lives elsewhere, where the petition belongs is for the attorney, not the psychologist. We flag the question when we see it coming. We will not write an opinion that assumes an answer the court has not given.
The calendar compresses. Demand for in-person examinations on the island concentrates in the same months. If your matter has a hearing date in season, the scheduling call is worth making early.
How Our Forensic Psychological Evaluations Run
Case Consultation And Records Review
Every evaluation starts with the referral question and the file, not with the examinee. Dr. Cathy Colet, Psy.D., Florida license PY9058, has practiced here since 2008 and has been court-appointed in the 1st, 15th, 17th, 19th and 20th Judicial Circuits. Records come first: medical charts, prior psychological reports, legal filings, school files, police reports, and in a will contest, the drafting attorney’s file. In retrospective work this stage is most of the evaluation.
Testing And Examination
Clinical interview, standardized instruments scored against normative data, behavioral observation, and effort and validity testing throughout. Where the question is cognitive, a neuropsychological battery produces evidence an interview cannot. Collateral interviews are added where the referral question needs them.
The Report
Every instrument named. Every source listed. Every conclusion traced back to the fact it rests on. In competency matters the report addresses each Rule 3.211(a)(2)(A) factor explicitly, because section 916.115 now requires it. We write down the findings that do not help the retaining party alongside the ones that do. A report containing only favorable findings is the easiest kind to take apart on cross.
Standards And Compliance
Florida has applied the Daubert standard since May 23, 2019 under section 90.702, Florida Statutes. A report written to older habits gets challenged on methodology before anyone argues the conclusion. Admissibility stays the court’s call, and a defensible report is what puts the question in front of the judge on the right footing.
Board Certification, License Status And 3 Other Things Worth Verifying
Florida issues no separate forensic psychology license. Everyone doing this work holds the standard psychologist license, prefix PY, issued under Chapter 490 by the Florida Board of Psychology. A doctorate, supervised hours, a passing EPPP score, the Florida laws and rules examination. None of it is specific to court work. “Forensic” on a website is a marketing word, not a credential.
Five checks separate the claim from the credential.
First, the license is active. Search the Florida Department of Health licensee portal by name and confirm the PY number, the status and any discipline history. Ours is PY9058 for Dr. Colet.
Second, for court-appointed adult competency work, the evaluator is current on the state list. After July 1, 2026, this is the check that decides whether the appointment holds, for the reasons at the top of this page.
Third, the testimony record exists in your circuit. Ask how many times the expert has been qualified in the 15th Judicial Circuit, and whether a report of theirs has ever been excluded on a methodology challenge. An expert who has never been challenged has usually never been tested.
Fourth, board certification, where it exists, is a real signal. The American Board of Forensic Psychology under ABPP ends in an oral examination before board-certified forensic psychologists. It is also rare, so its absence is normal and disqualifies nobody. Its presence tells you something.
Fifth, the practice actually does your case type. Criminal, civil, juvenile law and family matters call for different instruments and a different report structure. Our Lake Park forensic psychology page and South Bay practice page set out the same range for those communities. The clinical evaluation page walks through how a general assessment is structured. FC PsychExperts runs criminal, civil, family and immigration work from 2 Florida
Forensic and Clinical Psychology Services
Every evaluation below is performed by a licensed doctoral psychologist. No associates, no trainees, nobody writing under someone else’s signature.
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Our team works criminal, civil, family and immigration matters across Florida courts. Dr. Colet has practiced since 2008 and has been court-appointed in 5 judicial circuits. Her memberships include the American Psychological Association, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, and Physicians for Human Rights. She served on the Operation Youth Violence Task Force in West Palm Beach County. Her CV is published on her bio page.
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Connect with our experienced team of forensic psychologists serving Palm Beach Shores, FL and surrounding areas.
Serving Palm Beach Shores, FL and Surrounding Area
We work cases across Palm Beach Shores, FL and the wider county from our Jupiter office, about 10 miles north up the coast. The town organized in 1947 and began corporate existence in 1951. It has stayed small ever since. Roughly 0.3 square miles, running from the Lake Worth Inlet north to the Beach Road and Bamboo Lane line, ocean on one side and lake on the other.
The town has no courthouse, no hospital and no forensic practice inside its boundaries. That makes geography a scheduling problem rather than a service problem. Everything reaches the mainland across the Blue Heron Bridge. For an examinee who cannot make that drive, and with a median age of 60.4 that describes a real share of capacity referrals, we come to the residence, the facility or the courthouse instead.
The same holds for the rest of Singer Island, the Riviera Beach mainland west of it, and the north county communities along the Intracoastal. Our full range of forensic psychology services is available anywhere in Palm Beach County.
Frequently Asked Questions About Forensic Psychology Services
What is the difference between clinical psychology and forensic psychology?
Forensic psychology specifically applies psychological principles, methods, and findings to legal issues and court proceedings. While clinical psychology focuses on treating mental health conditions, forensic psychology evaluates psychological factors relevant to legal questions such as competency, sanity, custody, and damages. Forensic psychologists receive specialized training in legal procedures, ethical guidelines for court involvement, and assessment methods designed for legal contexts.
How long does a forensic psychological evaluation typically take?
The duration of forensic psychological evaluations varies depending on the complexity of legal questions and individual circumstances. Most comprehensive evaluations require multiple sessions spanning 4 to 8 hours of direct assessment time, plus additional time for records review, scoring, and report writing. Simple competency evaluations may require 2 to 4 hours, while complex custody or personal injury evaluations may extend over several weeks with multiple appointments.
What should I expect during a forensic psychological evaluation?
Forensic psychological evaluations typically include clinical interviews, psychological testing, records review, and sometimes collateral interviews with family members or other relevant parties. The process is more structured and legally focused than traditional therapy. You’ll be asked detailed questions about your psychological history, current functioning, and specific issues relevant to your legal case. All information gathered is confidential within the legal context but may be shared with attorneys and courts as specified in your evaluation agreement.
Can forensic psychologists provide therapy or treatment?
While many forensic psychologists are licensed to provide therapy, ethical guidelines typically prevent the same psychologist from serving both evaluation and treatment roles for the same individual. This maintains objectivity and avoids conflicts of interest. However, forensic psychologists often make treatment recommendations and can refer individuals to appropriate therapeutic resources when indicated by evaluation findings.
How much do forensic psychological evaluations cost in Palm Beach Shores?
Forensic psychological evaluation costs vary based on the complexity of the assessment, time requirements, and specific services needed. Comprehensive evaluations typically range from several hundred to several thousand dollars. Many forensic psychology services are not covered by insurance when conducted for legal purposes rather than treatment. We provide detailed fee estimates during initial consultation and offer payment plans when appropriate. Court appointed evaluations may have different fee structures determined by the court system.
Connect With Expert Forensic Psychologist In Palm Beach Shores, FL Today
Whether you’re a legal professional seeking expert psychological evaluation or an individual navigating court ordered assessment, our experienced team provides the specialized support you need. Contact us now to discuss your specific requirements and discover how our forensic psychology expertise can serve your case with the professional excellence you deserve.