Family law is having its day in the current session of the Minnesota Legislature. To start, a bill that would have drastically changed divorce proceedings by allowing couples to end marriages outside the court captured headlines earlier this month, but appears to have stagnated. Not so some other family-oriented proposed laws currently being considered at the capital. According to an interesting article the March 16 issue of Minnesota Lawyer, a group called the Child Custody Dialogue Group has met regularly since 2012 in the hopes of forging consensus on a whole host of family law reforms. If enacted, these proposed reforms would mark the most significant overhaul to family law in Minnesota decades.
Here are some of the bills that came from the efforts of the Child Custody Dialogue Group: Specifically, under SF1191/HF465, the 13 current “best interests of the child” factors in child custody proceedings would be scrapped in favor of 12 new factors. Topping the new list would be “a child’s physical, emotional, cultural, spiritual, and other needs.” (To contrast, the 13 custody factors currently in use under MN Stat §518.17 begin with “the wishes of the child’s parent or parents as to custody.”) Also of note, SF1103/ HF518 would require courts to award compensatory parenting time, and in some cases civil penalties, when parenting time is denied intentionally and repeatedly, unless the denial was necessary to protect the child’s physical or emotional health. Additionally, HF464/SF1424 provides for simple market rate-based annual interest rate calculations, for family law judgments. It would also for a lower rate or no interest (although not for child support or spousal maintenance judgments) if the parties agree or the court finds it necessary to avoid unfair hardship, plus move the notice of rights language from “Appendix A” into the actual order for divorce, custody, and parenting time.
Of course, time waits for no child. If you are a parent or practitioner hoping to craft the right parenting agreement for your situation, you know the legislature won’t do it for you. Come into the library to consult the tools we have for researching and drafting custody agreements. Some of them include:
- Building a Parenting Agreement that Works: Child Custody Agreements Step by Step (Nolo 8th Ed. 2014)
- Child Custody and Visitation Law & Practice (LexisNexis 2011)
- Minnesota Child Custody Deskbook (MN CLE 2nd Ed. 2011)
