Meet Judge Dale Cohen

Judge Cohen is a Circuit Court Judge for the 17^th Judicial Circuit, Broward County, Florida.  He was appointed to the bench in 2006 and has been re-elected twice without opposition in 2008 and in 2014. Currently he serves in the Family Court division and is the most senior judge in that division.  He is Broward County’s only Family Court Collaborative Judge. Recently, the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court appointed Judge Cohen to serve on the state grievance committee for mediators where he will preside over alleged ethical violations of mediators. Additionally, he serves as the judicial representative for Broward’s Online Dispute Resolution Panel.

In his 14-year tenure as a Broward County judge, he has served as a jurist in the felony criminal division, the dependency division and the family division.  As a dependency judge, Judge Cohen was tasked with ensuring that children who were abused, abandoned or neglected were placed in a safe environment and received proper services.  Judge Cohen required parents to undergo training or therapy to deal with the fundamental causes of their poor parenting skills. In the criminal division Judge Cohen often had to strike a balance between an accused person’s liberty and the safety of the community.  In the family division, Judge Cohen has presided over hundreds of adoptions, dissolution of marriage and paternity cases.