(WAVE) – There is a little more than a month before the end of Kentucky’s legislative session, but the state house wasted no time in passing a bill that will protect domestic violence survivors when it comes to custody cases.
HB 418, which is co-sponsored by Jason Nemes (R-District 33), is not final yet, and still has to pass in the Senate, but it passed the House 96-1 on Wednesday.
The bill states that if the court finds a parent in a custody case has committed domestic violence or abuse, it can’t cut parenting time or remove custody from the non-abusive parent.
Right now, the court assumes that joint custody is in a child’s best interest. But HB 418 says if a parent has committed two or more acts of domestic violence or abuse, the court must assume that joint custody and shared equal parenting time are not in the child’s best interest.
To get unsupervised visitation back, the parent must complete parenting classes, attend a certified batterer’s intervention program, go through mental health assessments and have participated in supervised visitation.
After these steps, the court will hold hearings to allow unsupervised visitation and restore custodial rights.
The bill also puts more requirements in place for professionals in these custody cases, including having training in certain areas like child and adolescent development and dynamics and effects of domestic violence.
Under the proposed law, professionals must have 16 hours of training in these areas before providing services, and eight hours of training annually.