130th District Court — Policies and Procedures for Civil, Family and Child Protective Services Hearings (eff. Apr. 1, 2026)

High confidence· verified September 23, 2026Local Rules130th Dist. Court, Policies and Procedures for Civil, Family and CPS Hearings (TOPICs reg. doc. 2881) (eff. Apr. 1, 2026, Rev. 03.26.26)

Summary

Judge Denise M. Fortenberry's governing P&P (TOPICs reg. doc. 2881, Rev. 03.26.26; supersedes the Sept. 2023 edition posted own-site): party-conference certificates before all settings, two-business-day response floor, MANDATORY formal mediation before final trials, the discovery-dispute letter regime, submission hearings, trial and jury-question requirements, family-case rules (Standing TRO adopted; 8-hour co-parenting class; Summarized Requested Relief; 20-minute-per-party temporary-orders hearings), and the CPS section (pre-adversary conference, mediation required, bench-warrant lead times).

Applies to

Texas > Matagorda County > 130th District Court

Source of truth

1700 Seventh Street, Rm. 317 Bay City, Texas 77414-5034 [Seal of the State of Texas] Phone: (979) 244-7635 Fax: (979) 245-6478 Email: 130thDistrictCourt@co.matagorda.tx.us IDCoordinator@co.matagorda.tx.us DENISE M. FORTENBERRY 130th Judicial District Judge POLICIES AND PROCEDURES FOR CIVIL, FAMILY AND CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES CASES (effective April 1, 2026) The following policies and procedures a

Official source: TOPICs — Texas local rules registry (topics.txcourts.gov)
Source health: Healthy · checked October 24, 2026
Effective date: April 1, 2026
Last verified: September 23, 2026benchpath-tx-corpus0920-p12-2026-09-21

Provenance record

Verbatim highlights from the vision-read instrument (eff. 4/1/2026) [moved from the text 2026-09-14] [TRANSCRIBED BY EYE 2026-09-21 (corpus-0920 P12): every page of the registered file (sha256 3ad433ede110..., 9 page(s), image-only scan; the OCR layer used as a typing base and corrected word by word from the page) read against the rendered file; verbatim, source typos kept, stamps/signatures bracketed; the earlier abstract replaced by the full instrument; confidence high. benchpath-tx-corpus0920-p12-2026-09-21]

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