The BBS 90-Day Rule, explained.

The rule reads the same on all three tracks. It has four conditions, and you have to meet all four, not most of them.

The four conditions

The credit stays provisional until the Board grants your registration. If it isn't granted, these hours don't count under this rule.

The usual requirements still apply

Hours in this window aren't credited on easier terms. The Board's FAQs say hours gained under the 90-day rule must comply with all experience and supervision requirements in order to count toward licensure.

• At least one hour of direct supervisor contact in each week experience is credited, in each work setting.
• A supervisor who meets the Board's supervisor qualifications.
• A weekly log of your hours, signed by your supervisor each week.

When your hours actually start

Your degree date, or the day after your employer's Live Scan, whichever is later.

It is not "at graduation." That shorthand is common and it is wrong in the expensive direction. The Board's flyer is flat about it: post-degree hours may only be counted after the date recorded on the "Request for Live Scan Service" form completed for your employer. After, not on.

One Live Scan per employer

If you work at two places, you need a Live Scan at each one, and each one has its own start date. The Board asks you to be fingerprinted separately for each employer, and to keep a copy of the form from each. Fingerprints don't transfer between employers or agencies.

Two Live Scans, and only one of them counts here

You will do two different Live Scans, and they are not interchangeable.

The Live Scan you complete for the Board as part of your associate registration application does not satisfy the 90-Day Rule. The Board says it cannot be accepted for that purpose.

What the Board will accept as proof

One document: a copy of your completed, employer-required "Request for Live Scan Service" form. The Board says the law doesn't allow it to accept DOJ results or a letter from your employer instead.

So keep the form. You'll send a copy with your licensure application, which could be two or three years later. Don't send it with your associate application.

There is no separate 90-Day Rule application, checkbox or attestation. You qualify by meeting the conditions.

Staying on at your practicum site

The Live Scan requirement doesn't apply to your pre-degree trainee hours. It does apply the moment those hours become post-degree hours.

So if you graduate and keep working at the same agency, the Board's position is that the agency must have fingerprinted you before you earn post-degree hours there. Being a known face at the site for a year doesn't carry over.

What this means on your track

The rule is identical on all three tracks. What's riding on it is not.

AMFTs

You may already have hours banked. As an MFT Trainee you can earn up to 1,300 hours toward the 3,000 before your degree is awarded, and at most 750 of those can be counseling and direct supervisor contact combined. Those hours are pre-degree, and the 90-Day Rule doesn't touch them. It governs one stretch: the post-degree weeks before your AMFT number arrives. See the full AMFT hour requirements.

APCCs and ASWs

No hours earned before your degree count toward your 3,000. Not practicum, not field placement, not a single one.

That makes the 90-Day Rule the start line for your entire count. Every hour you will ever claim is post-degree, so a missed window doesn't cost you a slice of the total. It moves where the total begins. See the full APCC hour requirements and ASW hour requirements.

If you don't meet the rule

Where your employer never required fingerprinting, the Board's answer is short. You cannot count any hours gained between the date your degree was awarded and the issuance date of your associate registration, and the law does not provide for any exceptions.

If your supervisor has already signed off on those hours, the Board publishes a procedure. It asks you to submit your weekly logs covering the period from the start of your supervision through the date your registration was issued. Your evaluator uses those logs to identify and deduct hours gained before the issuance date. Logs covering time after your registration was issued aren't required unless your evaluator asks for them.

Our guide to the weekly log the Board would ask for goes through every column.

There are two 90-day provisions, and they aren't related

If you're on the LMFT track, you'll run into a second 90-day provision in the same handbook. It is about practicum enrollment, it applies before your degree, and it has nothing to do with the rule above.

How the practicum enrollment gap works

All counseling you provide as an MFT Trainee has to be part of your supervised course of study while you're enrolled in practicum. The handbook makes one exception, and it needs both of these to be true:

• The lapse in your enrollment is less than 90 calendar days.
• That lapse comes straight after a period of practicum enrollment, and is straight followed by practicum enrollment again, or by completing your degree program.

So a summer between two practicum terms can qualify, and so does a gap that ends with your degree being conferred. A gap with nothing enrolled on the far side does not. The Board states the consequence directly: if a Trainee's practicum break is 90 days or greater, the Trainee cannot count any hours gained during that time period toward licensure.

You don't have to keep the same supervisor or the same site through the gap. Hours you gain during the gap are ordinary Trainee hours, so they count against your 1,300, not on top of it.

This provision says nothing about whether hours count once you graduate. So when someone says "the 90-day rule" on the LMFT track, ask which one they mean. Only the post-degree one carries the name.