Is Coercive Control Recognized in Arizona? The Alec and Lydia Act, Explained

Why it's named for Alec and Lydia

On May 20, 2024, in Surprise, Arizona, Brock Mater shot and killed his two children — seven-year-old Alec and six-year-old Lydia — during a court-ordered, unsupervised parenting-time visit, then killed himself. Their mother, Hope Hooton, had repeatedly told the family court and law enforcement about their father's documented mental health crisis: he had been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment months earlier, and had reported both suicidal and homicidal thoughts. Reporting on the case since has described a family court record that did not fully evaluate strangulation, coercive control, and psychiatric instability together before granting him unsupervised time with the children. Hooton became an advocate for family court reform in the aftermath, and testified before Arizona lawmakers as the bill that would carry her children's names moved through the legislature. This background matters for understanding the law — it was written in direct response to a specific, documented failure to weigh a parent's coercive and threatening conduct heavily enough when deciding unsupervised access to children.

What A.R.S. § 25-403.03 actually says

The Act substantially rewrote § 25-403.03. It opens with a declared public policy: domestic violence, including child abuse, is contrary to a child's best interests, and in any legal decision-making or parenting time matter, courts must assign the highest priority to the personal safety and physical, mental, and emotional well-being of both the child and the domestic violence victim. Before entering an order, the court must resolve any domestic violence allegation with specific written findings on the record — covering what evidence justified or prevented a finding of domestic violence, why a parent who committed it did or didn't rebut the presumption described below, and why the court's chosen precautions serve the child's best interests. A domestic violence claim is established by a preponderance of the evidence, and corroboration from exhibits or another witness's testimony isn't required. The court must consider prior findings from other courts, law enforcement and Department of Child Safety records, the alleged victim's medical or behavioral health records (if privilege is waived), domestic violence shelter records, school records, witness testimony — and, notably, other acts of domestic violence against any person that tend to prove the existence of coercive control, even if those acts were previously litigated, decided, or predate the current order.

The definition of coercive control

§ 25-403.03(M)(1) defines “coercive control” as a pattern of violent, threatening, coercive, or emotionally abusive conduct by one parent against the other, without consent or justification. The statute lists fifteen specific examples, including sexual or other physical assault; threatening to kill or injure a person (including oneself) or a household pet; displaying, accessing, assembling, or cleaning a firearm in the other parent's presence in a way that implies its threatened use; confinement or other restraining words or actions; isolation from friends and family; monitoring or regulating financial activity or access to services; stalking or harassment; demeaning or degrading words or actions; threatening to publish sensitive information; threatening to report the other parent to law enforcement; damaging property; jeopardizing the other parent's immigration status; forcing the other parent to commit a crime; and using surveillance or tracking technology to facilitate any of the above. It also names something distinctive: using litigation itself as a tool of control — threatening, initiating, or using civil litigation, including family court proceedings, to force the other parent to defend a false or frivolous claim, or to regulate or restrict their lawful activity. § 25-403.03(M)(2) then defines “domestic violence,” when committed by one parent against the other or against a minor child in either parent's household, as either an act under Arizona's general criminal domestic violence statute (§ 13-3601(A)) or coercive control as just defined — meaning coercive control alone, without any predicate criminal offense, is enough to establish domestic violence under this statute.

The custody connection — a mandatory presumption, broader than a joint-decision-making rule

This is the center of the law, and it's worth being precise about its scope. Under § 25-403.03(D), if a court determines that a parent has committed domestic violence, there is a mandatory rebuttable presumption that awarding that parent legal decision-making or parenting time — not just joint legal decision-making — is contrary to the child's best interests. That's broader than statutes in some other states that presume only against joint decision-making authority: Arizona's presumption reaches sole decision-making and parenting time (visitation) as well. The court may not require the victim to prove the violence was severe or frequent enough to justify restrictions, and may not treat the parents' conduct as “mutual” domestic violence unless both parents lacked justification to a similar degree and inflicted comparable harm.

To rebut the presumption, § 25-403.03(E) requires the court to weigh the severity and frequency of the violence — including whether it was aggravated by physical injury, weapon use or threats, strangulation, or multiple forms of coercive control — along with whether the parent denied or minimized the conduct, whether the child imitated it, and the parent's participation in a domestic violence treatment program (a completion certificate alone is explicitly not proof of rehabilitation; it must be paired with a waiver of confidentiality, proof the program was relevant and proportionate, and evidence the parent understood the harm caused). Under § 25-403.03(G), a restricted parent cannot get sole or joint legal decision-making, or unsupervised parenting time, unless they overcome the presumption by clear and convincing evidence — a higher bar than the preponderance standard used to find the violence in the first place. Even supervised parenting time requires overcoming the presumption by a preponderance of the evidence. Under § 25-411, a parent who previously failed to rebut the presumption remains subject to it in any later modification proceeding, regardless of new allegations. Sections 25-404 and 25-411 extend the same written-findings requirement to temporary orders and modification proceedings, so the presumption isn't confined to a final custody decree.