I just reviewed over four dozen Rules Amendments that were signed into effect by Justice Brutinel on August 24, 2023.   I narrowed down the Amendments to those that directly modify the Family Rules, and listed a few additional ones (Rules of Evidence, Supreme Court rules, and Civil Procedure rules) that may affect family law practice.  Here’s my summary. Changes to the Arizona Rules of Protective Order Procedure (ARPOP) are also mentioned here. Arizona Rules of Family Law Procedure are abbreviated as ARFLP and the full set of ARFLP can be found here.   Caution and Disclaime ..read more

Not all parental separations are alike. Not all parental separations have to be disastrous for the children. Social science research tells us that the biggest factor for poor developmental outcomes for children of separation/ divorce is the level of conflict between the parents. Sometimes the level of conflict can be reduced. Sometimes the level of conflict simply has to be managed. The amount of parental conflict mostly follows a continuum.  Picture a straight line with “amicable” or “very low conflict” on the left side, and “highest of conflict/ cannot communicate or be in the same area ..read more

The Arizona Rules of Family Law Procedure may have several new amendments in 2023. This is an overview of several pending Rules Petitions which may be adopted later this year. Note that these changes to the Rules are NOT in effect right now. Reference to FCIC is to the Family Court Improvement Committee, a Supreme Court Committee. ************* Rule 81 (New Rule), filed 11-28-22 by Judge McMurdie/ FCIC Petition and Rule This Rule will tell the court how to implement ARS 25-401(B) which provides for a “local social service agency to exercise continuing supervision over the case to assure that t ..read more

I get a lot of questions about how professionals can get the domestic violence/ child abuse training that’s required by ARS 25-406 for any person who makes reports to the court about child custody issues.  This would include Court-Appointed Advisors, parenting coordinators, and anyone who interviews children or does a custody eval or similar work.  Those with mental health degrees can count the training they received in getting their degrees.   For non-mental health professionals like attorneys, finding appropriate training is a little trickier, but getting easier. In 2022 ..read more

This is Part III (third and last) of the 2022 Arizona family court appellate review.  The Saba/ Femiano cases, which I wrote about here, discussed the calculation of a community interest in real property where one party signed a Disclaimer Deed during the marriage (thus making the real property someone’s separate property).  The Arizona Supreme Court took up the conflicting calculations set out in Saba v. Khoury  (Court of Appeals) and Femiano v. Maust  and resolved the issue in favor of the Saba calculation.   The Femiano was disapproved and the Drahos/Barnett fo ..read more

This is Part II of the recap of Arizona family law appellate opinions in 2022 and this post covers the opinions on financial issues.    Part III will cover the Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion resolving the ongoing Saba and Femiano conflicting opinions and the Blos/Hopkins cases that address when special orders, as opposed to final judgments) are appealable. The COA cases in 2022 on non-Saba financial issues include: Spousal maintenance.   In Huey, where the trial court made an award of spousal maintenance for an indefinite term, the Court of Appeals reversed, stating t ..read more

Here’s the beginning of my annual Arizona Court of Appeals’ recap for family law cases.  In 2022, we have a total of thirteen (13) reported COA opinions (two were consolidated), all out of Division One; plus one Special Action decision, and one Arizona Supreme Court family law opinion.    At least three of the reported opinions (Huey, Gish, and Brucklier) have Petitions for Review pending at the Arizona Supreme Court as of 1-1-2023. These fourteen COA opinions and one Supreme Court opinion can be broken down by subject, so this post, Part I, is the opinions relating to cust ..read more

The question of whether a parent must release his or her mental health records in a child custody proceeding, for review by the other parent, the court, or a court-appointed evaluator, is at least partially answered in JF v. CF, a Division 1 Court of  Appeals Special Action opinion issued July 12, 2022. Under the specific facts of this case, a parent’s mental health/ psychological records must be released (presumably to the other parent as well as to any court appointed professionals who are reviewing parenting time decisions) in a custody proceeding where the parent has made his complian ..read more

The title of this post is intentionally provocative.  Just about everyone who reads this is sure they’re the better parent.  This post is written for every parent who disagrees with what the court ordered for parenting time and legal decision-making orders.  In a lot of those cases, court orders are for fairly equal parenting time and joint legal decision-making and one parent doesn’t think that’s a correct result. Sometimes a parent (or both of them) thinks that getting a parenting coordinator assigned will help him or her in trying to (a) reduce the other’s parenting time or ..read more

The newest Arizona cases (all unpublished decisions) on binding Rule 69 agreements of the parties are: Prescott, Court of Appeals, Div. 1,  April 7, 2022 Cooper, Court of Appeals, Div. 1, March 9, 2021 Jones, Court of Appeals, Div. 1, March 17, 2022 These three cases, issued about a year apart by Division 1 of the Arizona Court of Appeals, start to give us some input on what needs to be done to ensure that agreements reached pursuant to Rule 69, Arizona Rules of  Family Law Procedure, are binding on the parties and will be adopted by the court into final orders. Written and signed Ru ..read more