A breakdown of HB2995, signed into law June 22, 2026, with an emergency clause that made it effective immediately.
By Michael Phillips | Father & Co.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed HB2995 — the “Alec and Lydia Act” — into law on June 22, 2026. The bill passed the House 51-4 and carried an emergency clause, meaning it took effect the day it was signed rather than on the state’s standard later effective date. It rewrites Arizona Revised Statutes §25-403.03, and makes conforming changes to §25-404 (temporary orders) and §25-411 (modification of custody orders).
The law is named for Alec, 7, and Lydia, 4, killed by their father in 2024 during a court-ordered, unsupervised parenting-time visit. He then killed himself. Their mother, Hope Hooton, testified to lawmakers that the order granting that visit had not fully evaluated documented strangulation, coercive control, and psychiatric instability before awarding unsupervised time.
Here is what the statute actually does, section by section.
What the old law required
Under the prior version of §25-403.03, a judge could deny sole or joint legal decision-making (legal custody) on a finding of “significant domestic violence” under §13-3601, or a “significant history” of domestic violence proven by a preponderance of the evidence. Neither phrase was statutorily defined. Appellate courts had spent years litigating what distinguished the two standards, and by how much abuse had to rise before it counted as “significant.” The word does not appear in the new version at all.
The old law also already put a burden on a parent found to have committed domestic violence to prove, to the court’s satisfaction, that parenting time would not endanger the child or significantly impair the child’s emotional development. What it didn’t do: specify what standard of proof that required, address coercive control at all, or stop the undefined “significant” qualifier from blunting the underlying finding before that burden ever attached.
“The word ‘significant’ does not appear in the new version at all.”
What the new law does
1. Removes the “significant” threshold and extends the presumption to parenting time itself. Under new subsection D, if a court finds a parent committed an act of domestic violence against the other parent, there is now a “mandatory rebuttable presumption” that awarding that parent legal decision-making or parenting time is contrary to the child’s best interests. The presumption applies to any qualifying act — it no longer has to clear a “significant” bar first, and it now reaches parenting time explicitly rather than being addressed only through the separate, standard-less burden clause the old law used.
2. Requires specific written findings before any order issues. Subsection B requires the court, before entering a legal decision-making or parenting time order, to put specific findings on the record covering three things: what evidence supported or precluded a domestic violence finding, why the parent found to have committed it did or didn’t rebut the presumption, and why the court’s chosen precautions serve the child’s best interests. Fink has described this as a direct response to judges and stakeholders asking for clearer statutory guidance, rather than case-by-case discretion.
3. Broadens the underlying definition to include “coercive control.” The statute defines domestic violence, for these purposes, as either an act listed under §13-3601(A) — the criminal domestic-violence statute — or “coercive control,” a new statutory term. Subsection M lists fifteen categories of conduct that can qualify, including isolation from friends and family, monitoring a partner’s finances, threatening to publish sensitive material, weaponizing immigration status, and using tracking technology to facilitate any of the above. None of these require a physical act.
“None of these require a physical act.”
4. Sets the proof standard for finding domestic violence, and forecloses one defense. A domestic violence claim is established by a preponderance of the evidence, and corroboration from another witness or exhibit is not required (subsection C). Once a court finds domestic violence occurred, it may not require the victim to separately prove the abuse was “severe or frequent enough” to justify restricting the other parent’s time (subsection D(1)) — a specific reversal of the “how significant is significant” problem Rep. Lisa Fink, the bill’s sponsor, cited in comments to the Arizona Capitol Times.
“The old law required a parent found to have committed domestic violence to prove parenting time was safe, but never said how convincingly. The new law does.”
5. Replaces the old, standard-less burden with an explicit, tiered one. This is the structural core of the bill. The old law required a parent found to have committed domestic violence to prove parenting time was safe, but never said how convincingly. The new law does. Once the presumption attaches, subsection G bars the court from granting:
- Sole or joint legal decision-making, unless the parent overcomes the presumption by clear and convincing evidence.
- Unsupervised parenting time, unless the parent overcomes the presumption by clear and convincing evidence.
- Supervised parenting time, unless the parent overcomes the presumption by a preponderance of the evidence — a lower bar than the other two.
“Unsupervised parenting time now requires clear and convincing evidence. Supervised parenting time requires a preponderance.”
6. Specifies what counts toward rebuttal, and what’s off the table. Subsection E lists what a court must weigh when a parent tries to overcome the presumption: severity and frequency of the violence, whether a firearm was used or threatened, strangulation, minimization of the conduct during treatment or court proceedings, and completion of a batterer’s intervention program — with a specific instruction that a certificate of completion alone is not proof of rehabilitation; it must come with a records waiver and evidence the program was “relevant and proportionate” to the specific conduct found.
Subsection F, by contrast, lists three factors courts must treat as irrelevant to the presumption: that the child wasn’t present for the violence, that the child didn’t know it happened, or that the child prefers contact with the parent found to have committed it.
7. Restricts how “mutual” violence can be found. Subsection D(2) bars a court from labeling the parties’ conduct “mutual” — which would otherwise let the presumption apply to both, or neither — unless both parents lacked justification “to a similar degree” and inflicted “similar injury.” Absent that finding, the presumption attaches only to whichever parent’s conduct was more serious.
8. Applies to modification proceedings — with a live dispute over how far back. Two separate provisions bear on this, in two different statute sections. Within §25-403.03 itself, new subsection J states that a parent who fails to overcome the presumption remains subject to it in “any subsequent modification proceeding” brought under §25-411. Separately, §25-411 (Sec. 3 of the bill, a distinct statute governing modification of existing orders) adds its own subsection L: a parent who previously failed to rebut the presumption “remains subject to the same presumption in any modification proceeding… regardless of the allegations made in the new pleadings.”
Rep. Fink issued a statement in July stating the Act applies to active cases regardless of filing date. That reading is contested: legal commentary reviewing the statute has flagged at least one Maricopa County judicial officer who ruled HB2995 does not apply retroactively to matters that were already pending when it took effect, based on Arizona’s general non-retroactivity statute, A.R.S. §1-244. That ruling doesn’t bind other courts, and family-law practitioners describe the retroactivity question as unresolved statewide.
“The statute is clear that the presumption can follow a parent into modification proceedings. What remains unsettled is how the new law applies to cases already underway.”
9. Possibly changes the standard of appellate review — needs direct confirmation. A House Judiciary Committee summary of the bill (Feb. 2026, pre-final version) states that appellate courts must review the legal sufficiency of the trial court’s required findings de novo — without deference to the trial judge. Family court findings are ordinarily reviewed for abuse of discretion, a deferential standard. If this survived to the final chaptered statute, it’s a significant procedural change: it would mean appellate courts don’t have to defer to a trial judge’s factual findings on domestic violence and rebuttal in the way they normally would. This item is flagged rather than stated as fact because the specific phrase “de novo” does not appear in the sections of the chaptered text reviewed for this piece — it may be phrased differently in the final law, may have been altered between the committee version and passage, or may have been missed in the section-by-section read above.
The sourcing
Primary source for the statutory language above is the chaptered bill text, HB2995, Chapter 263, Laws of 2026, filed with the Arizona Secretary of State June 22, 2026, amending A.R.S. §§25-403.03, 25-404, and 25-411, cross-checked against the House Judiciary Committee’s Feb. 2026 section-by-section summary. Legislative history (vote counts, sponsor statements) via the Arizona Capitol Times, FOX 10 Phoenix, and Rep. Fink’s official press statement.
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