Mediation: child custody and visitation.

Plain English Breakdown

Checked against official source text during the last sync.

Mediation for Child Custody and Visitation

This law requires courts to provide written notice about mediation sessions when deciding child custody or visitation issues and ensures that communications during these sessions are kept confidential.

What This Bill Does

• Requires the court to give all parties a written notice of mediation for child custody or visitation disputes.
• Specifies that court staff can also give this notice in writing if everyone is present at a hearing.
• Requires the court to develop a standard form for this notice, which must include information about confidentiality and separate meetings if there's a history of domestic violence.

Who It Names or Affects

• Parents involved in child custody or visitation disputes
• Courts handling these cases

Terms To Know

Mediation

A process where people work with a neutral person to solve problems and reach an agreement.

Confidentiality

Keeping information shared during mediation private between the mediator and disputing parties.

Limits and Unknowns

• The bill does not specify how courts will enforce compliance with these requirements.
• It is unclear if there are any penalties for failing to provide proper notice of mediation.

Official Summary Text

AB 2789, as introduced, Committee on Judiciary.
Mediation: child custody and visitation.
Existing law requires the court, for purposes of deciding custody, to determine the best interests of the child based on certain factors, including the nature and amount of contact with both parents and, consistent with specified findings, requires the court’s primary concern to be the health, safety, and welfare of the child. Existing law requires a court to set the contested issues for mediation when it appears on the face of a petition, application, or other pleading to obtain or modify a temporary or permanent custody or visitation order that custody, visitation, or both are contested. Existing law requires notice of mediation to be given to each party, and where a stepparent or grandparent seeks visitation rights, to the stepparent or grandparent seeking visitation rights, to each parent of the child, and to each parent’s counsel of record. Existing law requires notice to be given by
certified mail, return receipt requested, postage prepaid, to the last known address.
This bill would require all parties to be given written notice of mediation, including, among others, by court staff when all parties are present for a court hearing. The bill would require the court to develop a notice of mediation that includes that all communications between the mediator and the disputing parties are required to be confidential and, if there has been a history of domestic violence between the parties or a protective order is in effect, that the mediator is required to meet with the parties separately and at separate times at the request of the party alleging domestic violence, as specified.

Current Bill Text

Download Bill PDF