By Julie A. Hlywa, Esq.
Most people in Macomb County who have been through a divorce or a custody case know the phrase “friend of the court.” Far fewer know that the office behind it is more than a century old, or that Michigan invented it.
A Wayne County experiment
The story starts in Detroit. In 1917, a Wayne County judge appointed someone to make sure the court’s support and alimony orders were actually being followed, instead of being ignored the moment everyone left the courtroom. The problem was simple. A judge could order a father to pay support, but the court had no one to track whether the money ever arrived, and a family left without it had few good options.
Detroit at the time was booming, its population climbing with the auto industry, and the courts were seeing more domestic cases than the old system could handle. Wayne County Circuit Judge Henry A. Mandell gave the new role its name, borrowing from the Latin legal term amicus curiae, which translates to “friend of the court.” The title stuck because it described the job well. This was not a prosecutor or a judge. It was an officer of the court whose loyalty ran to the orderly working of the case and the welfare of the children inside it.
A statewide system in 1919
The experiment worked, and the Legislature paid attention. In 1919, Michigan passed the Friend of the Court Act and created the office across the entire state. Today, at least one friend of the court office serves the family division of every circuit court. The arrangement is distinctive enough that it remains, more than a hundred years later, largely unique to Michigan. When the system marked a century of service a few years ago, it was a reminder that most other states still spread enforcement across a scatter of separate agencies. Michigan built one office for it and gave that office a name people remember.
What the office does now
The job has grown well beyond chasing unpaid checks. The Friend of the Court now helps the circuit court with the three issues that touch families most directly: custody, parenting time, and child support. Its staff investigate disputes, make recommendations to the judge, calculate support under the statewide formula, and enforce orders once they are in place. It also runs mediation and referee hearings, the quieter settings where a great many custody and support disagreements are resolved without a full trial. The enforcement tools have real teeth, from income withholding to license suspension, which is a long way from a single appointee keeping an eye on one judge’s decrees. For many parents, the friend of the court office is the part of the system they deal with most, long after the judge has signed the final paperwork.
The other half of the story: no-fault divorce
Michigan’s habit of rethinking family law did not stop in 1919. Half a century later, the state moved again. Public Act 75 of 1971 took effect on January 1, 1972, and made Michigan one of the first states in the country to do away with fault-based divorce entirely. The change was larger than it sounds. Before no-fault, a spouse often had to prove wrongdoing, such as cruelty or desertion, to end a marriage. After it, the only requirement was, and still is, testimony that the marriage has broken down to the point that it cannot be repaired.
Put the two reforms side by side and a pattern appears. Michigan tends to favor systems that lower the temperature of an already painful process. No-fault removed the need to assign blame to end a marriage. The friend of the court removed the need for parents to police each other over support and parenting time, and handed that work to a neutral office instead.
A century later, the same path
For families in Macomb County, the history is more than trivia. The friend of the court office at the Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens does the same core work its predecessors did in 1919, now for a county of more than 800,000 people. Parents still file, still wait out the state’s mandatory period, and still work through custody and support with the friend of the court somewhere in the process. Many move through it with a local attorney such as the Law Offices of Julie A. Hlywa at their side, the same way Michigan families have leaned on guidance through this system for generations.
There is something fitting in that continuity. The tools have modernized, the formulas have been refined, and most of the paperwork has moved online. The basic Michigan idea, that a court should have a friend whose job is to look after the practical welfare of children and the fairness of support, has held up for more than a hundred years.
Julie A. Hlywa is a family law attorney in Mount Clemens who represents clients throughout Macomb County.
