The data behind the mission · FY 2023–24

California family court, by the official numbers.

Every figure on this page is extracted from the Judicial Council of California's 2025 Court Statistics Report (Statewide Caseload Trends) — processed page-by-page through our digital-twin engine, with the source page cited for every number. No estimates. No rounding up.

318,729

Family law cases filed in ONE year — dissolutions, custody, support, paternity

CSR 2025 · p.15 · 108,403 + 210,326

30,273

Juvenile dependency filings — children whose safety went before a judge

CSR 2025 · p.15

~99 sec

A new family-law case is filed in California roughly every 99 seconds

Computed: 318,729 ÷ year

4.89 M

Total superior-court filings statewide — the system these families enter

CSR 2025 · p.15 ("over 4.8 million")

Family & juvenile filings — what they are

FY 2023–24 · 379,165 total family & juvenile cases · CSR p.15

Where families sit in the statewide caseload

FY 2023–24 filings by category (computed from p.15 case-type totals)

→ Full county deep dive: all 58 counties, every category, audited to the statewide total

County Pulse — the ten heaviest caseloads

Family-law filings FY 2023–24 · CSR pp.156–157 · 58-county sum audits to the statewide total exactly

Where domestic violence weighs heaviest

DV filings as a share of county family-law filings (counties >3,000 filings) · computed from pp.156–157

Contra Costa County · Close-up · FY 2023–24

One county. Seven judges. 7,234 cases.

Contra Costa runs direct calendaring — every family law case is randomly assigned to one of seven judicial officers at filing and stays there for life. All figures extracted from CSR 2025 pp.156–157.

7,234

Family law cases filed in Contra Costa County in a single year

CSR 2025 · p.156 · Total (A)

Judicial officers handling ALL family law — 6 judges + 1 commissioner

CC Superior Court · contracosta.courts.ca.gov

~1,034

Cases per judicial officer per year — every family, one permanent docket

Computed: 7,234 ÷ 7

4.1

New cases added to each judge's docket every single working day

Computed: 1,034 ÷ 250 working days

2,171

Domestic violence cases — nearly 1-in-3 of all CC family law filings

CSR 2025 · p.156 · Col (D)

Highest DV rate among California's large counties — behind only Sacramento

Computed · CSR 2025 pp.156–157 · counties >3,000 filings

CC case-type breakdown

FY 2023–24 · 7,234 total filings · CSR 2025 p.156

The seven judicial officers

Family Law bench · Contra Costa Superior Court · 751 & 725 Pine St, Martinez

Judge	Dept	Courtroom
Hon. Gina Dashman	2	229
Hon. Peter Chang	7	225
Hon. John P. Devine	9	222
Hon. Jennifer Lee	25	212
Hon. Ayana K. Young	26	233
Hon. Palvir Shoker	35	223
Alexandria Quam (Commissioner)	52	206

📋 Extraction audit — every number, its source

The "information gathered" report. Source document mirrored at /reports/2025-court-statistics-report.pdf (md5 56b4f16d…, 199 pages). Digital twin 241222_CSR2025_JC_STATEWIDE_CASELOAD_TRENDS_001 — 199/199 pages extracted (docling), registered in the corpus, parquet-mirrored, ingest-audited.

Figure	Value	Source	Class
Marital filings (dissolution, separation, nullity)	108,403	CSR 2025 p.15	Verbatim
Other family law (paternity, child support, custody)	210,326	CSR 2025 p.15	Verbatim
Family law total	318,729	sum of above	Computed
Juvenile dependency filings	30,273	CSR 2025 p.15	Verbatim
Juvenile delinquency filings	30,163	CSR 2025 p.15	Verbatim
Civil (unlimited + limited + small claims)	886,644	278,901 + 530,282 + 77,461 · p.15	Computed
Criminal (felony + misdemeanor + infraction)	3,454,955	179,821 + 451,647 + 2,823,487 · p.15	Computed
Probate · mental health · appeals · habeas	169,686	63,609 + 99,223 + 2,602 + 4,252 · p.15	Computed
Cross-check: category totals vs report's "over 4.8M"	4,890,450 ✓	sum = consistent with p.15	Audit pass
Family-law county detail available (not yet charted)	pp. 156–169	filings/dispositions by county & type	Next phase

Extraction chain: mirrored PDF → per-page digital twins (docling) → corpus registration (199 pages verified against pdfinfo) → facts dataset (data-csr-family.json, 3,277 rows) → this page. County charts render live from that dataset. Numbers labeled Verbatim appear word-for-word in the source; Computed are arithmetic on verbatim figures, shown with their terms. The one editorial figure ("every ~99 seconds") is derived: 318,729 ÷ 31.5M seconds/year ≈ 98.9s.

⬇ Download the full report (PDF)