Legal decision making is the Arizona statutory term for the legal right and responsibility to make major nonemergency decisions for a child. These decisions include education, health care, religious upbringing, and personal care. This is what the rest of the country often calls legal custody.

Legal decision making can be awarded jointly to both parents or solely to one. Courts decide it separately from parenting time. A parent can have joint legal decision making without equal time with the child, and a parent can have significant parenting time without legal decision making authority.

The court decides legal decision making based on the child’s best interests, not based on any presumption related to the parent’s gender, income, or prior role in the household. What the court looks at is which arrangement is most likely to serve the child’s education, health, stability, and wellbeing.

Under the Alec and Lydia Act, when a court finds domestic violence has occurred, there is a mandatory presumption against awarding any legal decision making to the abusive parent. That presumption must be overcome by clear and convincing evidence before any decision making authority can be awarded. It is just not a factor to weigh. It is a presumption the abusive parent must overcome.