CPS & Child Protective Proceedings In Michigan

A Process That Moves on Its Own Track

A CPS case is a civil child-protective proceeding, not a criminal prosecution, and it can proceed even if police never charge anyone. CPS investigates, can seek emergency removal, and may file a petition asking the court to take jurisdiction over your children. What you say to an investigator can be used both in that case and in any criminal matter, so it is easy to make things worse without meaning to. At the same time, refusing to engage can also carry consequences. The path between those risks is where good counsel matters.

How We Protect Your Family

William Hackett helps you respond to CPS without sacrificing your rights, coordinates the defense when there is also a criminal investigation, and pushes back on a petition that is not supported by the facts. Where services are required, he works to keep them reasonable and focused on reunifying your family. The goal is to keep your children safe, your rights intact, and the case from spiraling into something worse.

Two Cases at Once, With Different Rules

A Children’s Protective Services investigation is a civil child welfare matter, not a criminal prosecution, and the differences run deep. It is heard in the family division of the circuit court rather than in a criminal courtroom. It is decided on a civil standard rather than beyond a reasonable doubt. And its purpose is the child’s welfare rather than punishment.

The consequence people underestimate is that it can proceed whatever happens in a criminal case. A prosecutor declining to charge does not end it. A dismissal does not end it. The two are separate proceedings that can reach different conclusions about the same events.

They are connected in one direction, though, and it is the dangerous one. Statements made to a caseworker are not privileged and can be used in a criminal case. So can a parent’s account given to be cooperative, a service plan signed without advice, and an admission made in the hope of getting children home sooner. Cooperation is usually right, and it is not the same as speaking without understanding what is at stake.

The Timeline Moves Whether You Are Ready or Not

These proceedings move through defined stages: an investigation, a petition, a preliminary hearing on whether a child stays in the home, an adjudication of whether the statutory grounds exist, and a disposition setting what a parent must do. Each has deadlines, and each produces findings the next one builds on.

Missing the early stages is what costs families most. A preliminary hearing decided without a parent properly represented sets the arrangements everything after it works around, and an adjudication entered by agreement sets the facts a later termination proceeding relies on. The point of maximum influence is the beginning, not the end.

A parent is entitled to be represented in these proceedings, to see the petition and the evidence, and to contest the allegations rather than simply accept a plan. Where a criminal investigation is running alongside, having one lawyer holding both strands is what keeps an answer given in one from damaging the other.

What Cooperating Well Actually Looks Like

Parents are usually told that cooperation is the fastest route to getting children home, and that is broadly true. What it does not mean is answering every question without advice, signing whatever is put in front of them, or agreeing to findings they do not accept in order to appear reasonable.

Cooperating well looks like attending everything, completing services genuinely, keeping a record of what has been done, and being straightforward about circumstances, while having advice before making statements about the allegations themselves. Those are not in tension. A parent can be fully engaged with a plan and still decline to give an account of a disputed incident without a lawyer present.

The other thing worth knowing is that a service plan is not a fixed document. What it requires can be discussed, and requirements that are impractical, that duplicate something already completed, or that are unrelated to the actual concern can be addressed before a parent is measured against them for months.