Amy says her final goodbyes to Graciela. Maxine realizes that she made a mistake in pushing Ignacio away and tries to reach out to him but Ignacio rebuffs her because he doesn't want to be her yo-yo, jerked around on Maxine's whims. Bruce is still absent on Amy's last day in the courtroom. Holbrook tries to raise awareness about the bill before Congress that will effectively kill the juvenille justice system. Donna is amazed that Amy refuses to support the cause and brings several of the kids whose lives Amy has changed during her time on the bench in an effort to change her mind. Amy, frustrated by her limitations as a judge, runs into Marty Levine, who again tries to convince her to give the speech in Washington and run for Senate. Amy runs the idea by Lauren who at first refuses to give a straight answer but later supports her mom when Maxine attacks the decision. That same night, Maxine must rush to save a young girl from being pimped out by her prostitute mother. Amy receive

Sitting in for a friend who's undergoing chemotherapy, Amy presides over her first jury trial and clashes with a former law school classmate who represents the parents of a murdered girl who are suing the parents of her teenaged killer; Maxine shops for a new car for the first time in her life; Vincent feels that Maxine doesn't take his writing seriously after she interrupts his work to ask him to babysit the six rambunctious first graders attending Lauren's sleepover party.

Amy must determine if a comatose boy who is believed to have healing powers is being abused by his grandmother; Maxine clashes with her supervisor over taking an underfed little girl away from her anorexic mother; Vincent begins a relationship with an older woman.

A death threat, coupled with Maxine's disapproval, puts a crimp in Amy's blossoming relationship with Tracy; Vincent begins to feel like he's Chris's pet project; Maxine rekindles an old friendship; Amy officiates at Donna's wedding to a convict; Maxine helps a second generation foster teenager keep her infant son out of the system.

Short calendar day drops 54 cases on Amy's docket, and the long day stretches into night when she's forced to make a life and death decision about the fate of an abused child; Maxine decides to return to work; Amy's confrontation with Lauren's obnoxious new teacher leaves her with yet another responsibility in an already jam-packed calendar.

A woman fights for custody of her son after the boy's father claims that her practice of the Wiccan religion makes her an unfit mother; Vincent gets an agent; in the week before Halloween, Lauren gets spooked by some older boys; Amy confronts narrow-minded attitudes at the P.T.A. meeting; in direct defiance of Susie's orders, Maxine pursues the search for a boy missing from a family with a history of child abuse.

Amy seeks to have Lauren qualified as a ""gifted"" student; Maxine agrees to take a anger management class after going too far in insulting a coworker and accosting the boy who vandalized the Gray home; Amy dates a detective who's ""out of her league""; Vincent agrees to be Donna's birthing partner; Amy presides at the sentencing hearing for a teenager who intentionally maimed a rival player during a hockey game.

Felled by the flu, Amy collapses in court, but not before presiding over a custody hearing for a cow; long-buried feelings erupt between Gillian and Peter when Evie offers to return Ned; Amy's caseload has more of an effect on her temporary replacement than he expected; after Sean grounds her to desk duty for taking wannabee gangbangers on an unauthorized field trip to the local I.C.U. which draws outcries from their parents, Maxine decides not to ask him for a few days off to accompany Jared on a business trip to China; Carole accepts a job offer in San Francisco and asks Vincent to come with her; Sean supports Maxine when Jared's plane is reported missing; the Gray family rejoices when both Ned and Jared are returned to them safely.

When Donna's birthing center burns down the night before she goes into labor, the Grays offer the use of their house for her baby's water birth; the family becomes concerned at Maxine's curiously dispassionate response to the news of Socrates's death; Amy is upset when Vincent decides to spend Christmas alone with Carole rather than with the family; as she begins to suffer from burnout on the job, Maxine shifts some of her caseload onto her colleagues and finally takes Amy's advice to see a therapist; Amy gives four girls who filed a false molestation complaint against their teacher a taste of their own medicine when she has them taken into custody.

As Peter and Gillian prepare for Ned's christening, Evie returns to claim her son; Amy and Tom decide to make their relationship public; Carole has trouble dealing with Vincent's relationship with Donna; Maxine moves forward with her plans for Sanctuary House; Amy looks for signs of remorse from a teenage boy accused of killing his sister.

Peter and Gillian lose custody of Ned to Evie; Peter tries to drown his grief in alcohol and is arrested for drunk driving; Gillian fixates on Peter's drinking to avoid dealing with her loss; Amy must rule on the future of an unborn baby after learning that the mother is under investigation for the disappearance of her first child; Maxine and Sadie investigate the strange case of a woman who thinks she's a holly bush; Vincent and Carol attend her parents' 30th wedding anniversary party; Bruce loses his cool when he mediates a dispute over a teenager's plastic surgery.

Maxine reunites a couple with their kidnapped baby; Vincent is upset when Carole usurps his prerogative to tell his family about their move in his own way and time by blurting out the news over family dinner, while Amy is downright angry at her brother's decision; when she learns that he's been granted an appeal, Donna can't face serving Oscar with divorce papers herself; Amy watches helplessly as a mother whose custody petition she denied takes drastic measures to protest Amy's decision.

Maxine teeters on the brink of collapse as she refuses to move out of Colton Gerard's hotel room, rages against Sean for his failure to run the department properly, and is suspended after being arrested for slapping a foster child who has abused and neglected her elderly and ailing foster mother; Vincent gets an eye-opening look at his life through the eyes of a teenager in foster care who was abused by his mother; Peter's praise of Gillian's mothering skills draws them closer together when they meet with their son's teacher, and they are shocked to discover that Ned is biting other children because his genius-level I.Q. leaves him bored with school; Donna is angry when an over-controlling Amy steamrollers right over her and the State's Attorney in a misguided attempt to help Donna win her first case as an attorney and ensure that her mentally ill teenaged client receives the help he desperately needs from the system; distressed about her mother's arrest and refusal to return home, Amy

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Amy Madison Gray struggles to adjust to the new circumstances in her life as she separates from her husband and becomes a single mother to her young daughter, Lauren; moves from Manhattan to Hartford, CT to live with her opinionated mother Maxine, a retired social worker; and starts a new career as a superior court judge in family court. The first case on her docket, the placement of a child abandoned by a drug addicted mother, introduces her to the shortcomings and political realities of the juvenile justice system.

Amy must decide whether to terminate the parental rights of a couple convicted of child abuse; Maxine's disrespect rubs a building inspector the wrong way, endangering the scheduled opening for Sanctuary House and thus the federal funds needed for its operation; Amy grapples with her jealousy over Lauren's attachment to Katie; Donna decides to divorce Oscar; Bruce and his sister Winnie quarrel over where their mother should live.

After Vincent asks his brother to lend him the money he needs to pay back the advance on his novel, Peter meets with his accountant to free up the funds and discovers that his business is headed toward insolvency; Maxine sets some strict boundaries for Ignacio, who soon realizes that it's time to divorce Francesca; Amy is back in juvenile court and immediately has a conflict with Bruce over the pace at which her docket is moving, but she persists in digging deeper into the case of a twelve year old boy who admitted to a felony murder; even though the publicity generates a lot of leads, Sean is upset when the Anthony Byrd case makes the paper, which recommends that they be fired for losing Anthony in the system; David buys a boat, but can't convince Amy to overcome her aversion to sailing; Maxine's teenage client mounts a publicity campaign to find an adoptive family before he graduates from high school; Donna resigns as Amy's clerk after accepting a position as a court-appointed minor

Amy finds it rather difficult to follow her mom's advice and embrace her 40th birthday as a milestone. Donna is in Amy's court representing a 13-year-old girl who accidentally kills her friend while they are out on a joyride but shows no remorse for her death. Maxine tries to determine whether two brothers are better off without the presence of their father, an ex-con, in their lives. Amy miscarries on her 40th birthday. Amy drowns her sorrows at a bar located on the beach, where she meets a stranger who gives her the perspective she needs during her difficult time.

Amy is as shocked as Lauren is pleased to learn of Michael and Leisha's impending wedding; sensing that Maxine has reservations about their relationship, Jared suggests that they take some time away from each other in order to gain a little perspective; Vincent is attracted to a producer he meets when he's invited to read his short stories on the radio; Amy must decide if an alcoholic mother responsible for the death of her daughter has recovered enough to regain custody of her son and retain custody of her unborn child; Maxine is distressed when the state's attorney declines to file charges in the Roseland case; Bruce unhappily assents when Mia suggests that Rebecca spend more time with her in New York; Amy hears the case of a divorcing couple fighting over frequent flyer miles.

Amy must decide whether to remove an eleven year old girl from the custody of her Wanderer parents; Vincent writes an article criticizing the foster care system which gets a frosty reception from his mother and siblings; Maxine is forced to testify for the prosecution during Jodi Larson's trial; Gillian's proposal that the entire Gray family take a formal Christmas portrait is met with a resounding lack of enthusiasm; Bruce mediates a custody modification dispute between a contentious couple.

Amy gets to know Rob, Lauren's very attractive sensei, better when he brings Lauren home from class after Amy has forgotten to pick her up; Maxine finds some powerful allies in her quest to open a facility devoted to helping victims of child abuse; Amy enlists other judges to volunteer their free time to finalize long-delayed adoptions; Donna becomes depressed when Oscar reveals that he is guilty of his mother's murder; Amy is asked to decide whether an exorcism is in the best interests of a young girl; Jared refuses to let Maxine push him away; Amy reluctantly hires Rob's niece as Lauren's new babysitter.

Maxine contemplates ending her relationship with Jared after meeting his son again, while Amy oversees a case involving a mother who wants to deny visitation rights to her daughter's grandparents; Vincent's decision to quit his job to write a novel unsettles Carole.

The Sanctuary House staff works together to determine the identity of the adult who molested a twelve year old boy who confessed to raping his five year old sister; after Bruce arbitrates a visitation schedule disagreement between a divorced couple and wonders if their child is being abused, Sean offers his help; Carole persuades Vincent to ignore his agent's advice to make his book more commercial; Amy faces a swarmy host and his ignorant, self-serving politician guest as she appears on a tv talk show in defense of the juvenile justice system.

With all three of her children living once again under the same roof with her, Maxine finally decides to let them be the grownups that they are (horseplay notwithstanding) and fix their own breakfasts; the ceiling in Amy's courtroom collapses, and she is sentenced to a stint in Accountability court, which she deems a punishment for her ruling in the Casey Ives matter; shortly after his return from New Mexico, David is devastated to discover that the man who holds the secret to his wife's murder has died; Ignacio asks Amy to plead his case with Maxine; Sean asks Maxine to track down the missing placement records on a little boy, and they discover that there's no trace of him anywhere; Heather visits Kyle to ask his forgiveness, announce that she's entering into a treatment program, and tell him about their son, but he doesn't believe any of it; Maxine relents her stance on Ignacio a little by allowing him to fix the broken sprinklers in the garden; Amy tries to figure out what's behind

Vincent's struggles with his latest novel leads him into blowing off his agent, who responds by dropping Vincent and demanding the return of the advance that Vincent's already spent; Maxine receives another award, and uses her acceptance speech to talk about the young boy lost in the system that she and Sean can't seem to locate; Amy's dealings with two troubled teenage girls and their mothers in Accountability court inspires her to change her focus when she returns to Juvenile Court; Maxine tries to avoid removing the children of a overburdened single mother working to overcome anger and abuse issues; David finally feels that he's put his wife's death behind him and can now pursue a relationship with Amy; Ignacio lets Maxine know that he's ready to do whatever it takes to have a future with her; Amy fires Donna to propel her into practicing law; Kyle decides to accompany Heather to Minnesota and take care of their son while she's in rehab.