ARS 25-402: Arizona Legal Decision-Making and Parenting Time

In Arizona, what used to be called child custody is now split into two separate concepts: legal decision-making and parenting time. Arizona legal decision-making and parenting time are decided together in divorce, legal separation, annulment, paternity, and modification cases, and a judge bases both on the child’s best interests using factors set by statute. Legal decision-making covers who makes the major nonemergency choices about a child’s education, healthcare, religious training, and personal care. Parenting time is the schedule that governs when the child is with each parent. The two are related but not the same, and a parent can have one without an equal share of the other.

The Three Categories of Legal Decision-Making

Arizona law recognizes three arrangements. Sole legal decision-making gives one parent the right and responsibility to make major decisions for the child alone. Joint legal decision-making means both parents share that authority, and neither parent’s rights are superior unless the court says otherwise for particular decisions. The general term “legal decision-making” is what Arizona uses in place of “legal custody” — and the statute confirms that when federal law or another state’s law refers to legal custody, Arizona’s legal decision-making is the equivalent.¹

Joint decision-making does not automatically produce equal parenting time. A court can order joint decision-making while giving one parent significantly more days with the child. The reverse also happens: sole legal decision-making does not automatically strip the other parent of parenting time. Keep the two questions separate as you read your order or draft your plan.

How Courts Choose Sole or Joint

When a judge decides between sole and joint decision-making, the best-interests factors below all apply, and the court adds specific considerations tied to whether parents can share authority. These include whether both parents agree to a joint arrangement, whether one parent’s refusal is unreasonable or unrelated to the child, each parent’s past and likely future ability to cooperate on decisions, and whether joint decision-making is logistically workable.²

The practical version: if you and the other parent cannot communicate without conflict, a judge is less inclined to order joint decision-making. Courts want evidence that both parents can actually work together on the choices that matter.

Best Interests Factors the Judge Must Weigh

Arizona bases every legal decision-making and parenting time ruling on the child’s best interests. In contested cases the judge is required to make specific findings on the record explaining how each factor shaped the outcome.³ The statutory factors are:

The past, present, and potential future relationship between each parent and the child.
The child’s interaction with siblings, the other parent, and anyone else who significantly affects the child’s well-being.
The child’s adjustment to home, school, and community.
If the child is old enough and mature enough, the child’s wishes.
The mental and physical health of everyone involved.
Which parent is more likely to encourage frequent, meaningful contact with the other parent. This factor does not apply when a parent is acting in good faith to protect the child from domestic violence or abuse.
Whether a parent misled the court to cause delay, run up costs, or gain a custody advantage.
Any history of domestic violence or child abuse.
Whether a parent pressured the other into agreeing to a custody arrangement.
Whether a parent completed the required parent education program.
Whether either parent has been convicted of falsely reporting child abuse or neglect.

No single factor decides the case. Judges weigh them together, and the weight depends on the facts. In practice, domestic violence findings and a parent’s willingness to support the other’s relationship with the child carry heavy weight.

Domestic Violence Changes the Default

If a court finds that a parent seeking custody committed domestic violence against the other parent, Arizona law creates a rebuttable presumption that awarding sole or joint legal decision-making to that parent is not in the child’s best interests. The abusive parent then bears the burden of proving otherwise.⁴

For this purpose, domestic violence means intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly causing or attempting to cause serious physical injury or sexual assault; placing someone in reasonable fear of imminent serious physical injury; or engaging in a pattern of behavior serious enough to warrant a protective order.⁴

To rebut the presumption, the parent who committed the violence has to show that custody or substantially equal parenting time is in the child’s best interests, complete a batterers’ prevention program, complete any court-ordered substance abuse counseling and parenting class, no longer be subject to a protective order if on probation or community supervision, and have committed no further acts of domestic violence.⁴ The presumption does not apply when both parents committed acts of domestic violence.

What the Parenting Plan Must Contain

Arizona requires parents to submit a parenting plan before the court awards legal decision-making. If you agree with the other parent, you can draft it jointly; if you disagree on any element, the court decides that element for you. At a minimum, the plan must cover:⁵

Whether legal decision-making will be joint or sole.
Each parent’s role in personal care, education, healthcare, and religious training.
A practical parenting time schedule, including holidays and school vacations.
Where and how the child will be exchanged between parents, and who handles transportation.
A process for handling proposed changes, disputes, and alleged violations, which can include mediation or private counseling.
A procedure for the parents to revisit the plan’s terms over time.
How the parents will communicate about the child, including method and frequency.
A statement that both parents have read and will follow Arizona’s notification requirements about changes affecting the child.

The more specific the plan, the fewer disputes later. Vague plans breed conflict, particularly around holidays and school breaks.

Separately, every Arizona county requires parents in a divorce or custody case to complete a parent education program covering the effects of divorce on children, the legal process, mediation options, and notification requirements for relocation and other changes.⁶ Skipping it counts against a parent under the best-interests factors.

Moving With the Child: The 45-Day Notice

If both parents share legal decision-making or parenting time and both live in Arizona, a parent who wants to move the child must give at least 45 days’ advance written notice before relocating the child outside Arizona or more than 100 miles within the state. The notice has to go by certified mail with return receipt requested.⁷

The other parent then has 30 days after receiving notice to petition the court to block the move. After that window closes, a petition to prevent relocation succeeds only for good cause. A parent who moves without giving notice, absent good cause, faces sanctions that can affect decision-making or parenting time.⁷

Limited exceptions exist. Notice is not required if an existing court order or written agreement made within the past year already addresses the move. In genuine emergencies involving health, safety, employment, or eviction, a parent with sole or primary decision-making authority can temporarily relocate after providing written notice. A parent with substantially equal parenting time in the same emergency has to get the other parent’s written agreement first.

Modifying an Order After It’s Entered

You generally cannot file a motion to modify legal decision-making or parenting time until one year after the order was entered. That waiting period does not apply if you show by affidavit that the child’s current environment may seriously endanger the child’s physical, mental, moral, or emotional health.⁸

Two additional exceptions apply to joint legal decision-making orders. A parent can petition at any time if domestic violence, spousal abuse, or child abuse has occurred since the order was entered. A parent can also petition six months after the order if the other parent is not complying with its terms.⁸

To modify legal decision-making, you file an affidavit or verified petition laying out detailed facts, and serve the other parties. The court denies the motion unless the paperwork shows adequate cause for a hearing. Modifying parenting time is easier: the court can adjust the schedule whenever doing so serves the child’s best interests, but it cannot restrict a parent’s parenting time unless the time would seriously endanger the child. The detailed-affidavit requirement does not apply when you are only asking to modify or clarify parenting time.⁸

If a parent is charged with a dangerous crime against children, child molestation, or domestic violence involving a minor victim, the other parent can request an expedited hearing, and the court can suspend parenting time or change decision-making on an emergency basis while the hearing is pending. Courts can also assess attorney fees against a parent who files a modification action that amounts to harassment.⁸

Arizona also has specific protections for parents facing military deployment. A parent’s military absence or possible future deployment cannot by itself count as a substantial change in circumstances, and deployment triggers rules for temporary orders and expedited hearings under the same statute.⁸

Who Can File

A parent can request legal decision-making or parenting time in a divorce, legal separation, annulment, paternity case, or modification proceeding.⁹

Unmarried Parents and Paternity

An unmarried father has no legal right to decision-making or parenting time until paternity is established. Arizona offers two main paths. Parents can file a voluntary acknowledgment of paternity — a notarized or witnessed statement signed by both parents and filed with the superior court clerk, the Department of Economic Security, or the Department of Health Services. Alternatively, both can agree to be bound by genetic testing results and submit an affidavit from a certified lab confirming the tested father has not been excluded. If paternity is disputed, either parent can petition the court to order genetic testing. Once paternity is established, the father has standing to request legal decision-making and parenting time.¹⁰ If another man is already presumed to be the father, a voluntary acknowledgment is valid only with that presumed father’s written consent.

Nonparents and Grandparents

Nonparents can seek decision-making authority or visitation, but the standards are strict. A nonparent seeking decision-making has to show they stand in loco parentis to the child, that placing the child with a legal parent who wants custody would be significantly detrimental, that no custody order has been entered in the past year (unless the child’s environment poses serious danger), and that a qualifying circumstance exists such as a deceased parent, unmarried parents, or a pending divorce. Even then, a rebuttable presumption favors the legal parent, and the nonparent must overcome it with clear and convincing evidence.¹¹

Grandparents and other nonparents can also seek visitation on a somewhat lower threshold, with the court giving special weight to what the legal parents believe is best for the child.¹¹

Which State’s Court Hears the Case

Jurisdiction determines which state can decide custody. Arizona follows the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, which sets a priority system designed to prevent forum-shopping across state lines.

Arizona has jurisdiction to make an initial custody determination when it is the child’s “home state” — where the child lived with a parent for at least six consecutive months immediately before the case was filed. For a child younger than six months, the home state is wherever the child has lived since birth. Arizona also retains jurisdiction if it was the home state within the past six months, the child has since left, and a parent still lives here.¹²

If no state qualifies as the home state, Arizona can take jurisdiction when the child and at least one parent have a significant connection to the state beyond mere physical presence, and substantial evidence about the child’s care and relationships is available here. Physical presence alone is not enough.¹²

Arizona courts can also exercise temporary emergency jurisdiction when a child is physically present in the state and has been abandoned, or when emergency action is needed because the child, a sibling, or a parent is being mistreated, abused, or threatened.¹³ This authority is limited and temporary; it does not replace a permanent custody order from the child’s home state.

Federal law requires every state to enforce custody orders issued by another state’s court that had proper jurisdiction. The Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act treats custody orders as entitled to full faith and credit, so Arizona courts cannot ignore or modify another state’s order simply because a parent has relocated here.¹⁴ When a case crosses international borders, Arizona courts can enforce an order for the return of a child made under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction as though it were a domestic custody determination.¹⁵

1
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-401 – Definitions
2
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-403.01 – Sole and Joint Legal Decision-Making and Parenting Time
3
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-403 – Legal Decision-Making; Best Interests of Child
4
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-403.03 – Domestic Violence and Child Abuse
5
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-403.02 – Parenting Plans
6
New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. Section 3-202 – Parent Education Programs
7
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-408 – Rights of Each Parent; Parenting Time; Relocation of Child
8
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-411 – Modification of Legal Decision-Making or Parenting Time
9
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-402 – Legal Decision-Making and Parenting Time Proceedings
10
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-812 – Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity
11
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-409 – Third Party Rights
12
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-1031 – Initial Child Custody Jurisdiction
13
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-1034 – Temporary Emergency Jurisdiction
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1738A – Full Faith and Credit Given to Child Custody Determinations
15
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 25-1052 – Enforcement Under Hague Convention