When most people hear the words “domestic violence,” they think of physical harm. Arizona’s new family court law, the Alec and Lydia Act (HB2995), effective June 22, 2026, changes that picture substantially. For the first time in Arizona, a pattern of behavior known as “coercive control” is explicitly included in the definition of domestic violence for purposes of legal decision-making and parenting time cases.
This is not a minor definitional update. Anyone involved in a family law matter where domestic violence is at issue, whether as a victim or as an accused parent, needs to understand what coercive control means and how courts will apply it.
Beyond Physical Violence: The New Definition
HB2995 defines “coercive control” as a pattern of violent, threatening, coercive, or emotionally abusive conduct by one parent against the other, without consent or justification. This conduct does not need to involve physical violence. The statute lists fifteen categories of behavior that can constitute coercive control, and several involve no physical contact at all.
The new law also redefines “domestic violence” for family court purposes to include both: (1) acts that violate Arizona’s existing criminal domestic violence statute, and (2) coercive control. A parent does not need to have been criminally charged with or convicted of anything for a family court to find that domestic violence occurred.
The Fifteen Categories of Coercive Control
The statute lists the following behaviors as potential components of coercive control:
- Physical or sexual assault.
- Threatening to kill or injure a person, including threats to harm oneself or a household pet.
- Displaying, accessing, assembling, or cleaning a firearm or other dangerous weapon in the other parent’s presence in circumstances that imply a threat of its use.
- Confining or restraining the other parent’s movement or restricting their lawful activities.
- Isolating the other parent from friends and family.
- Monitoring or regulating financial activity, economic resources, or access to services.
- Stalking or harassment.
- Demeaning, degrading, or humiliating words or actions.
- Threatening to publish sensitive information about the other parent or their family, including sexually explicit material.
- Threatening to make reports to law enforcement.
- Threatening, initiating, or using civil litigation, including family court proceedings, to force the other parent to defend against a false or frivolous claim or to restrict that parent’s lawful or constitutionally protected activity.
- Damaging property belonging to the other parent or their family.
- Threatening or jeopardizing the immigration status of the other parent or a family member.
- Forcing the other parent to commit a crime against their stated wishes.
- Using surveillance or tracking technology to facilitate or aggravate any of the behaviors listed above.
Why This Expansion Matters
Arizona previously had no concept of coercive control in its family court domestic violence framework. Research on abusive relationships has long recognized that physical violence is often only one component of abuse, and sometimes not the most damaging one. Financial control, social isolation, and systematic psychological intimidation are well-documented features of abusive relationships, frequently used alongside or even in place of physical violence. Under the old law, those behaviors had no explicit place in a family court’s domestic violence analysis unless they also constituted a criminal offense. That gap allowed many patterns of abusive conduct to go unaddressed in family court proceedings. The new law closes it.
For survivors: experiences you may not have thought of as “domestic violence,” such as being cut off from bank accounts, prevented from seeing your family, or subjected to systematic humiliation and threats, may now support a domestic violence finding and trigger the mandatory presumption against the other parent’s legal decision-making authority or parenting time.
For parents facing allegations: behaviors you may not have considered abusive, such as monitoring shared finances, expressing anger verbally, or threatening to seek a court order about parenting time, could be characterized as coercive control depending on the context and pattern. Knowing which facts matter and how they might be used is not something to leave to chance.
Litigation as Coercive Control
One provision deserves particular attention: the inclusion of civil litigation as a potential form of coercive control. The statute specifically identifies threatening, initiating, or using civil litigation, including family court proceedings, to force the other parent to defend against a false or frivolous claim or to restrict that parent’s lawful or constitutionally protected activity.
Filing or threatening to file family court motions about legal decision-making or parenting time, if done for coercive rather than legitimate reasons, can be characterized as domestic violence under the new law. This provision addresses a recognized phenomenon, sometimes called “litigation abuse,” in which repeated court filings are used as a tool of control and intimidation rather than for a genuine legal purpose.
Courts will face the challenge of distinguishing between a legitimate modification petition and one filed as coercion. How courts interpret “false or frivolous” in this context is one of the genuinely new and untested areas of the law, and it will develop over time through litigation.
Two Things Coercive Control Is Not
The statute contains two express carve-outs.
First, self-defense is excluded. Actions taken in defense of oneself or another person are not domestic violence under the new definition. If a parent engaged in conduct that would otherwise qualify as coercive control, but did so as a justified defensive response to the other parent’s violence or threats, that conduct is not covered. How courts evaluate the boundary between coercive conduct and defensive conduct will be an evolving area of law.
Second, coercive control requires a pattern. A single isolated incident is unlikely to qualify; the statute defines coercive control as a pattern of conduct. What constitutes a “pattern” (how many incidents? over what period? of what type?) is not defined, and that question will be among the first for courts to work through.
When Both Parents Claim Domestic Violence
As discussed in Part 1, the new law changes how courts handle situations where both parents have engaged in domestic violence. Courts must now determine which parent’s conduct and motivation were more serious, rather than treating mutual violence as a wash. That analysis is harder when coercive control is involved, because the statute expressly excludes defensive conduct from the definition. What looks like mutual behavior may, on closer examination, reflect one party’s escalating control and the other’s protective responses. Building that factual record clearly requires careful preparation.
What You Should Consider
Regardless of whether you would have described your relationship as one involving domestic violence, the expanded definition means that facts common to many family law cases now fall within the statute in ways they did not before. A candid conversation with your attorney about what occurred in your relationship, in both directions, and how those events might be characterized under the new law is a necessary starting point.
A domestic violence finding under the new law triggers a mandatory presumption that the offending parent should have no legal decision-making authority and no parenting time. Overcoming that presumption requires substantial effort, and for unsupervised parenting time or decision-making rights, the standard is clear and convincing evidence. The time to understand how the law applies to your facts is before a court makes a finding you will need to rebut.