Riverside County Family Law Self-Help: Self Help Legal Services, Workshops, Locations and What Staff Can and Cannot Do

The September 17, 2025 family law flyer lists four kinds of help: divorce, legal separation and nullity; paternity cases; preparing for mandatory settlement conferences; and asking the judge to make or change orders for child support, spousal support, custody and visitation³. A separate flyer, revised November 6, 2023, covers child support matters involving the Department of Child Support Services (DCSS): changing an existing order, stipulations and agreements, completing DCSS forms, opening a DCSS case, a COAP application and a waiver of unassigned arrears⁴. It lists an email address, [email protected], and a virtual appointment page at www.riverside.courts.ca.gov/appointments⁴.

The court also offers its required forms for many common procedures as digital form packets. The page says to complete the online coversheet first so the packet fills in contact information, and that “Filling in the coversheet only partially completes your forms”⁹. The forms themselves are covered in Riverside County divorce forms in order.

The flyer names five online workshops and clinics: the Dissolution Workshop, the Default Judgment Workshop, the Family Law Clinic, the Judgment Review Clinic and the Mandatory Settlement Conference (MSC) Clinic³. It gives no descriptions of them and sends readers to the court’s events page, riverside.courts.ca.gov/SelfHelpEvents, for descriptions, schedules and event details³. The settlement conference itself is covered in the mandatory settlement conference in Riverside family law.

The court’s self-help home page says: “Court staff cannot provide legal advice. Staff can explain court procedures but cannot tell you what choice to make. Court staff also make referrals to free or low cost legal resources.”⁶

The court’s request for order instructions print a longer disclaimer. Staff are not a private attorney and do not represent any party; there is no attorney-client relationship; staff cannot give legal advice based on individual facts; staff “may provide information and services to the other party in the case”; and communications with staff are not confidential⁷.

A family law facilitator is a different role. The Judicial Council describes the facilitator as a lawyer appointed by the court to help people without a lawyer, free, with child support, spousal support and health insurance⁸. The facilitator is neutral, can help both sides of the same case, cannot represent anyone, and discussions are not confidential⁸. The Council’s list gives Riverside’s facilitator contact as 4175 Main Street, Riverside, 951-274-4499 and [email protected], the same phone line as Self Help Legal Services⁸. The court does not say whether the facilitator is a separate office.

The Self-Help Information page lists these buildings as having computers for the public to look at case files, court calendars and court records, and to view procedures, local rules and forms²:

Hours are “except court holidays”². Which buildings take family law filings is covered in which Riverside County courthouse takes your family law case. The Menifee location page describes an adjacent Self-Help Center with a lowered counter, and the Larson page describes a Family Law Assistance Center and a Self-Help Center with lowered counters¹⁰¹¹.

Sources disagree The court’s November 2023 child support flyer advertises both in-person services and virtual clinics⁴, while its September 2025 family law flyer says Self Help Legal Services “provides self-represented litigants with remote assistance”³. The Self-Help Information page lists the Corona and Menifee Self-Help Centers but gives no staffed hours for them, and refers readers to the court’s self-help events page for Room M103². A September 2022 notice gave phone hours of Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.⁵; the 2023 and 2025 flyers give Monday, Wednesday and Thursday³⁴. The most recent dated source is the September 2025 flyer. No dated court source gives in-person staffed hours for family law self-help.

The Riverside County Law Library is separate from the court. It lists three branches: the Victor Miceli Law Library at 3989 Lemon Street, Riverside (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., 951-368-0368); the Palm Springs branch at 3255 E. Tahquitz Canyon Way (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., 760-848-7151); and the Temecula Law Resource Center at 30600 Pauba Road (Tuesday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., 951-693-8902)¹². Its staff “can assist with starting legal research by recommending various resources in our collection, but cannot provide legal assistance or guidance on how to proceed with your case”¹².