Just for a few moments, suspend your previous definitions of case, petition, court number, or whatever words your jurisdiction uses. The following describes a family case in fresh terms without too many loaded words. Let's call this a Big Family Case . This Big Family Case has a long life and may contain many separate legal proceedings. A Big Family Case may be related to one or more Little Cases.
Little Cases result from an incident, or the follow up to an incident.
Little cases have shorter lives than the Big Family Case. Little Cases have open dates, close dates and dispositions. Each Little Case is also assigned an identifying number by the courts. A Big Family Case may be related to one or more Little Cases. Little Cases result from an incident, or the follow up to an incident.