101PD

General · 3 hours

California Family Law Update — California MCLE, 3 hours

California Family Law Update covers current California law, professional responsibility, and practice workflow. Delivery, credential, and regulatory-credit eligibility are stated on the course page.

Professional training or exam-preparation material. No CE/MCLE/CPE credit hours are issued.

Learning objectives

  • Explain and apply §1 The Update Method — Family Law's Moving and Stable Layers.
  • Explain and apply §2 The Dissolution Procedure — the Track, Updated.
  • Explain and apply §3 Community Property — the Presumptions and the Fiduciary Floor.
  • Explain and apply §4 The Division Bench — the Assets, Worked.
  • Explain and apply §5 Self-Check — the Architecture Holds.

Assessment and timing

Knowledge check plus 2 final exam versions.

Passing score: 70%.

Final timing: 1 minute per question.

Full syllabus

Chapter 1 — The Dissolution Architecture: Procedure, Property, and Division

  • §1 The Update Method — Family Law's Moving and Stable Layers
  • §2 The Dissolution Procedure — the Track, Updated
  • §3 Community Property — the Presumptions and the Fiduciary Floor
  • §4 The Division Bench — the Assets, Worked
  • §5 Self-Check — the Architecture Holds
  • §5.1 The Moore-Marsden Workshop — the House, Computed
  • §5.2 The Disclosure Bench — Four Files From the Malpractice Center
  • §5.3 The Client Translations — the Architecture in Plain Language
  • §5.4 Rapid-Recall Bench — Part I
  • §5.5 The Characterization Bench — Four Property Files From the Docket
  • §5.6 Spot-Issue Bench — Part I in Twelve One-Liners
  • §5.7 The Figure Bank — Chapter 1's Numbers, Collected for Verification
  • §5.8 The Premarital Execution Workshop — the File That Survives the Attack
  • §5.9 The Judgment-Package Workshop — the Uncontested Case, Assembled
  • §5.10 Spot-Issue Bench — Part III: the Agreements and Endings, in Ten One-Liners
  • §5.11 Case Bench — Three Files at Full Complexity
  • §5.12 The Settlement-Conference Workshop — the Field's Real Endgame, Prepared

Chapter 2 — Support, Custody, and the Domestic-Violence Architecture

  • §6 Child Support — the Guideline Machine and Its Update Edges
  • §7 Spousal Support — Two Different Orders Wearing One Name
  • §8 Custody and Parenting — Best Interest, Presumptions, and the Moving Cases
  • §9 The Domestic-Violence Architecture — the Update Era's Center of Gravity
  • §10 Self-Check — the People's Chapter Holds
  • §10.1 The Guideline Inputs Workshop — Three Support Files, Built
  • §10.2 The DV Practice Workshop — the Pattern Case, Built and Defended
  • §10.3 The Custody Bench — Four Files From the Middle of the Docket
  • §10.4 Rapid-Recall Bench — Part II
  • §10.5 The Enforcement Workshop — Support Collection, Run
  • §10.6 Spot-Issue Bench — Part II in Ten One-Liners
  • §10.7 The Interfaces — Where the Family File Meets the Rest of This Catalog
  • §10.8 The UCCJEA Workshop — the Interstate File, Run Without Jurisdictional Error
  • §10.9 The Parentage Note — the Non-Marital File's Different Door
  • §10.10 The Technology Overlay — Family Practice's Digital Evidence and Tools
  • §10.11 The Special Postures — Military, Elder, and High-Conflict Files
  • §10.12 The ADR Landscape — Mediation, Collaboration, and Private Judging

Chapter 3 — Agreements, Judgments, and the Practice: Ending Cases That Stay Ended

  • §11 The Marital Agreements — Premarital, Postmarital, and the Settlement Itself
  • §12 Judgments and the Post-Judgment Practice — Where Files Return
  • §13 Fees, Sanctions, and the Access Economics — Who Pays, and Why It Works
  • §14 The Office Program — the Family File, Systematized
  • §14.1 The MSA Drafting Workshop — Ten Clauses That Decide Post-Judgment Life
  • §14.2 The Fee-Motion Workshop — the Leveling Instrument, Built
  • §14.3 Course Review — Ten Applications
  • §14.4 The Glossary — the Course's Terms, Fixed
  • §14.5 The Last Word — the Field Where the Method Matters Most
  • §14.6 The RFO Workshop — the Field's Working Motion, Built
  • §14.7 The Master Index — Every Artifact This Course Built, in Filing Order
  • §14.8 The Final Self-Check — the Course, and the Vertical, Closed
  • §14.9 The January Protocol — This Course's Maintenance, Scheduled
  • §14.10 The Family Bar's Load — the Wellness Close
  • §14.11 The Drafting-Error Museum — Ten Exhibits From the Post-Judgment Docket

Sample from Part I

Chapter 1 — The Dissolution Architecture: Procedure, Property, and Division California Family Law Update — a 101PD training course. State Bar of California MCLE provider approval pending; no MCLE credit or certificate is issued. §1 The Update Method — Family Law's Moving and Stable Layers Family law is the state's highest-volume civil practice and its most personally consequential, and this update course opens with the layering discipline every update course in this catalog installs. The stable layer, held cold: the community property presumption and its tracing doctrines, the fiduciary architecture between spouses, the best-interest framework, the guideline support structure, and the due-process spine of notice, disclosure, and hearing. The moving layer, verified at every advising: the Legislature amends the Family Code every session (this edition's bench spans joint-petition procedure, special-needs support mechanics, an expanding domestic-violence architecture, and firearm-relinquishment reform), the Judicial Council revises the forms and calculators the practice actually runs on, the tax layer shifts under support planning, and the appellate courts refine the date-of-separation, presumption-rebuttal, and move-away doctrines term by term. The field's practice reality, framing everything: most family courtrooms are majority self-represented, which changes the represented practitioner's job — the paper must be right because the bench relies on it, the proposed orders draft the court's work product, and the professional in the room carries disproportionate credibility and correspondingly disproportionate candor duties (this catalog's ethics course's communication-with-unrepresented-persons rules doing daily work here). The method's artifacts, built through the course: the case map (status, property, support, custody, DV — five tracks running simultaneously at different speeds through one file); the disclosure discipline (the field's malpractice center); the verified-figures habit (guideline inputs, statutory thresholds, form editions — dated at every filing); and the January protocol entry that re-verifies this course's bench annually, folded into the same office calendar every vertical in this catalog shares. The scope note: this course treats the dissolution-centered practice — the parentage, adoption, and juvenile tracks appear at their intersections, and the immigration interfaces (protective-order evidence, the special-findings practice) cross-reference this catalog's immigration course rather than duplicate it. §2 The Dissolution Procedure — the Track, Updated The procedural spine, with this edition's changes marked. Jurisdiction and venue: the residency requirements (state and county, with their durational arithmetic) for dissolution — and the update-era flexibility layered on: the venue-transfer expansion permitting family proceedings to move to any county where either party resides (the 2025 change extending beyond dissolution), and the domestic-violence filing rule allowing protective-order petitions in any superior court regardless of residency (the 2025 survivor-mobility change §9 details). Commencement, classic form: petition, summons with its automatic temporary restraining orders (the four ATROs binding both parties from service — property transfers, insurance changes, out-of-state travel with children, and nonordinary expenditures — the standard orders counsel reads to every client at engagement because violating them is contempt wearing routine's costume), service, response. Commencement, update form: the joint-petition procedure effective this January — both parties filing a single dissolution petition, with the act of filing constituting service (no

Available in these packages

California Family Law Update

Course FAQ

What does California Family Law Update cover?

The syllabus covers the California-specific topics listed on this page, with practical examples and assessment.

Does this course currently issue professional credit?

No credit is claimed unless the course page displays an approved-course badge and agency course number.

California Family Law Update | California MCLE 3h | 101PD