What the Alec and Lydia Act Means for Your Arizona Divorce

Arizona family court changed on June 22, 2026. If you are going through a divorce or a parenting dispute where domestic violence is part of your story, what the court is required to do is fundamentally different from what it was required to do last week.

The Alec and Lydia Act, House Bill 2995, is now law. It rewrites the rules for how Arizona family courts handle domestic violence in cases involving children. This article explains what changed, what it means for you, and what you are now entitled to expect from the court.

We are not going to bury this in legal language. You deserve to understand it clearly. If you have any questions, give us a call and schedule a consult.

What the old law did and where it fell short

Before June 22, 2026, Arizona law recognized domestic violence as a factor in parenting decisions. It created a presumption against giving legal decision making authority to a parent who had committed domestic violence. That was a meaningful protection in theory.

In practice it had real gaps. The presumption applied only to legal decision making which was the authority to make major decisions about a child’s education, health care, and upbringing. It did not automatically extend to parenting time, the actual time where a child was with the abuser. Courts had significant discretion. They didn’t have to make any mention or findings in cases in temporary orders and domestic violence. Judges could hear domestic violence evidence and still award parenting time to the abuser without making any written findings explaining their reasoning. The burden fell heavily on the victim to prove not just that abuse occurred but that it was serious enough, frequent enough, and recent enough to justify restrictions on the abuser’s access to children.

We have practiced family law in Arizona for nearly twenty years. We have seen what that judicial discretion looked like in real life. It has been painful. We have sat with clients who came to court as victims of domestic violence and watched judges make decisions without understanding any impact on little children who had to alone with an abuser. Sometimes, the courts didn’t even understand that facts as presented were the definition of domestic violence (coercive control). We have fought those fights. We will keep fighting them. But now we are fighting with a statute behind us that did not exist before.

What the Alec and Lydia Act changes

The Alec and Lydia Act requires the court to make specific written findings any time domestic violence is alleged including in temporary orders. The judge must describe the evidence, explain whether the presumption applies and why and explain what protective measures are in the child’s best interests. If the court finds domestic violence occurred and still awards parenting time it has to explain that in writing too.

Written findings matter because they create a record. They hold courts accountable. And they give victims something concrete to work with if the ruling needs to be challenged.

The Alec and Lydia Act makes the child’s preference for the abusive parent expressly irrelevant to the domestic violence analysis. The court must protect the child. The child’s wish to maintain contact with the abusive parent does not override that obligation.

The Alec and Lydia Act closes that gap. Courts can no longer call violence mutual unless the evidence shows that both parents had the same motivation, lacked justification to a similar degree, and inflicted comparable harm. Self-defense is not mutual combat. A victim’s reactive responding to abuse is not the same as an abuser initiating it. The law is now much clearer to protect the victim.

Coercive control is not always physical. It is not always recognizable. It is a pattern of behavior designed to dominate, isolate, and control another person. It includes financial monitoring and control, isolation from friends and family, stalking and surveillance, threats, demeaning conduct, threats to report someone to immigration authorities, and using family court itself as a weapon such a filing false or frivolous claims to force the other parent to defend themselves or to restrict their activity. Calling the police for “welfare” checks. Putting tracking devices on cars and computers. (also stalking).

If you were told before that what happened to you did not qualify as domestic violence because it was not physical, that may have changed. A consultation with Tali is the right place to ask these questions.

What the abusive parent must now prove to get any parenting time

Once a court finds domestic violence, the abusive parent bears the burden of overcoming the presumption. And the standard is different depending on what they are asking for.

To get unsupervised parenting time or any legal decision making authority, the abusive parent must overcome the presumption by clear and convincing evidence. That is a high standard. It requires more than completing a program and showing up to court looking allegedly reformed.

To get even supervised parenting time, the abusive parent must overcome the presumption by a preponderance of the evidence. That is a lower standard but it is still a real burden. Supervised parenting time is no longer a given.

A certificate of completion from a domestic violence treatment program is not enough on its own. The court must see demonstrated insight into how the violence harmed the child and the other parent. It must see transparency and the abusive parent must waive privilege so the court and the victim can see the treatment records. Checking a box and completing a course does not rebut the presumption anymore.

What this means if you are in a case right now

If you are currently in a divorce or a parenting dispute where domestic violence is an issue, the law that applies to your case changed on June 22, 2026. Courts are required to operate under the new framework for any proceeding going forward.

If you have been going through this process and feeling like the court was not hearing you, or like the evidence you brought was being minimized, or like the system was not connecting what happened to you with what should happen to your children, understand that the law has changed. The law changes what the court must do.

We cannot tell you on a web page exactly how the new law applies to your specific situation. Every case is different. What we can tell you is that this is a conversation worth having with an attorney who understands domestic violence, who has been fighting these cases for nearly twenty years, and who will listen to your story without minimizing it.

A consultation with Tali is where that conversation starts. She handles every new client consultation personally. She will tell you honestly what the law means for you and your children.

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