POSITIVES:

• Arizona's PTA has a very low threshold of 20 days.

• Arizona's PTA appropriately results in no presumptive child support transfer payment when parental income and parenting time are both equal.

NEGATIVES: 

• Arizona's PTA has a small discontinuity, creating a cliff effect.

• Arizona's PTA underestimates the fixed, duplicated costs involved in shared parenting.

• Arizona's PTA does not take into account the effect on the payer parent's household.

POSITIVES:

• Arizona statutes strongly encourage equal shared parenting and maximum practicable parenting time by requiring courts to “adopt a parenting plan that provides for both parents to share legal decision-making regarding their child and that maximizes their respective parenting time.” ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 25-403.02

• Research indicates courts interpret maximum time provisions as implicit rebuttable presumption of equal parenting time.

• Arizona explicitly endorses a “friendly parent” rule. ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 25-403

• Arizona explicitly requires courts to consider “[w]hether one parent intentionally misled the court to cause an unnecessary delay, to increase the cost of litigation or to persuade the court to give a legal decision-making or a parenting time preference to that parent.” ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 25-40

• Arizona statutes provide sanctions for knowingly making false allegations of abuse. ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 13-3620.01 & ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 25-415

NEGATIVES: 

• Arizona has no explicit provisions for shared parenting during temporary orders and, thus, no statutory preference for or presumption of shared parenting during temporary orders.

• Arizona’s statutes do not explicitly require courts to provide reasons for failing to adopt parenting plans that involve shared legal decision-making and maximization of both parents’ parenting time.

Arizona proclaimed April 26 Shared Parenting Day in 2021. State Chair Candace Harrison led this effort. Read more here.