Case library / What happens after discipline
Her registration lapsed while she was on probation for it
In short
Registration revoked, revocation stayed, and probation reimposed for 42 months on expanded terms - longer than the three
ProbationNo new clinical misconduct — one administrative condition breached turned three years of probation into forty-two months.
It is the case that shows a probation can be reopened and lengthened with no new clinical misconduct at all.
What happened
The respondent was registered as an associate marriage and family therapist in August 2017. In a prior disciplinary case, decided effective December 8, 2021, the Board revoked her registration, stayed the revocation, and placed her on three years’ probation. That earlier case rested on a criminal conviction and on her failure to answer the Board.
The conviction was for forgery. In October 2020, in Merced County Superior Court, she was convicted on her plea of violating Penal Code sections 470(d) and 473(a), forgery relating to an item exceeding $950, a felony; she was sentenced to 180 days in jail, three years of formal probation, and fees, fines, and restitution. Between November 2018 and January 2019 she had deposited five forged checks totaling $19,000 into her own bank account. The victim was the father of a man she had previously been in a relationship with. She had come to his home in September 2018 asking for help with her car, and while he was outside she asked to use the bathroom and was alone inside for a few minutes. He noticed months later that his account was low, and his bank traced five checks to her; surveillance video from the ATM confirmed she had deposited them. The Board separately charged her under 16 CCR §1845(h) for failing to give it documentation about her arrest after a February 2020 request. That case carried $1,855 in cost recovery and $1,200 a year in probation monitoring costs.
The violation charged in this case is administrative and singular. Probation Condition 14 required her to maintain a current and active registration with the Board at all times while on probation, including any period during which probation was tolled. Her registration had expired on August 31, 2019 — more than two years before the probation began — and was never renewed. She was notified in October 2022 that she was out of compliance and that further disciplinary action would follow, which under Condition 13 automatically extended her probation. The petition to revoke probation was filed in December 2022; she filed a notice of defense contesting it, then admitted every allegation in a stipulated settlement. She represented herself in both proceedings.
The Board did not revoke. It ordered the registration revoked, stayed the revocation again, and placed her on 42 months’ probation on a fresh and longer set of conditions: a psychological or psychiatric evaluation by a Board-appointed evaluator within 90 days, at her expense, with compliance required with whatever the evaluator recommends; ongoing weekly psychotherapy with a Board-approved licensed clinician who files quarterly reports on her fitness to practice; a graduate-level law and ethics course equivalent to two semester units, completed within a year and not usable for continuing education credit; fingerprinting through the Department of Justice and the FBI, and written reporting of any violation of law within 72 hours; quarterly reports under penalty of perjury; in-person interviews on request; notification to every current and future employer and to any client whose therapy or confidentiality is affected; a bar on supervising anyone’s hours toward licensure; a bar on teaching continuing education; and reimbursement of the Board’s probation monitoring at $1,200 per year. If either the evaluator or the treating therapist concludes she cannot practice safely, she must stop immediately and may not resume until the Board says so.
What it was charged as
Requires a probationer to hold a current and active registration at all times while on probation, including any tolled period; on renewal the registration remains subject to every term not already satisfied. The only condition charged in this petition.
The general disciplinary authority the Board invoked to bring the petition and to reimpose discipline on the underlying registration.
Expiration, cancelation, forfeiture, or surrender of a registration does not deprive the Board of jurisdiction to investigate, to proceed, or to revoke — the provision that makes a lapsed registration disciplinable at all.
Conviction of a crime substantially related to the qualifications, functions, or duties of a licensee or registrant — the first cause in the underlying case.
Commission of a dishonest, corrupt, or fraudulent act substantially related to the duties of a registrant — the second cause in the underlying case.
Authorizes suspension or revocation on the ground of a substantially related conviction.
Makes it unprofessional conduct to fail to provide the Board, within 30 days of a request, with documentation regarding the arrest of a licensee or registrant. The third cause in the underlying case.
Forgery: passing, uttering, or attempting to pass a forged check or other listed instrument with intent to defraud.
The penalty provision for forgery, under which an instrument exceeding $950 was charged as a felony here.
The outcome
Registration revoked, revocation stayed, and probation reimposed for 42 months on expanded terms — longer than the three years she was already serving. The order contains no separate cost recovery term; probation monitoring is reimbursed at $1,200 a year, and the $1,855 in costs from the underlying case remained payable under that earlier decision.
No cost recovery stated in the orderWhat the rule actually says
Every condition of a stayed-revocation probation is an independent, self-executing obligation, and the administrative ones are the easiest to breach precisely because they are not about clinical work. “Maintain a current and active registration” means renewing it on time, every time, including in periods when you are not practicing at all. The non-practice condition spells out what does not pause: obeying all laws, filing quarterly reports, complying with the probation program, maintaining a valid registration, and paying costs. A lapse does not put you outside the Board’s reach — §4990.33 keeps jurisdiction over an expired registration — and the filing of a petition to revoke automatically extends probation until the Board acts on it. You cannot wait out a probation by not working.
Discussion
Analysis, not part of the decision
The violation here is as small as a violation gets. Condition 14 of her probation required her to keep a current and active registration. Hers had expired in August 2019 — more than two years before the probation even began — and was never renewed. That is the whole of the petition: one condition, no new clients, no new conduct, no complaint. She was notified in October 2022 that she was out of compliance, and under Condition 13 that notice alone extended her probation automatically.
The underlying case is worth knowing because it is equally non-clinical. She was convicted of felony forgery for depositing five checks totaling $19,000 drawn on the account of the father of a former partner, taken during a few unaccompanied minutes in his house, and she was separately charged under 16 CCR §1845(h) for not producing arrest documentation to the Board after its request. No client was involved in any of it. The route from that conduct to a registration runs through §4982(a) and the 16 CCR §1812 substantial-relationship test, which reaches dishonesty wherever it occurs.
The arithmetic of the outcome is the lesson for anyone currently on probation. Three years’ probation with $1,855 in cost recovery became a fresh stayed revocation and 42 months — and the clock restarted on everything. A new psychological or psychiatric evaluation at her own expense, with binding recommendations. Weekly psychotherapy with a Board-approved clinician who reports quarterly on her fitness. A graduate law and ethics course that cannot count toward continuing education. Fingerprints, quarterly declarations under penalty of perjury, employer and client notification, no supervising anyone’s hours, no teaching continuing education, and $1,200 a year in monitoring. A missed renewal bought all of that.
The structural traps are the part to teach. Condition 13 extends probation automatically the moment a new petition is filed, or even requested from the Attorney General’s office, so the end date on the paper is always provisional. Condition 14 says that when an expired registration is renewed it comes back subject to every term not yet satisfied. And the non-practice clause names the conditions that keep running whether or not you see a client. Together they mean the only exits from a probation are completing it or surrendering — and surrender is itself discipline, with no route back except reapplying from scratch.
Where insurance reaches, and where it does not
Probation is the uninsured part of discipline. No policy pays for a Board-ordered psychological evaluation, for weekly psychotherapy you are required to attend, for a graduate law and ethics course that cannot count toward continuing education, for fingerprinting, or for the $1,200 a year in monitoring costs — and cost recovery is not a defense cost, so no sublimit reaches it either. The underlying conduct, forgery, is a criminal and intentional act excluded from every policy. What is genuinely worth asking your carrier in writing, before you need the answer, is whether the board-defense benefit extends to a petition to revoke probation at all: it is a second proceeding, arising after discipline is already on your record, and policies differ on whether that is a new covered claim or the continuation of an old one.
What would have changed it
- Calendar every probation deadline — renewal, quarterly report, evaluation, coursework, payment — in the week the decision becomes effective, not in the month each falls due.
- Renew a registration or license on time even while suspended, between jobs, or not practicing; where probation requires currency, the lapse is itself the violation.
- Read the non-practice clause of your own order and highlight the conditions it does not toll; those are the ones that end probations early and badly.
Questions
For a law and ethics seminar, or for yourself
- The only proven violation was administrative: the registration was not kept current. Should an administrative lapse carry the same revocation exposure as clinical misconduct, and what does a board gain, or lose, by treating them alike?
- The underlying conviction was forgery against a private individual, with no client and no practice setting involved. Articulate the theory that connects it to fitness to practice therapy — and then say where that theory should stop.
- The respondent represented herself in both the original accusation and the petition to revoke. What could counsel realistically have changed at each stage, and how should a low-paid associate weigh the cost of representation against 42 months of monitored probation?
Source. This write-up is drawn from the signed public decision in the case number above. Names, cities and employers have been removed — why. To pull the original, open the Board's quarterly newsletter archive, find the issue covering date not legible, and match the case number in the Formal Disciplinary Actions section. Not legal advice.
