Family Law Library

Scope

This file catalogs what NCBE actually publishes, free, for MPT preparation — the Instructions PDF, the skills description, the free MPT Summaries for recent administrations, and the released MPTs with drafters' point sheets from older administrations — and identifies which of those published items touch family-law topics (divorce and equitable distribution of property, child custody, marriage validity and annulment, guardianship, and a crime-victim immigration matter) [S1][S4][S5][S6][S7]. It then recommends, as clearly labeled editorial content, which items a candidate building a family-law practice library should practice and in what order [S1]. It does not cover NJ family-law doctrine, the internal drafting conventions of any MPT task type (sibling topics cover those), or the MEE/MBE family-law components [S1].

Legal Explanation

What the MPT is, and why the Library matters here (NCBE/national). The MPT is NCBE's performance-test component of the bar examination, consisting of two 90-minute items, administered on the Tuesday before the last Wednesday in February and July [S2]. Each item is a self-contained, closed-universe task: a File of factual materials (the first document being the supervising attorney's memorandum assigning the task) plus a Library of legal authorities — cases, statutes, regulations, or rules, some of which may not be relevant — from which the examinee extracts the principles needed to perform the task [S1][S2]. The MPT is not a test of substantive law: the Library materials provide sufficient substantive information to complete the task, and examinees are instructed to concentrate on the materials in the File and Library [S1][S3]. Problems are set in the fictitious state of Franklin and the fictitious Fifteenth Circuit, and the NCBE Instructions for Taking the MPT govern every administration [S3]. The practical consequence for a family-law library: the governing "family law" in any given MPT is whatever the Library supplies — typically a fictitious Family Code or Guardianship Code — not the law of any real jurisdiction, and that is by design [S1][S2].

What NCBE publishes free for MPT practice (NCBE/national). NCBE's "Preparing for the MPT" page catalogs the official free materials: the Instructions for Taking the MPT (PDF); the MPT Skills Tested description, which lists the six skills examined (sorting facts, analyzing legal materials, applying law to facts, identifying and resolving ethical dilemmas, communicating effectively in writing, and completing a lawyering task within time constraints); free MPT Summaries for recent administrations — 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and February 2026; and free released MPTs with drafters' point sheets from ten older administrations — February and July 2016, February and July 2017, February and July 2018, February and July 2019, and February and July 2020 [S1]. The drafters' point sheets "describe the factual and legal points encompassed within the lawyering tasks to be completed" and identify the issues and suggested resolutions contemplated by the drafters, which is how graders operationalize each task [S6]. The same page lists the variety of lawyering tasks an MPT might assign — a memorandum to a supervising attorney, a letter to a client, a persuasive memorandum or brief, a statement of facts, a contract provision, a will, a counseling plan, a settlement proposal, a discovery plan, a witness examination plan, or a closing argument — confirming that family-law content can arrive in any task format [S1].

Family-law items in the free MPT Summaries (NCBE/national). The MPT Summaries describe each item from recent administrations; the family-law items verified in this topic are all objective memoranda [S4][S5]. In February 2022 MPT-1, Painter v. Painter, the client is filing for divorce after a nine-year marriage with an eight-year-old daughter; the examinee must draft an objective memorandum on whether a court is likely to grant joint legal custody or sole legal custody to the mother, "taking into consideration the rebuttable presumption in the Franklin Family Code in favor of joint legal custody," and must also determine the proper classification of the couple's property and debt under Franklin law, including allocation of the appreciation of the marital home [S4]. Its Library contains excerpted sections of the Franklin Family Code, including the Franklin Community Property Act, plus two Franklin appellate cases [S4]. In July 2022 MPT-1, In re Marriages of Walter Hixon, the client discovers that his first wife — never divorced — was still living when he married a second time; the examinee must analyze which jurisdiction's law governs the grounds for annulling the second marriage, the annulment process, whether a Franklin court would have jurisdiction to annul and to dispose of property, and where to file, using a Library that includes Walker's Treatise on Domestic Relations, Columbia and Franklin statutes on void and voidable marriages, and sections of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws [S4]. In February 2026 MPT-1, Otto v. Nolan, the firm represents a client seeking a divorce; the examinee must analyze when the parties actually married under Franklin law — whether they created a common-law marriage in 2006 or married only at a 2019 ceremonial wedding with a filed marriage certificate — and how their assets would be characterized as separate or marital property under either timeline, using Library excerpts from the Franklin Family Code and three Franklin appellate cases [S5]. The 2023, 2024, and 2025 summaries were also checked for this topic and contain no family-law item: the twelve items in those administrations are In re Hill (February 2023, an objective memorandum on a buyer's claims under the Franklin Deceptive Trade Practices Act after her boat's engine block failed) [S10] and B&B Inc. v. Happy Frocks Inc. (February 2023, a persuasive brief arguing against an award of profits in a trademark-infringement case) [S10]; Dobson v. Brooks Real Estate Agency (July 2023, a persuasive brief in support of a motion in limine to admit and exclude evidence) [S10] and Martin v. The Den Breeder (July 2023, a client advice letter on claims over a puppy with a congenital liver defect) [S10]; State of Franklin v. Iris Logan (February 2024, an objective memorandum on robbery and felony-murder charging) [S11] and Randall v. Bristol County (February 2024, a persuasive argument in support of a motion for summary judgment in a public-employee free-speech case) [S11]; In re Girard (July 2024, a landlord-tenant matter analyzing a notice to cure or quit) [S11] and CDI Inc. v. Sidecar Design LLC (July 2024, a memorandum on potential liability under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) [S11]; Turner v. Larkin (February 2025, a Fair Housing Act familial-status discrimination matter) [S12] and In re University of Franklin (February 2025, a public-records analysis under Franklin's Inspection of Public Records Act) [S12]; and Lowe v. Jost (July 2025, an expert-witness admissibility argument) [S12] and In re Gourmet Pro (July 2025, an attorney-client privilege memorandum) [S12]. So across the eighteen items in the nine administrations covered by the 2022–2026 summaries, three family-law items appear — all objective memoranda — which is why a practice library should not expect family-law items to appear in every administration [S4][S5][S10][S11][S12].

Family-law-adjacent items in the free released packets (NCBE/national). Two of the released packets opened for this topic touch family law directly. In the February 2017 packet, MPT-2 is In re Guardianship of Henry King: Henry is incompetent and needs a guardian, and the client (Ruth King Maxwell) asks the firm to "draft our proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law to submit to the court," persuading the court that it has authority to override Henry's earlier nomination of Noah King as prospective guardian and that Ruth should be appointed [S6]. The File includes the office's guidelines on drafting proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, and the Library contains excerpts from the Franklin Guardianship Code and two Franklin Court of Appeal guardianship decisions, Matter of Selena J. (2011) and In re Guardianship of Martinez (2009) [S6]. In the July 2020 packet, MPT-1 is In re Alice Lindgren, a U nonimmigrant visa (U visa) matter [S7]: the supervising attorney's memo explains that U visas, created by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, are meant to encourage immigrant victims of crime to report crime and assist in investigation or prosecution, and the examinee must draft a persuasive cover letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services supporting the client's U visa application [S7]. The Library for that item contains excerpts from INA § 101(a)(15)(U) [S7] and 8 C.F.R. § 214.14 [S7], and the problem turns on whether robbery qualifies as a crime "similar" to the enumerated qualifying crime of felonious assault — a family-and-victim-adjacent immigration task rather than a domestic-relations task [S7]. The other eight released administrations (February and July 2016, February and July 2018, February and July 2019, February and July 2020's second item) are listed in NCBE's free catalog but were not individually opened within this topic's research budget, so this topic makes no claim about their content beyond their existence as published packets [S1].

Editorial recommendation — what a family-law practice library should hold (EDITORIAL, not NCBE guidance). The following is this topic's own recommendation for a candidate, not anything NCBE prescribes. Tier 1, the family-law core, practice in this order [S4][S5]: Painter v. Painter (February 2022) [S4] first, because it combines all three recurring family-law skills — custody analysis under a statutory presumption, property classification, and appreciation allocation — in a standard objective-memorandum format [S4]; then In re Marriages of Walter Hixon (July 2022) [S4] for the choice-of-law and marriage-validity variation [S4]; then Otto v. Nolan (February 2026) [S5] as the most recent family-law item, adding common-law marriage and marital-property characterization under alternative factual timelines [S5]. Add the February 2017 In re Guardianship of Henry King [S6] for the one released guardianship task and for its unusual deliverable (a proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law filing), which tests persuasive drafting inside a court-document format [S6], and the July 2020 In re Alice Lindgren [S7] as the only released item combining a family-adjacent client (a crime victim) with persuasive agency correspondence [S7]. Tier 2, format flexibility: after the family-law core, work one item from each of the other recent administrations (2023–2025 summaries) to keep the six skills sharp across non-family formats, since family-law items have all been objective memoranda so far [S1][S10][S11][S12]. Supporting reference works for the library, all free: the Instructions for Taking the MPT, which should be re-read before every practice item because it states the ground rules of the closed universe [S3]; the drafters' point sheets in every released packet, which show what graders reward [S6][S7]; and the MPT Summaries as the map of what recent administrations actually tested [S4][S5][S10][S11][S12]. Because the MPT is not a substantive-law test, the library's job is not to memorize family-law doctrine but to practice extracting code-based rules (custody presumptions, property classification, marriage validity, guardianship standards) from supplied materials and applying them to the File's facts [S1][S2].

New Jersey context (NJ-specific). New Jersey administers the Uniform Bar Examination — the New Jersey Supreme Court adopted the UBE beginning with the February 2017 administration, with a minimum passing score of 266 — so New Jersey examinees take both MPT items as part of the UBE [S9]; nationally, UBE jurisdictions weight the MPT 20% of the UBE total (MBE 50%, MEE 30%, MPT 20%), with totals reported on a 400-point scale [S8][S2]. That is the only NJ-specific point in this topic; everything above about NCBE's published materials is NCBE/national [S1].

ELI-10: Explain It Like I'm 10

[HYPOTHETICAL — NOT A REAL CASE] Imagine you want to become the best junior mechanic in town, and the town's official auto-repair school runs a contest every spring. The school publishes, for free, three things: a rulebook ("The Rules of the Garage"), a folder of every past contest job with the boss's grading sheet attached, and a one-page note describing each recent contest job. You notice that some past jobs are "family jobs" — fixing the minivan the divorced parents must share for school pickups, deciding whether a handshake deal counts as a sale of grandma's old car, and settling who gets the family toolbox when the will is unclear. You practice those first, in the order the school listed them, always reading the job note before touching the tools, and always using only the parts and the rule sheet the school put in the box — never parts from your own garage. After each job you compare your work to the boss's grading sheet to see what he cared about. Then you practice one job from every other year, too, so you can handle a school-bus repair or a delivery-truck brake job if that's what this year's note asks for.

Now translate back to the real rule: the school is NCBE, and the contest is the MPT [S1]. The rulebook is the Instructions for Taking the MPT, the ground rules for every item [S3]. The past jobs with grading sheets are the free released MPTs with drafters' point sheets, and the one-page notes are the free MPT Summaries [S1]. The "family jobs" are the family-law items this topic verified [S4][S5][S6][S7] — Painter v. Painter (custody and the family home in a divorce) [S4], In re Marriages of Walter Hixon (whether a second marriage counts) [S4], Otto v. Nolan (when a couple actually married and who owns what) [S5], In re Guardianship of Henry King (who should care for an adult who can't manage his affairs) [S6], and In re Alice Lindgren (a crime victim's visa case) [S7]. The parts and rule sheet in the box are the File and the Library — and just as the school never tests whether you memorized your own garage's parts, the MPT is not a test of memorized family law: every rule you need is supplied in the Library [S1][S3]. And the real skill, for family-law items and every other item, is reading the boss's note, working only with the box, and producing exactly the job it asks for within the time limit [S1][S3].

Real Case Reference (if applicable)

No published judicial decision squarely addresses what a family-law practice library for the MPT should contain — these are administrative testing materials published by NCBE, not litigated doctrine [S1]. The governing authority is NCBE's published MPT program materials as adopted by each administering jurisdiction [S1][S2][S3]; for New Jersey, the operative rule is the New Jersey Supreme Court's adoption of the UBE — which includes both MPT items — as administered by the New Jersey Board of Bar Examiners [S9]. Real decisions do appear inside MPT Libraries as exam materials, but they are fictitious authorities from the closed universe of the problem — for example, the Franklin Court of Appeal guardianship decisions in the February 2017 packet (Matter of Selena J. (2011) and In re Guardianship of Martinez (2009)) are part of the exam, not real-world precedent [S6]. In the same way, the "Franklin Family Code" [S4] and its joint-custody presumption in Painter v. Painter [S4] are fictitious law supplied for that item, not the law of any real state [S4].

Key Takeaways

• NCBE publishes free: the Instructions for Taking the MPT, the MPT Skills Tested description, MPT Summaries for 2022–2026, and released MPTs with point sheets from ten administrations (February 2016 – July 2020) [S1][S3].
• Three family-law items appear in the recent summaries — Painter v. Painter [S4] (February 2022: divorce, joint vs. sole custody under a Franklin Family Code presumption, property and debt classification) [S4], In re Marriages of Walter Hixon [S4] (July 2022: annulment, void/voidable marriage, choice of law) [S4], and Otto v. Nolan [S5] (February 2026: divorce, common-law vs. ceremonial marriage, separate vs. marital property) [S5] — all objective memoranda; the 2023–2025 summaries contain no family-law item [S10][S11][S12].
• Two released packets touch family law directly: February 2017 MPT-2 In re Guardianship of Henry King (a proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law filing in a guardianship) and July 2020 MPT-1 In re Alice Lindgren (a persuasive U-visa cover letter to USCIS in a crime-victim matter) [S6][S7].
• The MPT is not a test of substantive family law: every family-law item supplies its law in the Library (Franklin Family Code, Franklin Guardianship Code, INA excerpts), so the library's value is practice at extracting and applying supplied rules, not memorizing doctrine [S1][S2][S4][S6].
• Editorial (this topic's recommendation, not NCBE's): practice the four family-law items in the order Painter → Hixon → Otto → Henry King, add the Lindgren U-visa letter for persuasive agency work, then work one item per recent administration for format flexibility; keep the Instructions PDF and each packet's point sheet in the library [S3][S4][S5][S6][S7].
• NJ-specific: New Jersey is a UBE jurisdiction (adopted February 2017, passing score 266), so NJ examinees take both MPT items; the MPT is weighted 20% of the UBE total, reported on a 400-point scale [S9][S8][S2].

Sources

• [S1] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "Preparing for the MPT," https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt/preparing-mpt (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S2] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "About the MPT," https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt/about-mpt (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S3] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "Instructions for Taking the MPT" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/Instructions_MPT_2023.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S4] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Summaries 2022" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/MPT_Summaries_2022.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S5] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "February 2026 MPT Summaries" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-06/February%202026%20MPT%20Summaries.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S6] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "February 2017 MPTs and Point Sheets" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/2017-Feb-MPTs-PointSheets.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S7] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "July 2020 MPTs and Point Sheets" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2026-06/July%202020%20MPTs%20and%20Point%20Sheets.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S8] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "UBE Bar Exam Scores," https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-scores (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S9] New Jersey Board of Bar Examiners, "Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) Information," https://www.njbarexams.org/ube (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S10] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Summaries: February and July 2023" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/February%20and%20July%202023%20MPT%20Summaries.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S11] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Summaries: February and July 2024" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/2024%20Febuary%20and%20July%20MPT%20Summaries.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).
• [S12] National Conference of Bar Examiners, "MPT Summaries 2025" (PDF), https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-10/MPT%20Summaries-2025.pdf (verified 2026-08-20).

Not Legal Advice