LMFT Licensure in Kentucky: Requirements, Hours and Exams

Kentucky's pre-licensure rung is a permit, not a license.

The associate permit exists so a graduate can practice and earn the experience the license application requires, and it renews annually.

Two mechanics do the planning work.

First, the supervisory contract comes before practice: the statute says no associate enters practice until the board has approved the written contract with an approved supervisor, and practice must stop immediately if that contract terminates.

Second, the clock: every associate permit is limited to five total years, a cap effective January 1, 2016 that counts previous associate experience too.

At contract termination the associate applies for licensure or requests an extension from the board.

The permit itself is administered annually — a fifty-dollar first-year fee, a fifty-dollar renewal, and a thirty-day late window with a twenty-dollar late fee before the permit terminates.

KRS 335.330(1) gives three routes: a master's or doctoral MFT degree from a regionally accredited institution; a master's, post-master's or doctoral program approved by the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education; or an equivalent course of study as the board defines it, which the rule limits to a closely related mental-health field such as psychology, social work or professional counseling, supplemented by the required core areas.

Whichever route you take, the degree or equivalency must contain specific coursework on psychopathology and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

201 KAR 32:020 spells out the core areas: three courses each in marriage and family studies, marriage and family therapy and human development; one course each in psychopathology and the DSM, professional studies and research; and a practicum of one year or 300 hours of supervised direct client contact.

The practicum has a trap: without one from graduate school, your first 300 post-master's client contact hours can fill the gap, but those hours do not count toward the two years' experience or the 200 supervision hours.

The statute sets the experience requirement in two units, both after the master's degree: at least two years' practice of marriage and family therapy acceptable to the board, and a minimum of 200 hours of clinical supervision.

The rule translates the two years into a minimum of 1,000 hours of direct, face-to-face or telehealth contact with individuals, couples, families and groups under an approved supervisor — the rule names no separate couples-and-families minimum within those hours.

The supervision hours carry their own floors and ceilings: at least 100 in individual supervision, which the rule defines as one or two supervisees; no more than 100 in group supervision, which means three to six; and at least 50 of the 200 built on raw data — video-recorded sessions, live observation, or co-therapy with a board-approved supervisor.

Supervision must also be equally distributed across the qualifying period and average at least four hours per month, so a front-loaded supervision sprint does not satisfy the rule.

The statute requires a pass on a written examination prescribed by the board in administrative regulation, and the rule names it: the national exam offered through the Association of Marriage and Family Therapy Regulatory Board.

The rule ties the exam to the associate permit: under 201 KAR 32:045 §1(2) the exam application is filed as part of the associate permit application, so you can sit the national exam while you accumulate supervised hours.

A failed attempt can be retaken on payment of the fee established in 201 KAR 32:030, and the candidate may continue functioning as an associate under the board-approved supervisor until the exam is passed, the supervisory contract terminates, or the candidate ceases practice and notifies the board in writing.

A request to defer the exam goes to the testing agency, which has full discretion to grant or deny it.

Since January 1, 2016 the rule has accepted three kinds of board-approved supervisor: an AAMFT Approved Supervisor licensed in Kentucky with at least two years of post-licensure experience; an AAMFT supervisor candidate licensed in Kentucky with three years; or a Kentucky LMFT with at least five years post-licensure whose last eighteen months of experience were in Kentucky.

The non-AAMFT route also needs six hours of board-approved supervision coursework completed within the two years before the application.

One supervisor may take no more than twelve associates at a time unless the board approves more, which is worth asking a prospective supervisor up front.

Video supervision is workable but conditioned: supervision may be conducted via live video conferencing only if both the supervisor and the supervisee have met the educational requirements of 201 KAR 32:110 — the CE rule identifies a fifteen-hour telehealth course under that section.

And if your supervisor dies, falls seriously ill, or leaves, an extenuating-circumstances rule lets you keep working up to ninety calendar days under a qualified mental health professional while a new contract is filed.

Kentucky's portability route is brand new.

KRS 335.336, effective July 15, 2026, directs the board to grant licensure to an applicant who holds an active license from another state to practice as an independent marriage and family therapist, is in good standing with that state's board and of good moral character, has had no disciplinary actions of a serious nature, has met the examination requirement in KRS 335.330(3), and has paid the application fee.

The exemption covers the education requirement and the supervised-experience hours, but not the examination requirement: the statute asks whether the applicant has met KRS 335.330(3), and an out-of-state LMFT who already passed the AMFTRB national exam has met it — the statute does not order a retake.

The statute sets no minimum period the out-of-state license must have been held; it must be active.

There is no MFT interstate compact, so this statute is the path a relocating LMFT uses rather than any multistate privilege.

Kentucky renews the LMFT license every year — the statute caps the renewal fee at one hundred fifty dollars — and the continuing education load is annual too: fifteen approved CE hours per one-year renewal period for licensees and ten for associates, including three hours of marriage and family therapy ethics.

Two more requirements sit on top.

Every six years, licensees and associates show six hours of CE in suicide assessment, treatment and management under KRS 210.366, in addition to the fifteen unless the board preapproves them as qualifying; and within three years of initial licensure each licensee and associate completes a one-time three-hour training on domestic violence, elder abuse, neglect and exploitation under KRS 194A.540.

That domestic violence figure is sometimes misreported as six hours every year — the rule says one-time, three hours, within three years.

Hours cannot carry over between renewal periods, a missed renewal gets a ninety-day grace period, and the board may reinstate an expired license within three years.

The 2023–2026 story in Kentucky is one statute.

KRS 335.336 was created by 2026 Ky.

Acts ch. 79, sec. 2, effective July 15, 2026, and it is the portability route described above; an association source had earlier reported Kentucky as a 2025 portability target, but the operative date is the statute's own.

Everything else this page rests on predates 2023: the supervision and CE rules, 201 KAR 32:035 and 32:060, were last amended effective August 26, 2021; the exam and associate rules, 32:045 and 32:025, effective December 16, 2015; and the definitions and equivalency rules, 32:010 and 32:020, last amended effective March 21, 2012 — the February 27, 2020 date in their notes is a certification of the current text, not an amendment.

The five-year associate cap has applied since January 1, 2016.

A guide written before July 2026 will miss the portability statute entirely.

The supervisory contract is the document everything hangs on, and it has its own administration.

The first associate application must include the contract for board approval; an approved contract runs one year and must be reaffirmed in writing at each permit renewal.

When a contract ends, the supervisor notifies the board within thirty days, and the associate has thirty days from termination to submit a new contract — a window to watch if you change jobs.

Co-therapy is explicitly credited: in a session where the supervisor and supervisee both see the client, the roles must be defined before the session starts, and the supervisee receives credit for both the client-contact hours and the supervision hours.

Combined with the ninety-day extenuating-circumstances bridge, the message for an associate is that supervision gaps are fixable, but only on the board's paperwork and timetable.