Background
Richard Hernandez (Father) and Angela Nunez (Mother) are unmarried parents of one minor child. In October 2023, Father petitioned the Yuma County Superior Court to establish paternity and determine legal decision-making authority and parenting time. In March 2024, the court issued an order granting joint legal decision-making, designating Mother as the residential custodial parent, and awarding Father parenting time every other week from Thursday to Monday. At that time, both parents and the child lived in Yuma.
Mother had expressed interest in relocating to Phoenix for better employment opportunities. She filed a relocation notice in the spring of 2024, but the court denied that request in May 2024. In August 2024—less than six months after the March 2024 parenting-time order—Mother filed another notice of intent to relocate and, according to Father, had already moved to Phoenix with the child without court permission. Despite Father’s contempt motion, the court eventually entertained Mother’s subsequent relocation motion and, in April 2025, granted it, reducing Father’s parenting time to every other weekend. Father appealed, arguing that A.R.S. § 25-411(A) barred the motion because it was filed within one year of the initial parenting-time order.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals vacated the relocation and modified parenting-time order. Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge Williams held that A.R.S. § 25-411(A)’s one-year waiting period is compulsory—the statute provides that a party “shall not” move to modify parenting time within one year of the order unless one of three narrow exceptions applies: the child’s present environment seriously endangers the child’s health, domestic violence has occurred, or the nonmoving parent has not complied with the order for at least six months. Following Murray v. Murray, the court confirmed that the same one-year constraint applies when a parent seeks a relocation that will necessarily change parenting time.
The superior court had reasoned that the one-year bar was “not an absolute bar” and that the first judge had given Mother leave to refile. The Court of Appeals rejected this reasoning, noting the superior court cited no legal authority for its proposition that it had discretion to circumvent the statutory waiting period. Because no statutory exception applied—neither party claimed endangerment, domestic violence, or noncompliance—the trial court abused its discretion by hearing the relocation motion prematurely.
Key Takeaways
- Arizona’s one-year waiting period under A.R.S. § 25-411(A) applies to relocation motions that will necessarily change parenting time, not just to direct modification requests.
- The statute’s language is compulsory (“shall not”), and trial courts do not have inherent discretion to waive the waiting period outside the statute’s three enumerated exceptions.
- A trial court’s invitation to “refile later” does not override the statutory one-year bar if the refiling occurs before the waiting period expires.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the mandatory nature of A.R.S. § 25-411(A)’s one-year stability period for parenting-time orders, which is designed to protect children from frequent disruption of custody arrangements. For Arizona family law practitioners, the opinion makes clear that creative procedural workarounds—such as obtaining a court’s informal permission to refile—cannot override the statutory waiting period. The case is particularly relevant in relocation disputes, where the court confirmed that the Murray rule extends the one-year bar to any relocation that necessarily changes parenting time. Practitioners should also note that Mother’s failure to file an answering brief was not treated as a concession of error because the child’s best interests were at stake.