Background
Larry and Laura Beltran divorced in October 2024 after a marriage of nearly two decades that produced seven minor children. The dissolution proceedings ran alongside a parallel juvenile court case, and the superior court did not enter a legal decision-making and parenting time order until March 2025. That order awarded Larry sole legal decision-making authority and restricted Laura to up to four hours of professionally supervised parenting time per week, citing her “paranoia” and “delusional beliefs” about the risk of the children being sex trafficked while in their father’s care. The court expressly prohibited Laura from seeking unsupervised parenting time at any point absent a modifying court order.
In July 2025, Larry petitioned for an order of protection (“OOP”), alleging that Laura had repeatedly come to his home uninvited and refused to leave, and that on July 7 she entered his home while he was absent and removed five of the children without a supervisor present — in direct violation of the March 2025 parenting time order. The superior court issued the OOP, naming both Larry and all seven children as protected persons and prohibiting Laura from contacting any of them. Laura requested a contested hearing, which was held in September 2025. She admitted at the hearing that she had gone to Larry’s home on July 7 and taken the children, claiming she did so pursuant to an agreement between the parties and to take the children to a doctor for lice. The court continued the OOP after finding by a preponderance of the evidence that Laura had committed or may commit an act of domestic violence.
Laura timely appealed, raising multiple arguments: that the hearing violated due process and ARPOP Rule 35(b) procedures; that the court improperly included the children as protected persons without making express findings; that the OOP conflicted with A.R.S. § 25-403.03(F); and that the court improperly used the OOP as a vehicle to modify the existing parenting time order. Larry did not file an answering brief.
The Court’s Holding
A divided panel of the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, affirmed the continued OOP in a 2-1 memorandum decision. The majority declined to apply the confession-of-error doctrine arising from Larry’s failure to file an answering brief, reasoning that Laura raised no debatable issue on appeal and that the doctrine is not strictly applied in cases involving children’s welfare. Because Laura failed to provide a transcript of the September 2025 hearing, the court applied the well-established presumption that the missing record supports the trial court’s decision, rejecting her due process challenge and her claim that the court failed to properly consider the Rule 35(b) child-harm factors before naming the children as protected persons.
On the merits, the court found that Laura’s own admission — that she removed the children from their father’s home without a professional supervisor — constituted sufficient evidentiary support for including the children as protected persons, given that the March 2025 order had already found unsupervised contact by Laura could endanger the children. The court also rejected Laura’s statutory and procedural arguments, holding that ARPOP 4(b) says nothing about parenting time, that A.R.S. § 25-403.03(F) applies only to Title 25 parenting time proceedings rather than OOP proceedings, and that the OOP did not conflict with the March 2025 order because that order set a ceiling — not a floor — on Laura’s parenting time and expressly contemplated modification by subsequent court order.
Judge D. Steven Williams dissented, arguing that Larry’s petition only requested protection for himself and not the children, in violation of ARPOP 23(b)(2)’s requirement that a petitioner name each person to be protected. The dissent contended that Laura’s violation of the parenting time order could have been addressed through contempt proceedings rather than a blanket two-year OOP, and would have either vacated the OOP entirely or ordered the children removed from it, also treating Larry’s failure to respond as a confession of reversible error.
Key Takeaways
- An appellant who fails to provide a hearing transcript bears the consequences: Arizona appellate courts will presume the missing record supports the trial court’s ruling, foreclosing challenges to both the conduct of the hearing and the sufficiency of the court’s factual findings.
- ARPOP Rule 35(b) requires a court to consider whether a child may be harmed by contact with a defendant before naming the child as a protected person, but does not require the court to make express written findings on those factors — the presumption of judicial knowledge of the law fills the gap when no transcript is available.
- An order of protection is not a parenting time order under Title 25, so it need not comply with the modification procedures of A.R.S. § 25-411 or the parenting time presumptions of A.R.S. § 25-403.03(F); a court may restrict a parent’s contact with children through an OOP even when a separate parenting time order is in place, provided that order contemplates further modification.
- The confession-of-error doctrine, triggered when an appellee fails to file an answering brief, is not mechanically applied in cases involving children’s welfare and will not operate where the appellant has failed to raise a debatable issue.
Why It Matters
This decision illustrates how procedural defaults — particularly the failure to secure and submit a hearing transcript — can be fatal to an appeal even when substantive arguments might otherwise have merit. For family law practitioners, it underscores the importance of record preservation when a client intends to challenge the conduct or outcome of a contested protective order hearing. The case also clarifies, at least in non-precedential form, that Arizona courts need not make express findings under ARPOP Rule 35(b) before extending an order of protection to minor children.
The dissent raises a pointed concern that practitioners and courts should note: ARPOP 23(b)(2) requires a petitioner to specifically identify each person to be protected, and a court that sua sponte expands an OOP beyond the petition’s request may be acting outside proper procedural bounds. While the majority sidestepped that issue on waiver grounds, the dissent’s view — that a two-year blanket no-contact order affecting seven children was a disproportionate response to conduct better addressed through contempt — signals ongoing tension in Arizona courts over the appropriate scope of protective orders in high-conflict custody disputes.