Miami-Dade County runs family reunification, co-parenting and parental alienation work at no cost. Nine interventions, staffed in-house, at 175 NW 1st Avenue. Most families in a Miami-Dade case never hear about it.
Here is the part nobody puts on a flyer. The court’s own FAQ says communications with that unit are not confidential and the unit reports back to the judge when the intervention ends.
Private family therapy in Florida is different. It is privileged under Fla. Stat. 90.503. That privilege holds against most things. It does not hold against a court-ordered examination, and it does not hold once a party puts their own mental condition into the case.
So the first question is not which therapist. It is which door. There is a four-question test for that below, and it takes about two minutes.
One thing to know before you call. We are a forensic and clinical practice, roughly 75% forensic, and our closest office to Miami is Fort Lauderdale. If what your family needs is weekly general counseling with no court file attached, a Miami-Dade practice near you is the better answer. We will tell you that on the phone rather than after you have booked.
Run The Three-Door Test Before You Book Anything
Family therapy in a Miami-Dade case is three different products, and the difference is who reads what you say.
Work out which door you are walking through first. The therapy is the easy part.
| Door 1: Family Court Services | Door 2: Private family therapy | Door 3: Forensic evaluation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | Miami-Dade Eleventh Circuit, in-house staff | A licensed clinician you choose | A licensed psychologist or qualified professional, court-appointed or retained |
| What it costs | Nothing | Private fee or insurance | Parents pay, unless certified indigent |
| How you get in | A signed Order of Referral. You cannot self-refer | You call and book | Court order, or you retain |
| Who reads it | The judge. The unit reports on completion | Nobody, unless the privilege is removed | The judge, both lawyers, opposing counsel |
| Confidential | No. Stated plainly on the court’s FAQ | Yes, under Fla. Stat. 90.503, with exceptions | No, and it never was |
| Good for | Getting moving fast at no cost, low-conflict matters, families without funds | Changing how the family actually works | Answering a question the judge has to decide |
| Fails when | You need candour, or you need to pick your clinician | The other side is preparing to subpoena it | You wanted help and got an assessment |
The four questions
One. Is there an order, and what does it actually name? An Order of Referral to Family Court Services, an order for a social investigation under Fla. Stat. 61.20, and an order for evaluation of a minor child under Fla. Fam. L. R. P. 12.363 are three separate instruments producing three separate outputs. People book therapy when the order says evaluation, and then pay twice. Read the order.
Two. Who receives the product? A judge, a lawyer, or nobody. If the honest answer is a judge, you are not in therapy, whatever the provider calls it.
Three. Has anyone pleaded a mental condition? If a party’s psychological condition is an element of a claim or defense in the case, Fla. Stat. 90.503(4)(c) removes the privilege for communications about that condition. Assume the file is reachable and act on that.
Four. Are you working on the relationship or on the record? Both are legitimate goals. They need different providers. One provider cannot serve both without damaging each, which is the next section.
Miami-Dade will do some of this for free, and it is not a secret, it is just unadvertised
The Eleventh Judicial Circuit’s Family Court Services page lists nine court-ordered interventions provided at no cost: parental alienation work, child and family assistance, co-parenting, crisis assistance, marital reconciliation, parenting coordination, reunification, time-sharing, and supervised visitation with monitored exchanges. The unit’s separate FAQ page lists eleven, adding community referral and substance abuse testing.
175 NW 1st Avenue, Suite 1503, Miami, FL 33128. (305) 349-5508. Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm. Supervised visitation runs outside office hours, Mondays and Wednesdays 4pm to 8pm plus a Saturday session. Call to confirm the Saturday time before you plan around it, because the circuit’s own two pages give different answers.
The mechanics matter more than the list.
You cannot self-refer. A judge or general magistrate has to sign an Order of Referral, and a copy has to reach the unit. Referrals come through the Family Division, the Domestic Violence Division, Unified Family Court, and General Magistrates.
You have five working days. Once the order is signed, the parties must contact the unit within five working days to provide initial data. Miss it and the court is noticed of non-compliance. That clock is not on most people’s radar and it starts the moment the order is signed, not when you get around to reading it.
Parenting coordination for indigent parties is capped at six meetings per order. Six sessions is a real intervention for a scheduling dispute. It is not a real intervention for entrenched alienation.
Nothing you say there is private. The unit’s own FAQ: “All communications with the unit are not confidential. Family Court Services reports to the Court upon completion of the intervention, or as necessary, according to the specific needs the case.”
The confidentiality question to ask at your first Family Court Services meeting
Ask which rule governs your referral.
Fla. Stat. 61.125(8) says: “Except as otherwise provided in this section, all communications made by, between, or among the parties, participants, and the parenting coordinator during parenting coordination sessions are confidential.” That opening clause carries the weight. Eleven exceptions follow at (a) through (k), and they include reporting whether a party complied with a court order and reporting that a case is unsuitable for coordination.
The unit provides parenting coordination and also states that its communications are not confidential. Those two statements point in different directions, and which one applies to your matter depends on the instrument you were referred under. It is a fair question, it takes thirty seconds to ask, and the answer changes what you should say in the room.
We are not telling you to skip the free option. For a scheduling dispute between two reasonable parents, it is often the right answer and it costs nothing. We are telling you to know what it is before you use it.
The Equal Time-sharing Presumption Changed What Family Therapy Is For In Florida
Since 1 July 2023, Florida law starts from 50/50.
Fla. Stat. 61.13(2)(c)1: “Unless otherwise provided in this section or agreed to by the parties, there is a rebuttable presumption that equal time-sharing of a minor child is in the best interests of the minor child. To rebut this presumption, a party must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that equal time-sharing is not in the best interests of the minor child.”
Preponderance, not clear and convincing. The bar to rebut is lower than most parents assume, and the court still works through the twenty best-interest factors in 61.13(3).
Here is the part that changed the clinical work, and it is a position rather than a neutral summary. Before 2023, a contested Miami-Dade case was largely an argument about how much time. Now the starting point is equal, so the argument moves to whether these two adults can operate an equal schedule at all. Handovers. Medical decisions. School communication. The Wednesday text that turns into forty messages.
That is a co-parenting operations problem, and it responds to structured co-parenting work far better than it responds to open-ended family counseling. A family therapist who treats a post-2023 Florida time-sharing dispute as a feelings problem is solving last decade’s case.
What Actually Breaks Privilege In A Miami Custody Case
Two subsections of the evidence code, and most parents have never read either.
Fla. Stat. 90.503(2) gives the patient a privilege “to refuse to disclose, and to prevent any other person from disclosing, confidential communications or records made for the purpose of diagnosis or treatment of the patient’s mental or emotional condition.”
The privilege reaches wider than people expect. Under 90.503(1)(a), a “psychotherapist” includes a person licensed or certified as a psychologist under the laws of any state or nation, a person licensed in Florida as a clinical social worker, marriage and family therapist, or mental health counselor, a physician engaged in diagnosis or treatment of a mental condition, an advanced practice registered nurse whose primary scope is mental or emotional conditions, and treatment personnel of facilities licensed under chapters 394, 395 and 397. Your LCSW is covered.
Then it stops.
90.503(4)(b) removes the privilege for communications made during a court-ordered examination of the mental or emotional condition of a patient.
90.503(4)(c) removes it for communications relevant to an issue of the mental or emotional condition of the patient in any proceeding in which the patient relies upon the condition as an element of the claim or defense.
Read that second one twice. A parent who argues that their own anxiety or depression explains their conduct, or who puts their psychological recovery forward as a reason to modify time-sharing, has relied on the condition. The privilege on communications relevant to that condition goes.
The rule we apply, and it costs us work
Your treating therapist should not write a custody recommendation. Not for you, not for anyone, not even a short letter.
A clinician who has spent six months building an alliance with one side of a family cannot then produce a neutral opinion about who the child should live with. The alliance is the whole point of the therapy and it is exactly what disqualifies the opinion. Opposing counsel knows this and will spend ten minutes on it in cross-examination.
We decline these requests. It costs us billable work and it is the correct answer. If you need an opinion for the court, that is a separate engagement with a separate clinician, and the therapy file stays where it is.
Therapy Is Not An Evaluation, And Miami-dade Judges Read A Lot Of Both
A social investigation and an evaluation of a minor child are assessments. They produce a report for the court. They are not treatment and they will not repair anything.
Under Fla. Stat. 61.20, in any action where the parenting plan is at issue because the parents cannot agree, the court may order a social investigation. The statute names who may conduct one: court-qualified staff, a child-placing agency licensed under s. 409.175, a psychologist licensed under chapter 490, or a clinical social worker, marriage and family therapist or mental health counselor licensed under chapter 491. The parents pay, unless certified indigent.
Miami-Dade runs its own Social Investigation Program, coordinated by Family Court Services under Administrative Order 03-15 (Unified Family Court). Judges and magistrates order it when the court needs further information to decide, and the unit assigns, coordinates and monitors the cases.
For evaluations of a minor child, Fla. Fam. L. R. P. 12.363 sets the calendar and one sentence most parents never hear.
12.363(b): the report is due “no later than 30 days before trial or 75 days from the order of appointment, unless the time is extended by order of the court.”
12.363(e): “The court shall not entertain any presumption in favor of the appointed expert’s findings.”
That second line is worth sitting with if a court-appointed evaluator has just written something you disagree with. The report arrives with no head start. It faces the same examination as a privately retained expert’s and it is subject to cross-examination like any other evidence. A well-built retained assessment meets it on level ground.
The Miami-Dade calendar you are working against
Four dates and one absence.
Forty-five days for the parenting course. Fla. Stat. 61.21(2) requires all parties to a dissolution with minor children, and to a paternity action involving parental responsibility, to complete a Parent Education and Family Stabilization Course of a minimum of 4 hours. Under 61.21(5) the petitioner has 45 days from filing the petition. In a dissolution, other parties have 45 days from service. In a paternity action the other party’s clock runs instead from acknowledgment or adjudication of paternity, or from an order granting time-sharing or support. Under 61.21(9) a parent who fails to attend may be held in contempt, denied shared parental responsibility or time-sharing, or otherwise sanctioned. Miami-Dade requires it before a dissolution is finalized and directs you to the Department of Children and Families provider list.
Twenty days to respond. A respondent in a Miami-Dade dissolution has 20 days after service to file a response.
Thirty days before trial, or 75 days from appointment. The Rule 12.363(b) deadline for an evaluation report, whichever comes first.
Six meetings. The cap on in-house parenting coordination for indigent parties, per order.
And no fast track for enforcement. A 2026 bill would have required a Miami-Dade motion to enforce time-sharing to be heard within five business days, including evenings, weekends and holidays. CS/SB 1128 died in the Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice on 13 March 2026, and its House companion died the same day. Several family-law articles published since then describe the five-day rule as if it exists. It does not. Enforcement moves at the pace of the assigned division’s calendar, which is a reason to work the co-parenting problem rather than plan around a motion.
One structural note that trips people up: the Eleventh Circuit splits this work between a Family Division and a separate Unified Family Court Division, with general magistrates hearing a large share of matters in both. The circuit’s judicial directory dated 29 June 2026 lists both benches separately. Which division your case sits in changes who hears the motion and how quickly, and it is worth knowing before anyone promises you a hearing date.
Meet the Team
Dr. Cathy Colet
Forensic PsychologistDr. Cathy Colet is a Licensed Clinical and Forensic Psychologist and founder of Forensic and Clinical PsychExperts, LLC.
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Dr. Lauren Miller
Clinical and Forensic NeuropsychologistDr. Miller has nearly 20 years of experience as a clinician, consultant, lecturer, and writer.
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Dr. Matthew J. Jalazo
Forensic PsychologistDr. Matthew J. Jalazo is a licensed psychologist who has practiced forensic psychology on a full-time basis for the last fifteen years.
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Dr. Christopher J. Beltran
Forensic PsychologistDr. Beltran is a Licensed Forensic Psychologist with over twenty-five years of experience in criminal and family law
Read MoreFour Reasons We Say No, And We Say Them On The First Call
Your case needs an evaluation, not therapy. If the question in front of the judge is who the child should live with, no amount of family therapy answers it. Therapy that is quietly expected to produce a court-ready opinion produces neither.
You want your treating therapist to write a recommendation. Covered above. The answer is no, and it is no for your protection.
The free option fits better. A scheduling dispute between two parents who are basically cooperating is what Family Court Services exists for, it is at no cost, and we will point you there.
There is a conflict. Prior evaluation of a party or a family member gets disclosed and we step aside, before any retainer, not after.