How California counts your MFT hours.

Parts of it have minimums you have to reach. Parts have maximums you can't count past. And the whole thing has to run over a minimum stretch of time.

A minimum and a maximum aren't the same kind of rule

A minimum is something you have to reach, and you can't finish without it. A maximum is where hours stop counting toward the 3,000. It isn't a limit on your work, and it doesn't take away anything you already logged.

That distinction gets sharper further down the page, in where your hours stop counting.

Two limits on any single week

Six hours, not six units

This is the one people convert wrongly. Every other weekly supervision figure counts in units. One unit is one hour of individual or triadic supervision, or two hours of group. The weekly ceiling counts in hours instead.

So six hours of group supervision in a week is your limit, not six units of it. Reading the ceiling as units doubles it.

Why 104 weeks is a real floor

At the maximum 40 credited hours a week, 3,000 hours takes 75 weeks. The Board still asks for at least 104 supervised weeks, so nobody finishes in 75.

Working longer weeks moves your hour total. It doesn't move your calendar.

What each column on your weekly log is counting

Six columns, and only two of them add up.

The others exist so the Board can check the parts. Writing an hour in a sub-column doesn't count it twice. The names below are the ones printed on the AMFT weekly log.

SparkHours fills every one of these columns from the hours you've already logged. Our column-by-column walkthrough of the weekly log covers what each one wants, including the versions for the other two licenses. For what does and doesn't belong in column A, see what counts as direct client contact.

The week you owe supervision isn't the week you saw clients

The rule is written around weeks for which experience is credited, not weeks with client contact. Earn any hours at a setting that week and you owe at least one unit of supervision there.

A week of nothing but progress notes still owes one. So does a week of nothing but psychological testing, or clinical reports, or client-centered advocacy.

The carve-out is narrow and specific: time spent attending workshops, seminars, training sessions or conferences. Everything else on the non-clinical side still owes you a unit.

Supervision is itself credited experience. So the hour you sit both triggers the week's requirement and satisfies it.

How much, and how it changes when your degree posts

The floor is the same in both phases. What sits above it is not. Before your degree it's a ratio that climbs with your counseling hours. After your degree it's a single step.

The same weeks, run through both rules

Supervision runs per setting. The hour caps don't

The supervision rules run per work setting. Two placements mean two separate weekly obligations, and supervision at one never covers the other.

The hour figures don't work that way. The 40-hour weekly cap is counted across all your settings at once, and every lifetime number on this page is a career total rather than a per-placement one.

Two supervisors at one setting is a third case. The Board looks at your supervision there as one picture. Each supervisor signs only for the supervision they gave you.

Where your hours stop counting

A maximum is a credit ceiling, not a rule about your work

Past a maximum, hours stop moving your total toward the 3,000. Nothing about the work becomes improper, and you keep everything you already logged. The Board's tables describe what gets credited toward licensure.

So a week over 40 hours is a normal week. Only the credit stops at 40.

Supervision eats into the non-clinical maximum

Supervision isn't a separate allowance. It's one of the items inside the 1,250-hour non-clinical maximum. It sits alongside psychological testing, clinical reports, progress notes, client-centered advocacy and workshops.

The arithmetic is worth doing once. Over 104 weeks at a single unit a week, supervision alone takes at least 104 hours out of that 1,250. Most people run above one unit a week, and group supervision costs two hours per unit. The 1,250 is not the spare room for paperwork it looks like.

The six-year rule

All your work experience has to be accrued no more than six years before the date the Board receives your Application for Licensure. The Board's own example: an application received April 3, 2022 counts the experience gained between April 3, 2016 and April 3, 2022.

The clock runs from your licensure application, at the end of the process. It doesn't run from your associate registration at the start of it.

One exception exists, and only on the LMFT track. Up to 500 hours of counseling and supervision you earned as a Trainee while enrolled in practicum can be older than six years.