LMFT Licensure in North Dakota: Requirements, Hours and Exams

North Dakota issues an actual associate license, and the statutory definition tells you how the state counts: an associate has completed the education and passed the licensing examination, but not the supervised work experience.

The associate license lasts one year and may be renewed for up to four additional years, and the renewal rule has associates renewing annually for up to forty-eight months, so the two calendar years of experience have to be finished inside that window.

A provisional license is a separate bridge: once the applicant has submitted all documents, met the criteria for licensure, and been approved by the board for oral examination, it allows practice as an LMFT with all the privileges and responsibilities of the profession until four months pass or the oral exam is not passed.

The full license is the only way to hold out the MFT title.

The statute accepts a master's or doctoral degree in marriage and family therapy from a recognized educational institution — regionally accredited, or a COAMFTE-accredited postgraduate training institute — or a graduate degree in an allied field with coursework the board finds equivalent.

The equivalence rule spells out what it checks: at least fifty-four semester hours across listed content areas, including a clinical practicum of nine semester hours, or at least five hundred hours or twelve months of clinical client contact with individuals, couples and families, with no more than two hundred fifty of those hours with individuals.

Coursework gaps can be closed after the degree at a regionally accredited college, one course cannot satisfy two content areas, and the burden of proving equivalence by a preponderance of the evidence sits on the applicant.

The statute requires two calendar years of work experience in marriage and family therapy under qualified supervision following receipt of the qualifying degree.

The rule turns that into numbers: the board shall accept a minimum of 3,000 hours, of which 1,500 are direct clinical client contact including assessment, diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, plus 200 hours of postgraduate supervision, over not less than twenty-four months full time and no more than forty-eight months part time.

The planning problem is the case-type split: at least 500 of the direct hours must come in each of three categories — unmarried, married, and separating and divorcing couples; family groups including children; and individual services.

An associate whose employment generates only one of those caseloads cannot reach the license on that job alone, though the board may consider waiving part of the split for good cause shown.

Every applicant sits two parts.

The written, objective part is designed and scored by a professional examination service approved by the Association of Marriage and Family Therapy Regulatory Boards, and the passing score is that association's.

The state part is conducted by members of the board — the oral examination on the board's fee schedule — after the licensure application has been accepted, covering knowledge of the laws, the code of ethics, responsibilities to the board and the public, and other practice areas; both parts must be passed.

Because the associate license is issued on the degree plus a pass on the licensing examination, scheduling the written exam early protects the timeline.

A failed part may be reexamined, but not more than five times without a variance, reexamination on the written part requires the written examination fee again, and statute bars an applicant who fails a board-conducted examination from a subsequent exam for at least six months.

The 200 supervision hours must be face-to-face, at least 100 of them individual, at one hundred hours per year full time or fifty per year part time, with a minimum of one hour every two weeks and a supervision agreement filed within sixty days of starting.

Individual supervision means one supervisor with no more than two supervisees; group supervision means three to six.

Supervisors are recognized by the board, not self-declared: a graduate degree in MFT or a related field, a non-associate MFT license, a supervision course or thirty-hour continuing-education course, and 3,000 hours of direct client contact over at least three years as a licensed LMFT — or AAMFT approved-supervisor status — and a supervisor may not be the associate's employer or a relative within the prohibited degrees.

The statute adds that at least fifty percent of qualified supervision must be with an approved supervisor who is a licensed marriage and family therapist.

NDAC 111-02-02-03, as amended effective April 1, 2024, counts real-time two-way audio-and-video supervision as in-person supervision, with no limit on the number of hours.

Chapter 43-53 defines marriage and family therapy as the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional disorders, whether cognitive, affective, or behavioral, within the context of marriage and family systems — so diagnosis sits inside the North Dakota license's own definition, not in a separate privilege.

Title protection has applied since January 1, 2006: only a licensee may use the title marriage and family therapist or the initials MFT, and the board's rule reaches look-alike titles — marriage therapist, family therapist, marriage counselor — for people outside the chapter's exemptions.

Practicing in violation of the chapter is a class B misdemeanor.

The exemptions cover academic and government employees, board-recognized interns in training, clergy, and volunteers for nonprofit or community agencies who do not hold themselves out as licensed.

The board shall issue a license by examination of credentials to an applicant licensed or certified as a marriage and family therapist in another state whose requirements are equivalent to or exceed North Dakota's, and the burden of proving that equivalence, by a preponderance of the evidence, rests on the applicant.

Two parts of the rule do real work for a relocating clinician.

Every endorsement applicant must pass the state examination, and a clinician licensed elsewhere without a written examination must pass the written part before applying.

Five continuous years licensed as an MFT in a United States jurisdiction satisfies the educational requirements; less than that and the board decides whether they are met.

North Dakota's route is endorsement only — there is no interstate compact for MFTs as of the September 2026 check, so no home-state license carries an automatic privilege to practice here.

A license is valid for two years and must be renewed biennially, with the renewal application postmarked on or before December thirty-first.

Licensed marriage and family therapists attest to thirty hours of continuing education every two years, six of them ethics, upon renewal in each odd-numbered year; associates renew every year with fifteen hours, three of them ethics, and the required hours are prorated for a licensee initially licensed during a reporting period.

Approved supervisors dedicate ten percent of their continuing education — three units — to courses on supervision.

Home study counts for no more than fifteen of the thirty licensee hours, and the board audits randomly: keep attendance certificates for at least five years, because a receipt for the course fee is not sufficient evidence of completion.

NDAC 111-02-02-03, as amended effective April 1, 2024, counts real-time two-way audio-and-video supervision as in-person supervision, with no limit on the number of hours completed that way.

The chapter histories also show April 1, 2024 amendments to the definitions chapter, the continuing-education chapter, and the renewal and reinstatement sections; the saved text carries the current rules and the amendment dates but not the prior versions, so what those amendments changed cannot be shown from the sources read.

For an associate choosing a supervisor or an employment setting, the practical effect is that a fully remote supervision arrangement is usable in North Dakota when it carries both audio and video.