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Yes: 176 • No: 0
UtahS.B. 1192025 General SessionSenateWALLET
Domestic Relations Recodification
Sponsored By: Todd Weiler (Republican)
Signed by Governor
RecodificationAdoptionChild SupportChild Custody/Parent TimeFamilyJudicial OperationsLegislative OperationsParentage
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82 provisions identified: 26 benefits, 8 costs, 48 mixed.
Support duties for intended parents
Intended parents who sign a gestational agreement can owe child support even without court approval of the agreement. This applies when a child is born under the agreement, even if the agreement is otherwise unenforceable. Liability includes expenses and fees listed in Utah law; no dollar amount is stated here. Anyone ending a court-approved gestational agreement must notify the court, which must cancel its approval order. Failure to notify the court can lead to sanctions.
Adoption court protections extend beyond final orders
Utah's appellate defense division must provide services for covered appeals about ending or restoring parental rights under the adoption law. The appeal must be an appeal of right. Separately, juvenile-court orders for the two adoption categories identified in the law can remain effective after age 21.
Adoption placements no longer favor married couples
For children in Division custody, the law removes the adoption placement requirement favoring married couples. The Division and child-placing agencies can consider a broader set of prospective adoptive placements.
Child safety rules recognize more parents
Juvenile law recognizes legally established parent-child relationships, including noncustodial parents, subject to a stated statutory exception. Child services must maintain protective custody when no parent, guardian, or responsible relative can and will provide safe, appropriate care. That safety test now considers any parent, not only a natural parent. A related abuse rule also uses the broader parent term when one parent causes, is suspected of causing, or faces prosecution or conviction for the other's death.
Consent protections for unmarried birth fathers
An unmarried biological father's consent is required in covered adoptions connected to Utah residence, birth, or adoption consent. Fathers unaware of that connection, and unable reasonably to know, must establish parental and notice rights before the mother's consent or relinquishment. They must also show full commitment to parental responsibilities. Fathers who knew or should have known must comply by the later of 20 days after learning or the mother's consent or relinquishment. Utah also joins an interstate compact requiring timely sharing of requested registry information about a specific possible father, even with members lacking registries.
Court protection for children facing abduction
Courts must issue a prevention order when credible evidence shows a risk that a child may be abducted. A court can act on a petition or on its own. The order must include steps reasonably designed to prevent abduction while considering custody, visitation, and parenting-time rights.
Foster parents get removal review protections
Before removal, child welfare staff must speak with foster parents, give written reasons, and offer neutral review; licensing action waits until required proceedings end. After two years of placement, foster parents can request review by a juvenile court judge. Staff must explain removal procedures at placement and give notice of direct court review after 12 months, subject to statutory limits. Emergency foster care applies when danger or a substantial health or welfare threat exists; child-statement-only removals require expedited procedures. Within 30 business days of a child's complaint, staff must tell foster parents its nature, alleged time, place, and people involved.
More dependents qualify under victim restitution rules
Children under 18 and incapacitated people can qualify as dependents when a deceased or permanently impaired victim was their parent or legal guardian. The victim must have had a legal duty to support them when the crime occurred. The relationship rule is no longer limited to biological or adoptive parents. The law states no restitution amount.
More information and guidance for adoptive families
For covered placements more than 60 days after May 4, 2022, agencies must explain adoption challenges before placement. Coverage includes foster or institutional care, prior or foreign adoption, foreign origin, noncitizenship, attachment or trauma disorders, and prenatal substance exposure. Agencies must share material child-specific information known or reasonably obtainable, update it before finalization, and reasonably try to share later discoveries. Child-specific guidance is due before finalization for U.S.-resident children; intercountry guidance follows federal law, and families can request financial-help and support-service information. These duties do not award aid; state officials can investigate violations, seek court or administrative relief, and suspend or revoke agency licenses.
Support duties when children live elsewhere
Utah’s health and human services department gains support-payment enforcement authority when children live in department-licensed or certified settings outside their homes. When a juvenile court awards permanent custody and guardianship to an individual or relative, it can order parents to pay support. That authority covers parents, not just those described as natural parents. These provisions do not set payment amounts or change the support formula.
Tighter adoption consent and paternity rules
A lawfully separated married adult needs the spouse’s consent to adopt a minor if the spouse can give consent. No one can sign or file a paternity declaration after adoption consent or relinquishment has been signed. In a Utah adoption, an out-of-state parentage order or paternity declaration alone establishes only unmarried biological father status. To gain notice, consent, custody, control, or visitation rights from that determination, the father must fully and strictly comply with Sections 81-13-213 and 81-13-212.
Adoption limits and priorities for families
An adult adopting a minor must be at least 10 years older; for married couples, one spouse must qualify. State and agency adoption placements of children in their legal custody favor married couples. Exceptions cover the lack of a suitable married couple, qualifying relatives, existing relationships, birth-parent choices, and single-adult placements serving the child's interests. An adoption that preserves an existing parent's rights and duties cannot leave the adoptee with more than two parents.
Adoption records access expands with privacy limits
Utah-born adoptees age 18 or older can inspect adoption documents without a court order with a pre-existing parent's consent. That access also applies when the pre-existing parents listed on the original birth certificate are deceased. Pre-existing parents can choose which contact details, medical updates, or original birth certificate information to release. Adult adoptees and their adoptive parents also have inspection access without a court order, except for juvenile-court adoption decrees. Potential birth fathers allowed to intervene in an adoption case can access records. Office disclosures otherwise require legal or court permission; unlawful registry disclosure, or knowingly allowing it, is a class A misdemeanor.
Adoptive families face checks with exceptions
Adoptions of minors or vulnerable adults require evaluations before placement and before the final hearing, subject to exceptions. The first includes background checks, abuse and neglect history, and a home study; courts can waive the later evaluation on request unless it serves the adoptee’s best interests. Beginning September 1, 2025, preplacement exceptions cover specified relatives when a birth parent has legal custody. They also cover a former spouse of a birth parent who has or had custody, after at least 180 days living with the adoptee before filing. A one-year stay in the adoptive home before filing also qualifies with a best-interest finding; courts can still request evaluations for these exceptions.
Adult adoption changes existing parents' rights
Adult adoption generally ends an existing parent's rights and duties at the adoption decree or earlier termination of those rights. That release does not apply when the existing parent is lawfully married to the adopter. Courts can preserve rights through required notice, consent, and a finding that preservation serves the adoptee's best interests. An adult adoptee cannot have more than two parents, and support owed before adoption remains due. The law also revises adult-adoption requirements, but the supplied text does not detail those additional changes.
Adult adoption rights come with safeguards
Adult adoption creates a legal parent-child relationship with its rights and duties; the adoptee can take the parent's family name. The court must find that adoption serves the adult's interests. The adult and prospective parents must appear, consent, and sign an agreement recognizing the adult as their lawful child. Vulnerable adult adoptees also face placement safeguards, even when they will not live with the adoptive parents. A court can waive those safeguards for good cause.
Child abuse offenses limit adoption eligibility
Adults convicted of, or pleading guilty or no contest to, aggravated sexual abuse of a child generally cannot adopt minors. The bar also covers attempts. A court can consider an exception only with clear and convincing evidence supporting the required findings. At least 10 years must pass after successful release from confinement or supervision related to the offense. Required findings address rehabilitation, risk, the child's best interests, and a qualifying relationship to the child.
Child safety shapes parents’ custody rights
Courts must consider domestic violence evidence and put the child’s and abused parent’s safety first. A cohabitant-abuse protective order counts as evidence of actual or substantiated potential harm; violence-related moves require specific findings and orders. Courts generally cannot grant custody or parent-time to a parent convicted of a sexual offense that caused the child’s conception. Exceptions allow consent by the nonconvicted biological parent or legal guardian plus a best-interest finding, or post-conviction cohabitation establishing shared care. Denial of custody or parent-time does not end parental rights or the duty to support the child.
Families get fast custody enforcement hearings
Parent-time cases count as custody proceedings, and a verified enforcement petition with required records normally gets a hearing the next judicial day after service. If impossible, the hearing occurs the first possible day; the petitioner can request more time. Courts must order delivery to someone entitled to immediate custody unless a listed jurisdiction, modification, or notice defense applies, and award authorized fees and costs. A verified emergency request can bring immediate police action for serious imminent harm or imminent removal from Utah, followed by a hearing within 72 hours. These emergency orders apply statewide; private-property entry requires an ineffective less intrusive remedy, and forced entry at any hour requires emergency necessity.
Foreign support enforcement has contest deadlines
Convention support orders must be registered with required order, enforceability, notice, arrears, adjustment, and legal-assistance records. Courts must enforce registered orders unless a listed refusal ground applies. A contest is due within 30 days after notice, or 60 days for someone living outside the United States. Missing the deadline makes the order enforceable; challengers bear the proof burden, and courts cannot reconsider the merits. Appeals do not pause enforcement absent exceptional circumstances. Registered foreign support agreements require their full text and proof of enforceability; refusal grounds include public-policy conflicts, fraud, conflicting orders, or unreliable records.
Foreign support orders get enforcement paths
Under international support-convention rules, people can directly seek support establishment, changes, parentage decisions, or recognition and enforcement of orders or agreements. Utah law governs establishment, changes, and parentage; convention procedures govern recognition and enforcement, and direct filers do not receive state department assistance. Someone who received free legal help in the issuing country retains at least the free help Utah law offers in similar cases. After refusal for lack of jurisdiction, procedural fraud, or specified notice or hearing failures, parties get reasonable time to seek a new order. The department must seek child support when that application came through it, and courts must enforce separable, enforceable parts of convention orders.
Limits on informal child custody transfers
Beginning May 4, 2022, parents, guardians, and adoption caregivers cannot transfer custody intending to abandon parental rights and duties outside authorized routes. Those routes include adoption, guardianship, court custody orders, agency placement, specified court or tribal actions, and safe relinquishment. Exceptions cover specified relatives, qualifying caregivers, Indian custodians, and transfers governed by the Indian Child Welfare Act. Knowing recipients and intermediaries must promptly notify child welfare officials or take appropriate steps to establish authorized custody. Advertising, soliciting, or arranging prohibited transfers is also banned; violations are class B misdemeanors.
Limits on parents’ past support payments
In a parentage action, past support liability reaches back only four years before the action began. Under a voluntary paternity declaration, the limit is four years before the declaration was filed. These limits reduce what a parent can owe and what a recipient can collect. A presumed or declaring father who files a valid paternity denial cannot recover support paid before filing with Utah’s vital records office.
Moving parents face notice and visitation rules
Parents moving 150 miles or more from the other parent must give written notice at least 60 days ahead. The notice must affirm that parenting time and parental rights will be respected; missing notice is contempt of court. Unless the court orders otherwise, children ages 5 to 18 get a minimum schedule with the noncustodial parent. It includes alternating-year holidays, half of summer or off-track time, and an optional monthly weekend. The noncustodial parent pays for that monthly weekend.
Moving parents share children’s travel costs
When a move serves the child’s best interests, the court sets parent-time and travel costs, considering the move’s reason, burdens, and parents’ finances. Unless the court orders otherwise, the moving parent pays specified holiday travel costs. That parent also pays half of extended-visit travel costs when the noncustodial parent is current on support. A noncustodial parent found in contempt for unpaid support pays all scheduled travel costs unless the court orders otherwise. Reimbursement is due within 30 days after receiving expense records.
Optional parenting schedule affects child support
For children ages 5 to 18, an optional schedule includes weekday visits, alternating weekends, holidays, and summer time. The noncustodial parent gets up to four summer weeks, including two uninterrupted weeks; the custodial parent gets two uninterrupted weeks. The schedule counts as 145 overnights for child support, with support changes consistent with joint physical custody. It can serve as a minimum when parents agree or the noncustodial parent meets involvement, communication, cooperation, and child-interest requirements. A compliant parenting plan must be filed with the order.
Parents face binding adoption consent rules
Required adoption consent or relinquishment takes effect when signed and cannot be revoked; implied consent also cannot be withdrawn. Consent can be implied from leaving a child with someone for 30 consecutive days without identifying information. Leaving a child for 180 consecutive days without support, communication, or a substantial relationship can also count. Prenatal abandonment requires reasonable knowledge of pregnancy and failure to offer and provide financial and emotional support for 180 days before birth. Failure to respond as required after notice of adoption or termination proceedings can also imply consent. Courts cannot find abandonment when offered support was refused or emotional support was impossible; unmarried biological fathers' requirements still apply.
Parents face standards for custody changes
Known access to a qualifying offender counts as a substantial and material change for seeking a custody change. This covers living with or allowing access to people with specified child-related offender registrations or convictions. It does not automatically change custody. Changing joint custody requires a petition, hearing, evidence of a substantial change, a benefit to the child, and dispute-resolution compliance or an exception. Courts must weigh the child’s best interests, give substantial weight to an order under which the child thrives, and consider alternatives before ending it.
Parents face temporary support and costs
In a proceeding under the covered chapter, a tribunal can order a birth mother to pay temporary support when appropriate. A support order can include costs, fees, interest, income withholding, automatic adjustments, reasonable attorney fees, and other relief. When juvenile courts give an individual legal custody, they must explain support duties verbally and in writing to the obligated person. That notice does not itself set a new support amount.
Returning military parents regain custody access
Returning military parents can agree with the other parent to end temporary deployment custody arrangements on a chosen date. Without a date, private agreements end when both sign; courts must end agreed temporary orders immediately. Without agreement, arrangements end 30 days after return notice to the other parent; court orders also require notice to nonparent custodians. Ending agreements for court-filed arrangements must be filed within a reasonable time with the case heading and number. Until termination, courts must grant reasonable parent-child contact, possibly exceeding predeployment time, unless contrary to the child's best interests.
Safety checks for foster and adoptive homes
Before placement of a child or vulnerable adult in state custody, prospective foster or adoptive parents and household adults must pass checks. These include fingerprint-based national criminal checks and child-abuse registry checks covering states of residence during the prior five years. Exceptions allow federally permitted alternatives and specified placements with noncustodial parents or relatives while checks are pending. Nonresident adoptive parents must comply when their adoption will be finalized in Utah.
Teen birth parents can approve adoption
Birth parents under 18 can consent to their minor child's adoption or give up custody for adoption. Their consent or relinquishment has the same legal force as an adult's. They cannot revoke it just because they later turn 18 or become emancipated.
Unmarried fathers face adoption rights deadlines
For placement more than 180 days after birth, an unmarried father's consent generally depends on relationship, responsibility, support, or qualifying cohabitation. At 180 days or younger, he generally must complete parentage, affidavit, registry-notice, and pregnancy and birth expense steps before the mother's consent or relinquishment. A fully complying father has at least one business day after birth to act. Exceptions address lack of actual pregnancy knowledge, interference by a custodian or agency, and the mother's refusal of payment. Consent can also be unnecessary after rights termination, failure to preserve rights after notice, or certain paternity rescissions followed by noncompliance within 10 business days. Conception through conduct constituting a sexual offense removes his consent and notice rights, even without charges or conviction. A father who does not know the mother's county can start the specified parentage action in any county. In covered interstate adoptions, Utah's requirements and court-ordered notice cannot exceed those of the conception state or mother's home state.
Adoptive parents receive children’s health histories
When a minor’s Utah adoption is finalized, the petitioner’s representative or involved child-placing agency must file a nonidentifying history report. The report includes detailed health, genetic, and social history. Adoptive parents receive a copy.
Deployed parents get temporary custody protections
From deployment notice through deployment's end, courts can issue temporary caregiving orders, subject to Utah law and federal servicemember protections. A permanent order requires the deploying parent's consent. Courts must follow earlier deployment custody orders unless Utah's custody-change rules allow changes, and enforce written parental agreements unless contrary to the child's best interests. Temporary orders must list feasible deployment details and, when applicable, allocate authority, provide dispute resolution, and address contact during deployment, leave, and after return, including communication costs. Orders must allow liberal communication during deployment and contact during leave or other availability unless contrary to the child's best interests, and state that they end through the return-from-deployment process.
Families get revised adoption filing rules
Adoption cases can be filed in a Utah judicial district rather than being limited to a county. The law also clarifies juvenile and district courts' authority over adoption cases. The supplied provisions do not explain how cases are divided between those courts.
Foreign adoptees gain simpler document rules
Petitions to adopt a child classified as an alien no longer need written proof of lawful admission. This does not change the child's immigration status. Utah must prepare birth certificates for Utah adoptees who were alien children at adoption or adults born abroad. Applicants must present the adoption order and a court order establishing the fact, time, and place of birth.
Foster families gain safeguards against evasion
People cannot intentionally evade foster-parent safeguards by taking or encouraging action against a foster parent's license. They also cannot evade those safeguards by removing a child before the placement reaches two years.
International support cases get help and safeguards
Utah's health and human services department must send and receive Hague Convention support applications and help cases proceed. Its duties cover specified requests to establish, recognize, enforce, or change support orders. Courts cannot require security, bonds, or deposits guaranteeing case costs in Convention proceedings or covered direct enforcement requests. Personal information gathered or sent under the Convention can be used only for its original purpose. The Convention-specific rules apply only to Convention cases and control when they conflict with the general support rules.
Military families can authorize relatives' care
At a deploying parent's request, courts can give an adult relative with a close, substantial relationship caretaking authority, consistent with the child's best interests and other Utah law. Unless the other parent agrees, care cannot exceed the deploying parent's permanently ordered time, or habitual care time before deployment notice if no permanent order exists; unusual travel time can be added. Courts can give such a relative specific decision-making powers when the deploying parent cannot exercise them, including school, health, religion, activities, and travel decisions. At the deploying parent's request, courts must grant limited contact to a family member or another person with a close, substantial relationship, unless contrary to the child's best interests.
Military families can seek temporary support
A Utah court can issue temporary child support for a deployment caregiving arrangement under other Utah support law. A court order or parental agreement must first grant caretaking authority. The court must have authority under the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act. This provision sets no support amount.
More counseling time for relinquishing parents
Parents whose consent or relinquishment is required can choose up to three adoption counseling sessions, each at least 50 minutes. Sessions can occur before relinquishment or within 120 days afterward, rather than the former three-month window. The parent chooses a licensed counselor or adoption service provider and can waive counseling. Required consent signers other than the birth mother or adoptee can sign before a notary or another authorized person.
More families qualify for updated birth certificates
Utah-born people can request a supplementary birth certificate when their parents later marry and they are legally recognized as their child. Eligibility is no longer limited to natural parents.
Parents gain voice in child welfare
Child welfare workers and juvenile courts must seriously consider parents’ wishes and protected rights; workers must use the least intrusive available means. In covered parental-rights cases, courts treat parental care as best for the child and should transfer custody only for compelling reasons with legal authority. Family-plan duties cover parents, not just natural parents: involvement, a copy, and a parent-time schedule; parents with unknown whereabouts need not help develop it. Parents can access child-abuse and neglect reports about their children, subject to access and redaction rules. Beginning September 1, 2025, people awarded permanent custody and guardianship can also receive the child-protection report.
Parents’ gender identity views receive protection
Courts cannot discriminate against a parent in custody or parent-time decisions for agreeing or disagreeing with a child’s stated gender identity. This protection applies when the child’s stated or expressed identity differs from the child’s biological sex.
Placement and visitation protections for adoptive families
When a court hears competing adoption petitions, a qualifying petitioner gets a placement presumption that opposing evidence can overcome. The child must have lived with that petitioner continuously for 180 days, and adoption requirements must be met. In custody orders covered by the adoption law, courts can grant visitation to an interested third party, including a prospective adoptive parent. This can include an order after an adoption petition is dismissed.
Egg donation gets recorded consent exception
Egg donation for another woman's assisted reproduction is exempt from the recorded-consent requirement for a married woman and her husband. The exception removes that consent step for the covered arrangement.
Local government workers get pregnancy-loss leave
Utah municipalities and county personnel rules must provide at least three paid workdays of bereavement leave after miscarriage or stillbirth. Leave covers the employee's own loss or a spouse's or partner's loss. It also covers a former spouse's or partner's loss when the employee would have been a biological parent. Documented intended adoptive parents and parents under valid gestational agreements also qualify. Miscarriage includes spontaneous or accidental fetal loss at any pregnancy stage.
More parents can share medication review records
The psychotropic medication oversight team can receive health and medication records from parents, not only natural parents. This applies to foster children and qualifying minors committed to juvenile justice services. The team must request the records under the applicable business associate agreement.
Child welfare response to illegal transfers
Beginning May 4, 2022, child welfare staff can act when they reasonably suspect a prohibited custody transfer has happened or will happen. They can make home visits allowed by state law and take appropriate steps to protect the child. For home visits involving children adopted or placed through intercountry adoption, staff must prepare a welfare and permanent-placement report. A copy must go to the U.S. Department of State.
Tribes recognized in child abduction prevention
The child abduction prevention law treats federally recognized Indian tribes and nations as states. This includes those tribal governments among the jurisdictions recognized by that chapter.
Adults face age limits for adoption
An adult adopter must be at least 10 years older than the person being adopted. For married couples adopting together, at least one spouse must meet that age gap. A lawfully separated married adopter also needs consent from a spouse who can give consent. Stepparent adoptions of adults born in Utah remain subject to specified post-adoption rules; the minor-child exception does not apply.
Assistance recipients must help establish parentage
People whose support rights are assigned for public assistance must cooperate when Utah's Office of Recovery Services requests parentage help. Cooperation can include providing identifying information and taking ordered genetic tests. They must not undermine the office's rights. Good cause or another legal exception excuses cooperation.
Fees for adoption information services
The responsible office must set a fee for requests for covered adoption information or services. The law does not state the amount. Fees and donations go into a dedicated General Fund account and can only support those services, automation, improvements, or potential matches.
Filing duties for competing support orders
A request to decide which child support order controls must include every current order and the applicable payment record. The requester must notify everyone whose rights may be affected. After a ruling, the person who obtained it has 30 days to file certified copies with every court or tribunal that issued or registered an earlier order. Failure to file can lead to sanctions, but does not invalidate the controlling order.
Pregnancy alcohol campaign loses funding protection
The Drinking While Pregnant Prevention Media and Education Campaign account loses its listed protection allowing appropriated money to carry forward. The law does not state an appropriation amount or eliminate the campaign through this provision.
Adoption consent rights and timing change
Adoptees age 12 or older must consent when they have the mental capacity; the rule now includes exactly age 12. Consent is also required from a court-recognized parent whose parentage was established before the birth mother's consent or relinquishment. Other required consents or relinquishments can be signed before birth, but birth mothers must wait at least 24 hours after birth. Adoptees cannot consent before age 12.
Adoption filing deadlines change for families
Prospective adoptive parents no longer must file a minor’s adoption petition within 30 days after placement in their home. The law gives no replacement deadline for that requirement. For competing petitions, hearing eligibility includes a 240-day deadline after the shelter hearing for a placement request and statement of intent to adopt. The same period applies to the specified hearing-eligibility rule about a qualifying relative’s lack of awareness of the child’s removal.
Adoption privacy limits hearings and records
A court can close an adoption hearing at a party’s request; attendance beyond legally allowed participants requires a good-cause order. Adoption records are sealed, but parties can inspect them during the case and for 180 days after the final decree. Later access requires legal authority or court approval for good cause; access after an intervention appeal requires express permission. Potential birth fathers made parties and people admitted after intervention appeals receive adoptive-parent details redacted; pre-existing parents cannot access sealed records or those details. Parents without custody or contact rights because of termination or adoption, and their immediate families, lack the stated interest for vital-record access. Adoption records become public 100 years after the decree; birth certificates become public 100 years after birth.
Birth and paternity records for families
For live births outside a birthing facility without a listed attendant, the mother or presumed or declaring father must file registration. Before signing a paternity declaration, parents must receive written and spoken notice about alternatives, legal effects, rights, and duties. Parentage decisions and paternity declarations must be filed with Utah's vital-records office. A declaration amends the birth certificate, and the original record and declaration must be marked to distinguish them. Certified copies can include the declaration; electronic copies can show only the amended information and amendment date.
Broader parent and relative definitions
A parent of a child's sibling counts as a relative under the covered child-protection rules. A qualifying friend must be a nonparent adult with an established relationship with the child or family. Affected rules now refer to any parent, not only a natural parent, including unrepresented parents' access to relevant agency records. This wording also covers protective-custody grounds, abandonment standards, parental rights, custody principles, and foster-removal protections and exceptions. It also applies to evidence of harm based on a parent's conduct concerning the other parent's death.
Court process rules for proving parenthood
District courts can transfer parentage cases to juvenile court when both courts have legal authority to hear them. Parentage trials require clear and convincing evidence. A settlement with an alleged father is binding only after court or administrative tribunal approval, and parties must keep their addresses current. When Utah starts a parentage action, the attorney general or the county attorney where the person owed support lives represents the state. That lawyer does not represent either parent or form an attorney-client relationship with them.
Deployment custody grants can change
Either parent or a nonparent holding temporary caregiving or contact rights can ask the court to change or end them. Changes must follow deployment-custody law and serve the child's best interests. The court must end a limited-contact grant when the deploying parent requests it. Changes end through return-from-deployment procedures unless ended sooner; military court protections and an exception for specified deployment orders still apply.
Families face court limits and locations
The Business and Chancery Court generally cannot hear related domestic-relations claims. Exceptions cover compulsory counterclaims, material risks of conflicting outcomes, and specified temporary remedies. Outside that court, parentage cases go where the child lives or is found. If the child lives outside Utah, venue follows where the respondent lives or is found. A case can also go where estate proceedings for the presumed or alleged father have begun.
Families get revised adoption filing rules
A minor's adoption petition can be filed before birth and before or after placement in the prospective parent's home. The law removes the old timing language, including its 30-day filing deadline after placement. Adoption venue now uses judicial districts rather than counties, including the district where a prospective adoptive parent lives. For nonresident petitioners, the adoptee's parent's residence provides a filing location only when the adoptee is a minor.
Families resolve competing child support orders
A party or support agency can ask Utah to identify the controlling order when multiple orders cover the same payer and child. Utah must have authority over the payer and the individual owed support; requests can stand alone or accompany enforcement or modification filings. Utah keeps exclusive authority to change its lawful controlling order while the payer, individual recipient, or child lives in Utah. The parties can also consent in a record or open court to continued Utah authority. Indian nations and tribes count as states under the covered support rules.
Foster families get removal safeguards with exceptions
The Division must provide foster families procedural protections before removing a child unless a statutory exception applies. The return-to-parent exception now covers any parent, not only a natural parent. Age- or health-based removal from a relative foster parent requires proof about that person's ability to care for the child. Moving the child to a nonrelative requires clear and convincing evidence; moving to another relative requires a preponderance of evidence.
Fraud alone cannot undo adoptions
A fraudulent statement does not excuse compliance with adoption law. By itself, it cannot dismiss an adoption petition, cancel a decree, or automatically give custody to the person harmed. Courts must decide custody based on the child’s best interests.
Interstate child placements gain support enforcement tools
Utah can use child- and spousal-support enforcement laws when someone partly or fully defaults on interstate child-placement compact duties. This provides another enforcement route for obligations connected to covered placements. The law sets no new support amount.
Limits on changing foreign child support
Utah generally cannot change a Convention child support order while the person owed support remains in the issuing country. Utah can act if that person accepts Utah's authority. It can also act if the foreign tribunal lacks or refuses authority to change the order or issue a new one.
Military families can make caregiving agreements
Parents can make temporary deployment caregiving agreements, signed by both parents and any nonparent receiving authority. When feasible, agreements cover deployment details, care and decision-making, nonparent contact, disputes, parent-child contact costs, support, filing, and ending care after return; missing terms do not invalidate them. Parents should agree before deployment notice when possible, but can do so afterward. Changes require mutual consent: before deployment, both parents and any nonparent caregiver must sign; during deployment, parties must agree in a record. Agreements and powers of attorney must be filed within a reasonable time in each court with an active custody or support order, using the case number and heading; nonfiling does not invalidate otherwise valid documents. A servicemember's family care plan must reflect the order or agreement the servicemember enters and files.
Military parents get temporary caregiving options
Courts cannot count past or possible deployment alone against a parent, but can consider significant effects on the child. A deploying parent can give an adult nonparent caregiving authority through a power of attorney and revoke it in writing. This option requires that no other parent has custody under Utah law outside the deployment chapter, or a current order bars that parent’s contact. Deployment custody agreements and court grants are temporary and end through return-from-deployment procedures, unless ended sooner by the allowed process. Nonparents can enforce granted authority or contact while it lasts, but gain no independent, continuing custody right.
Military parents must share caregiving updates
A deploying parent must notify the other parent in a record within seven days of receiving deployment notice. If service prevents timely notice, it is due as soon as reasonably possible. Each parent must share a caregiving plan as soon as reasonably possible; notice is unnecessary when parents living together both already know about the deployment or plan. Anyone granted caregiving authority during deployment must report address changes until that authority ends to the deploying parent, other authorized caregivers, and courts with active custody or support orders. When a court order bars disclosure of contact details, notice can go only to the issuing court, which must protect those details and forward deployment notices when possible.
Out-of-state custody orders gain Utah enforcement
Utah courts must enforce out-of-state custody orders that meet jurisdiction rules and have not been changed under those rules. Registration requires a request, two order copies including one certified copy, a sworn statement about changes, and identifying details. A person served with notice has 20 days to seek a hearing on jurisdiction, order changes, or notice failures. Missing that deadline confirms registration and bars challenges that could have been raised. Courts lacking authority to change an order can temporarily enforce parent-time; an unscheduled arrangement lasts until the court-set deadline or an order from a court with authority.
Parentage rules cover mothers and visits
The law applies the chapter’s paternity rules to maternity determinations as well. It defines a birth mother as the woman who gives birth, excluding a gestational mother from that term. After finding an alleged father is a parent, a tribunal can order parent-time on its own or at his request. This parent-time authority does not apply if the child was later adopted.
Parents can face custody travel costs
Utah courts can require an in-state party or someone holding the child in Utah to appear, with or without the child. When an out-of-state party is directed to appear or chooses to appear, another party can be ordered to pay. Payment covers reasonable and necessary travel and other expenses for that party and the child. Courts can also order safety measures. The law sets no fixed reimbursement amount.
Parents get custody protections and remedies
For separated or divorcing parents, the law favors frequent, meaningful contact and active involvement by both parents. This presumption ends when evidence more likely than not shows real harm or substantiated potential harm to the child. Courts must assess legal fees for frivolous custody or parent-time modification filings or responses designed to harass. A denied modification petition also requires reasonable fees for the winner when it lacked merit and good faith. In disputes over compliance with parent-time or qualifying family-visitation orders, winners get reasonable make-up time unless contrary to the child's best interests; courts may also award fees, costs, or another fair remedy. After a court issues and carries out an ex parte child-custody warrant, a hearing is required by the next judicial day, or the first possible judicial day.
Parents get support procedures and review
The Office of Recovery Services uses parentage procedures to establish parentage and establish, change, or enforce support orders. It can require genetic testing of the child, birth mother, and alleged father in those cases. Tribunals can order two or more individuals tested together or in sequence when they are subject to testing orders. A person obligated to pay support has 30 days after notice to seek a fresh district-court review of covered administrative actions. State and county attorneys represent the office, not either party, and have no attorney-client relationship with either party.
Prospective adoptive parents can take care duties
After a prospective adoptive parent receives an agency-placed child at home, the agency can delegate daily care and support duties. Those duties can include needed medical or surgical care. A qualifying temporary residence can count as the petitioner's home, though the supplied text does not detail all qualifying circumstances. The agency keeps custody and control until the final adoption decree.
Safety and disclosure rules for custody cases
Before declining a custody case, Utah courts must hear from the parties and weigh safety, finances, residence, and available evidence. Parties must provide known information under oath about the child's five-year home history, related cases, and custody claims. They must report later cases that could affect custody; courts can pause proceedings until required information arrives. Courts must seal identifying details after a sworn claim of danger, unless disclosure serves justice after a hearing. Judges can draw negative conclusions from refusals to answer self-incriminating questions; specified spouse-communication privileges and family-relationship immunity defenses do not apply.
Support cases can delay interstate surrender
These rules cover interstate surrender requests involving criminal charges for failure to provide support. For outgoing requests, Utah's governor can require proof that support proceedings began at least 60 days earlier or are futile. For incoming requests, the governor can investigate or delay surrender so an effective support case can begin. The governor can decline surrender if the accused person wins that case or follows the resulting support order.
Interstate support orders include children's health coverage
Utah employers must follow another state's income-withholding order when they receive it, including directions for withholding and distributing money. This includes orders requiring a parent to provide a child's health coverage through a policy available at work. The rule supports children's coverage and can add costs for the parent required to provide it.
Sponsors & Cosponsors
Sponsor
Todd Weiler
Republican • Senate
Cosponsors
Anthony E. Loubet
Republican • House
Roll Call Votes
Senate vote • 2/28/2025
Senate/ concurs with House amendment
Yes: 25 • No: 0
House vote • 2/27/2025
House/ passed 3rd reading
Yes: 67 • No: 0
House vote • 2/24/2025
House/ circled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
House vote • 2/20/2025
House Comm - Consent Calendar Recommendation
Yes: 10 • No: 0
House vote • 2/20/2025
House Comm - Favorable Recommendation
Yes: 9 • No: 0
House vote • 2/20/2025
House Comm - Amendment Recommendation
Yes: 9 • No: 0
Senate vote • 2/12/2025
Senate/ passed 3rd reading
Yes: 26 • No: 0
Senate vote • 2/11/2025
Senate/ substituted
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • 2/11/2025
Senate/ uncircled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • 2/11/2025
Senate/ circled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • 2/11/2025
Senate/ uncircled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • 2/11/2025
Senate/ passed 2nd reading
Yes: 24 • No: 0
Senate vote • 2/7/2025
Senate/ circled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • 1/28/2025
Senate Comm - Favorable Recommendation
Yes: 6 • No: 0
House vote • Unknown
House/ circled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • Unknown
Senate/ uncircled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • Unknown
Senate/ circled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • Unknown
Senate/ uncircled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • Unknown
Senate/ substituted
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Senate vote • Unknown
Senate/ circled
Yes: 0 • No: 0
Actions Timeline
Governor Signed
3/26/2025Senate/ to Governor
3/17/2025SenateSenate/ received enrolled bill from Printing
3/17/2025SenateSenate/ enrolled bill to Printing
3/13/2025SenateEnrolled Bill Returned to House or Senate
3/13/2025Draft of Enrolled Bill Prepared
3/4/2025Bill Received from Senate for Enrolling
3/4/2025Senate/ signed by President/ sent for enrolling
3/3/2025SenateSenate/ received from House
3/3/2025SenateHouse/ to Senate
2/28/2025HouseHouse/ signed by Speaker/ returned to Senate
2/28/2025HouseHouse/ received from Senate
2/28/2025HouseSenate/ to House
2/28/2025SenateSenate/ concurs with House amendment
2/28/2025SenateSenate/ placed on Concurrence Calendar
2/27/2025SenateSenate/ received from House
2/27/2025SenateHouse/ to Senate
2/27/2025HouseHouse/ passed 3rd reading
2/27/2025HouseHouse/ placed back on 3rd Reading Calendar
2/24/2025HouseHouse/ circled
2/24/2025HouseHouse/ 3rd reading
2/24/2025HouseHouse/ 2nd reading
2/20/2025HouseHouse/ comm rpt/ amended/ placed on Consent Cal
2/20/2025HouseHouse Comm - Consent Calendar Recommendation
2/20/2025HouseHouse Comm - Favorable Recommendation
2/20/2025House
Bill Text
Enrolled
3/13/2025
Amended 2/20/2025 11:02:176
2/20/2025
Substitute #1
2/11/2025
Introduced
1/15/2025