Add PFA family-case overlap explainer

docs/attorney-reviewer-guide.md

@@ -3,3 +3,7 @@
 Attorney reviewers validate source relevance, citation support, quote spans, issue labels, posture labels, red flags, evidence mapping, and release eval rows. Generated or seed rows must not be promoted to gold unless attorney-review metadata is complete.
 
 A reviewer must record identity, confidence, status, and conflict resolution where required. Reviewers should add failures back into eval candidates so regressions are tested.
+
+For protection from abuse overlap, reviewers should confirm that the output keeps
+PFA orders and family-case parental-rights/contact analysis separate. See
+[Protection From Abuse and Family Case Overlap](pfa-family-case-overlap.md).

docs/pfa-family-case-overlap.md

@@ -0,0 +1,128 @@
+# Protection From Abuse and Family Case Overlap
+
+This note explains why Maine protection from abuse (PFA) issues can overlap with
+family cases and why the workbench should flag independent-analysis concerns.
+It is an operator and reviewer aid, not legal advice or a filing-ready checklist.
+
+## Why overlap happens
+
+PFA matters can involve the same people, children, residence, contact limits,
+safety facts, communications, and hearing schedules that appear in a divorce,
+parental-rights, child-support, post-judgment, or contempt matter.
+
+Maine's PFA chapter also makes overlap procedurally possible:
+
+- A PFA proceeding may be independent of, or joined with, a divorce,
+  dissolution, legal separation, or separate-maintenance proceeding.
+- A PFA proceeding is in addition to other available civil or criminal
+  remedies, and a criminal prosecution is not required before PFA relief is
+  sought.
+- Temporary PFA orders may include interim parental-rights and responsibilities
+  terms for minor children.
+- Final PFA relief may include temporary parental-rights or contact terms, but
+  those terms are not binding in a separate parental-rights case.
+
+Because the same facts can travel through different procedural lanes, the
+workbench should treat PFA overlap as a source, safety, posture, and human-review
+signal rather than as a shortcut to a family-case conclusion.
+
+## Why independent analysis matters
+
+A PFA order can be important evidence that a family-case reviewer must see. It
+does not, by itself, resolve the family case.
+
+Maine's parental-rights statute says the court considers a protective order, but
+the proper parental-rights and contact award must be determined de novo and the
+protective-order award may not be used as precedent for the family-case award.
+The same statute separately requires best-interest analysis, safety and
+well-being review, domestic-abuse contact conditions, and findings when relying
+on alleged willful misuse of the PFA process.
+
+That is the independent-analysis concern: a generated answer, draft, proposed
+order, or review memo must not import the PFA outcome into the family case as if
+the family-law questions were already decided. It should identify the overlap,
+surface the relevant PFA terms and safety facts, and then require separate
+family-case analysis tied to the governing Maine family-law authority and the
+record.
+
+## What the system should flag
+
+Flag PFA-family overlap when an input, retrieved source, or draft mentions any
+of the following in a family-law context:
+
+- A PFA, protective order, no-contact order, abuse complaint, temporary order,
+  final protection order, or PFA hearing.
+- Children, parental rights and responsibilities, contact, residence, school,
+  exchanges, supervision, child support, or family housing terms inside a PFA.
+- A request to copy, enforce, extend, or rely on PFA contact terms in a divorce,
+  parental-rights, post-judgment, contempt, or child-support matter.
+- Domestic abuse, immediate safety concerns, confidentiality risks, weapon
+  restrictions, address protection, or emergency-relief language.
+- Allegations that a PFA was misused for tactical advantage.
+
+The flag should tell the reviewer what is missing, not decide the merits. Useful
+flag language is:
+
+> PFA facts or orders appear in a family-law contact, residence, or child-related
+> context. Review the PFA terms and safety facts, but make a separate
+> family-case analysis before relying on them for parental rights,
+> responsibilities, contact, or best-interest conclusions.
+
+## Reviewer checklist
+
+For a PFA-family overlap item, reviewers should check:
+
+- What order exists: temporary PFA, final PFA, consent order, family-case order,
+  bail/no-contact condition, or another order.
+- What terms affect children, contact, residence, exchanges, school, records,
+  transportation, support, housing, weapons, address confidentiality, or
+  communication.
+- Whether immediate safety, emergency, sealed-record, confidentiality, or
+  minor-related risks require routing outside ordinary document review.
+- Whether the output distinguishes PFA procedure from divorce, parental-rights,
+  child-support, post-judgment, contempt, criminal, and child-protection
+  procedure.
+- Whether the output identifies official Maine sources and source freshness.
+- Whether a draft relies on PFA facts only after separate family-case analysis,
+  best-interest review, safety findings, and record support.
+- Whether any claim of PFA misuse is treated as review-required and tied to the
+  heightened proof and findings language in the parental-rights statute.
+
+## Output boundaries
+
+The workbench should:
+
+- Preserve safety and emergency warnings without dramatizing them.
+- Keep private addresses, child information, and confidential records out of
+  generated public artifacts unless an approved reviewer has decided what may be
+  disclosed.
+- Follow existing orders while asking for human legal review when order terms
+  conflict or are unclear.
+- Avoid telling a user what to file, how to defend a PFA, whether an order is
+  valid, or whether one order controls another.
+- Keep all PFA-family overlap outputs review-required unless the repository's
+  separate authority, citation, quote-span, fact, posture, form-freshness, and
+  human-review gates pass.
+
+## Source anchors to verify
+
+Use current official sources before relying on any legal statement:
+
+- Maine Revised Statutes,
+  [Title 19-A, section 4105](https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/19-A/title19-Asec4105.html),
+  "Other proceedings": PFA proceedings may be independent of or joined with
+  related domestic-relations proceedings and are in addition to other civil or
+  criminal remedies.
+- Maine Revised Statutes,
+  [Title 19-A, section 4108](https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/19-A/title19-Asec4108.html),
+  "Temporary orders": temporary PFA relief may include interim parental-rights
+  and responsibilities terms and safety restrictions.
+- Maine Revised Statutes,
+  [Title 19-A, section 4110](https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/19-A/title19-Asec4110.html),
+  "Relief": final PFA relief may include temporary parental-rights/contact
+  terms, and those terms are not binding in a separate parental-rights action.
+- Maine Revised Statutes,
+  [Title 19-A, section 1653](https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/19-A/title19-Asec1653.html),
+  "Parental rights and responsibilities": family-case parental-rights/contact
+  decisions require best-interest and safety analysis; protective orders are
+  considered but do not serve as precedent for the family-case award.

docs/reviewer-guide.md

@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ Useful reviewer questions:
 - Are the Maine sources real, current, and correctly described?
 - Are citations and quote spans verified or clearly marked unresolved?
 - Are missing facts, jurisdiction issues, safety risks, and confidentiality risks visible?
+- If a protection from abuse issue overlaps with a family case, does the output
+  flag the independent-analysis concern described in
+  [Protection From Abuse and Family Case Overlap](pfa-family-case-overlap.md)?
 - Does the output avoid legal advice, guaranteed outcomes, and filing-ready claims?
 - Is the plain-language explanation understandable without hiding uncertainty?
 

docs/user-guide.md

@@ -3,3 +3,9 @@
 The Maine Family Law LLM is a review-required research and drafting assistant. It helps ask Maine family-law questions, review documents, map facts to evidence, create timelines, inspect citations and quotes, and prepare working drafts.
 
 Every legal answer should show source cards. Every draft remains review-required unless all authority, citation, quote, fact, posture, form-freshness, and human-review gates pass.
+
+## Operational explainers
+
+- [Protection From Abuse and Family Case Overlap](pfa-family-case-overlap.md):
+  why PFA issues may overlap with family cases and why PFA-family overlap should
+  trigger independent family-case analysis review.

tests/test_pfa_family_case_overlap_doc.py

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+from __future__ import annotations
+
+from pathlib import Path
+
+
+ROOT = Path(__file__).resolve().parents[1]
+DOC = ROOT / "docs" / "pfa-family-case-overlap.md"
+
+
+def test_pfa_family_case_overlap_explainer_exists_and_covers_core_flags() -> None:
+    text = DOC.read_text(encoding="utf-8")
+
+    required_phrases = [
+        "independent-analysis concerns",
+        "independent of, or joined with",
+        "not binding in a separate parental-rights case",
+        "determined de novo",
+        "What the system should flag",
+        "Reviewer checklist",
+        "Title 19-A, section 1653",
+        "Title 19-A, section 4110",
+    ]
+
+    for phrase in required_phrases:
+        assert phrase in text
+
+
+def test_pfa_family_case_overlap_explainer_is_linked_from_guides() -> None:
+    guide_paths = [
+        ROOT / "docs" / "user-guide.md",
+        ROOT / "docs" / "reviewer-guide.md",
+        ROOT / "docs" / "attorney-reviewer-guide.md",
+    ]
+
+    for guide_path in guide_paths:
+        assert "pfa-family-case-overlap.md" in guide_path.read_text(encoding="utf-8")