Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Family Law topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
House passes joint-custody reform to restore court discretion over termination
Summary
Substitute House Bill 288 passed the Utah House; it removes a statutory provision that allowed a single parent to unilaterally terminate joint custody and clarifies the court’s role to make creation and termination decisions guided by the child's best interest.
The House adopted Substitute House Bill 288, updating Utah’s joint-custody law to remove a provision that previously allowed either parent to unilaterally terminate a joint-custody arrangement. Sponsors said the change returns discretion to judges and aligns the statute with a "best interest of the child" standard.
Representative Wilkie, presenting the measure, described the problem: current text allowed a parent to effectuate termination without meaningful judicial review. He said the amendment "take[s] the decision about joint custody out of the hands of the court and puts it in the hand of either parent" under the pre-existing wording and that the substitute corrects that anomaly by requiring court decision-making for creation and termination. He also noted a study from Michigan State University indicating children in joint custody arrangements often fare better than other divorce outcomes.
Members asked clarifying questions about whether both parents could still jointly ask a court to terminate and how the court’s discretion would operate in practice; sponsors answered that if both parents jointly ask for termination, the court would typically follow that stipulated request, but otherwise termination would be a judicial determination.
Substitute House Bill 288 passed on a roll call of 64–3 and will be transmitted to the Senate.
