Legal Question in Civil Litigation in Massachusetts

Re: Dedham Appeals Court C&P

In addition, it would help to know what stage of the proceedings, your involvement and your goal, and possibly what is the problem that you are trying to resolve;

Re: Dedham Appeals Court C&P

C&P stands for "Care and Protection."

C&Ps are initiated by the Dept. of Social Services (DSS) and are heard in the

Juvenile Court for your community.

C&P proceedings occur behind closed doors, through which the public is not allowed.

Such proceedings are considered by many folks to

be "kangaroo courts" because of the secrecy as

to what evidence is used against one or both

parents and what procedure is used by the court.

The docket sheets are also "sealed."

In a nutshell, C&Ps are scary.

There is no database which you can access in Dedham.

If a C&P case is appealed, the Appeals Court in Boston issues a decision. Those decisions can be found in a library or in the Westlaw/Lexis/versuslaw.com databases.

Occasionally appeals of orders and judgments in

C&P actions are also filed in the Supreme Judicial Court in Boston. They are in the same databases as those for the Appeals Court.