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Bill Summary · SF 5298

Overview

SF 5298, introduced in the Minnesota 2025-2026 Legislature, amends existing custody and parenting time provisions. The bill focuses on clarifying, strengthening, and standardizing how courts evaluate the best interests of the child and how parenting time is allocated and enforced in dissolution or legal separation proceedings.

Purpose and intent

  • To provide a clearer framework for determining custody and parenting time that emphasizes the child’s best interests, with explicit findings and considerations.
  • To promote safe, stable, nurturing relationships with both parents while preserving flexibility to address individual circumstances, including domestic abuse and parental cooperation.
  • To update presumptions and guidelines around joint custody and parenting time to reflect contemporary family dynamics.

Key provisions

Section 1 — Best interests of the child (518.17, subdivision 1)

  • Reaffirms and expands the factors the court must consider when assessing the child’s best interests, including:
    • The child’s physical, emotional, cultural, spiritual, and developmental needs.
    • Any special medical, mental health, developmental, or educational needs requiring specific parenting arrangements or services.
    • The reasonable preferences of the child (if age and maturity permit).
    • Domestic abuse within the household or relationship and its implications for safety and well-being.
    • Any health issues of a parent affecting the child.
    • Each parent’s history and ongoing ability to provide care, consistency, and follow-through with parenting time.
    • Effects of changes in home, school, and community on the child.
    • The impact on relationships with the other parent, siblings, and significant others.
    • The child's benefit from increased parenting time with both parents, balanced against potential detriments of reduced contact.
    • Each parent’s willingness and ability to cooperate in parenting and resolve disputes with minimal conflict exposure to the child.
  • Additions and refinements to the factors:
    • Courts must provide detailed findings on each factor and explain how conclusions were reached.
    • Emphasizes that both parents are capable of nurturing relationships; recognizes multiple valid approaches to meeting a child’s needs across different family structures and cultures.
    • States that conduct not affecting the parent-child relationship should not be considered.
    • Disability of a proposed custodian or child should not be determinative.
    • Evidence of violations of certain laws (e.g., domestic abuse) must be considered.
  • Presumptions regarding custody:
    • Joint legal and physical custody is rebuttably presumed to be in the child’s best interests upon request.
    • This presumption can be rebutted if domestic abuse has occurred, with court considering the nature and context of abuse and its impact on safety and development.
    • Disagreement over custody arrangements alone does not automatically indicate an inability to cooperate.

Section 2 — Parenting time (518.175, subdivision 1)

  • Governs parenting time in dissolution or legal separation proceedings during the child's minority:
    • Courts should grant parenting time to maintain a meaningful parent-child relationship; may reserve a determination on future expansion of parenting time.
    • If parenting time is likely to endanger the child’s health or safety, the court may restrict or deny parenting time, considering the child’s age and prior relationship with the parent.
    • Nonpayment of support due to inability to pay is not by itself a basis to deny parenting time.
    • Provisions for enforcement, including involvement of law enforcement if needed.
    • If requested, orders should include a specific schedule for regular parenting time, holidays, school breaks, etc., unless restricted.
    • Requires a pro se motion form for parenting time disputes (not a custody change form) and instruction on service.
    • There is a rebuttable presumption that a child receives at least 50% of parenting time with each parent, with the method for calculating time (overnights or alternative methods) noted; age may influence whether a child is considered to be with a parent for a significant period.

Who is affected

  • Parents undergoing dissolution or legal separation proceedings involving custody and parenting time.
  • Courts, family law judges, and clerks who must apply the factors, presumptions, and procedures.
  • Children, particularly with regard to required considerations of their best interests, safety, and stable relationships with both parents.
  • Domestic violence and child safety considerations, given the re-emphasized role of abuse context in custody decisions.

Procedural and timeline aspects

  • The bill adds requirement for detailed, factor-by-factor findings and explanations in custody decisions.
  • Introduces or reinforces a rebuttable presumption favoring joint custody, subject to abuse considerations.
  • Establishes a procedural pathway for parenting time disputes, including specific scheduling, enforcement mechanisms, and a dedicated pro se filing form.
  • Likely effective upon enactment and applies to ongoing and future proceedings post-enactment.

Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.

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