Get With the Plan

What Attorneys and Courts Need to Know About the New Parenting Plan Form and Revised Law on Parenting Limitations 

BY ELIZABETH HENDREN AND JUDGE JANET HELSON

As of July 27, there is a new mandatory parenting plan form that reflects changes made to RCW 26.09.191, governing parenting plan limitations, and the new RCW 26.09.192, which governs parenting plan limitations arising from sexual abuse of a child or a sex offense committed against a child. What is actually new, and what do practitioners and courts need to know? Keep reading to find out. 

Reorganization of a Complicated Statute

RCW 26.09.191 governs parenting plan limitations in cases involving serious concerns about a parent’s behavior, including domestic violence, sexual abuse, abuse and neglect of children, substance use disorder, and other issues that impact a parent’s ability to safely parent their child. The previous version of RCW 26.09.191 was difficult to read for parents, attorneys, and judges. Through a series of disconnected amendments made over multiple decades, new sections were inserted into the middle of the statute and important general provisions tacked onto the end. This made for a long statute broken up by multiple tangents and cross references. Key concepts were buried at the end. Lengthy provisions regarding sex offense convictions that do not apply to most parenting plan cases dominated the statute. The impact was particularly challenging for pro se litigants attempting to read the statute to represent themselves or for judicial officers who did not have a background in family law.

A group of attorneys and judges began meeting in 2022 to propose a reorganization and cleanup of the law, aimed at simply making it easier to read. This effort revealed many additional issues with the statute and generated conversations about disparities in how judges were addressing gaps and problems in the law. 

Engrossed Substitute House Bill (ESHB) 1620, introduced in the 2025 legislative session by Rep. Jamila Taylor (D-Federal Way), a family law attorney herself, was the culmination of these discussions. It creates a clearer statute, both in terms of readability and by providing uniformity of guidance for how courts handle complex parenting plan cases. 

A New Parenting Plan Form

Perhaps the most noticeable change for practitioners and courts is the new parenting plan form, which now consists of a Basic Parenting Plan with four possible attachments depending on what the case requires:

• Attachment A: Limitations, for cases involving parenting limitations under RCW 26.09.191 and RCW 26.09.192;
• Attachment B: Sex Offense or Sexual Abuse of a Child, for cases where those issues apply;
• Attachment C: Supervised Visitation Rules, for cases where supervised visitation is ordered; and 
• Attachment R (for Residential Schedule): Parenting Time Schedule, which includes the provisions from the previous parenting plan form regarding how parents divide parenting time during the school year, breaks, and holidays.

Every final parenting plan must have at least one attachment. While the attachments will undoubtedly be an adjustment, the new form allows families to leave out sections that do not apply to them. Cases that do not involve any parenting restrictions will not have many blank sections regarding limitations included in their parenting plan form. Similarly, cases where a parent has no regular parenting time will no longer have pages crossed out of the school schedule and holiday sections. 

Substantive Changes

Many of the substantive changes made to parenting plan limitations under ESHB 1620 are clarifications of terms and sections which were previously vague or undefined. The previous statute was silent on many issues, leaving a tremendous amount of discretion to individual judicial officers. As a result, litigants left trials with wildly different results depending on their county and judicial officer. The goal of the changes implemented this year was to create more uniformity and predictability and to codify best practices, so that attorneys and litigants know what to expect, and so that judicial officers are guided through these difficult cases in a consistent way. 

As a result, depending on the courts you appear in, you may or may not notice significant substantive changes to how the court handles your complex family law cases. 

Reorganization

Language concerning parenting plan limitations arising from sexual abuse of a child or a sex offense committed against a child, which previously broke up the middle of RCW 26.09.191, is now in its own section, RCW 26.09.192. It is worth noting that RCW 26.09.191 still covers parenting plans involving any kind of sexual abuse history, but cases involving sexual abuse of a child or a sex offense committed against a child must also consult RCW 26.09.192.

RCW 26.09.191 is now organized into eight general sections:

1. Purpose
2. General Considerations
3. Definitions
4. Residential Time Limitations
5. Limitations on Decision Making & Dispute Resolution
6. Determination Not to Impose Limitations
7. When Limitations Apply to Both Parents
8. Rights to Appeal

General Considerations and Definitions

Several general considerations that were peppered throughout the previous statute are now consolidated at the beginning of the section. The language included in this section is not new, but is now all in one place, at the beginning, where it is easier to find. Some previously undefined terms are now defined, including abusive use of conflict and willful abandonment. 

Parental Conduct that Must and May Result in Limitations 

As with the former statute, if the court makes certain findings against a parent, the court is directed that it shall impose limitations. These are referred to as “mandatory” limitations or findings. These findings include:

• Willful abandonment;
• Physical abuse or a pattern of emotional abuse;
• A history of acts of domestic violence, an assault that causes grievous bodily harm or fear of such harm, or any sexual assault; or 
• Sexual abuse of a child.

This section is reworded and updated slightly, but largely unchanged from the previous statute. One substantive change was to remove “substantial refusal to perform parenting functions” as a mandatory factor since it was not defined and somewhat confusingly overlapped with the first discretionary factor. 

As with the former statute, there are also certain findings which require the court to consider whether limitations should be imposed. These are referred to as “discretionary” limitations or findings. This section is also slightly updated but largely unchanged from the previous statute, and discretionary findings still include:

• Neglect or substantial nonperformance of parenting functions;
• A long-term emotional or physical impairment which interferes with the parent’s performance of parenting functions (parenting functions are defined in RCW 26.09.004);
• A long-term impairment resulting from drug, alcohol, or other substance abuse that interferes with the performance of parenting functions;
• The absence or substantial impairment of emotional ties between the parent and the child;
• Abusive use of conflict (now defined);
• A parent has withheld from the other parent access to the child for a protracted period without good cause; or
• Such other factors or conduct as the court expressly finds adverse to the best interests of the child.

Balancing Findings Against Both Parents

In complex parenting cases, it is not uncommon for both parents to raise concerns about the other parent and sometimes the court has legitimate concerns about both parents. The previous statute did not give any guidance to courts about how to handle cases in which the court makes RCW 26.09.191 findings about both parents. It also gave no guidance as to how to balance the various findings (i.e., what if one parent has engaged in domestic violence but the other parent has a substance use disorder?). There was previously no statutory guidance on how courts balance these concerns, and as a result families ended up with wildly different parenting plans even with similar facts. 

The new statute provides guidance on how to balance findings when courts have concerns about both parents. It is based largely on the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Model Code on Domestic and Family Violence, with adjustments for Washington’s legal framework. There is now a presumption that mandatory findings, like domestic violence and sexual abuse, will be prioritized over discretionary findings when both parents have findings. 

As with the former statute, there are limited circumstances in which the court can choose not to impose any limitations despite the existence of mandatory findings. The new statute provides increased guidance, again based on the Model Code, for these rare cases. The court must make written findings when it decides not to impose any mandatory limitations. The court must address the following five factors in writing (which can then be reviewed on appeal): 

(i) Any current risk posed by the parent to the physical or psychological well-being of the child or other parent;

(ii) Whether a parent has demonstrated that they can and will prioritize the child’s physical and psychological well-being;

(iii) Whether a parent has adhered to and is likely to adhere to court orders;

(iv) Whether a parent has genuinely acknowledged past harm and is committed to avoiding harm in the future; and

(v) A parent’s compliance with any previously court-ordered treatment. A parent’s compliance with the requirements for participation in a treatment program does not, by itself, constitute evidence that the parent has made the requisite changes.  

Limitations on Decision-Making and Dispute Resolution

The previous statute never allowed mutual decision-making or alternative dispute resolution in cases involving domestic violence findings under any circumstances, even if requested by the survivor of violence. This was at odds with what some survivors wanted, and as a result, families and courts would sometimes opt not to include domestic violence findings in parenting plans despite evidence, in order to allow for these provisions. Further, the previous statute precluded joint decision-making but did not preclude awarding sole decision-making to the parent with abuse history—a decision made by some trial courts and upheld by the Court of Appeals. The new statute creates a presumption of sole decision-making in cases where there is a finding of domestic violence but provides limited circumstances in which courts can decide not to impose this based on the five-factor analysis (see previous section) for when it will not impose mandatory limitations. The court still may not require face-to-face mediation, arbitration, or therapeutic interventions that require the parties to share the same physical or virtual space if there has been a finding of domestic violence.

Child Sexual Abuse

New statute RCW 26.09.192 significantly strengthens protections in cases involving child sexual abuse by a parent. While the previous statute contemplated restrictions for certain criminal convictions, the new statute creates a presumption of no contact for parents who have been found to have sexually abused their children in either a criminal matter, or by a preponderance of the evidence in a dependency or family law action, including the present family law case. 

Supervised Visitation

While supervised visitation has always been a tool in these cases, the previous statute had very little guidance on what considerations a court should weigh in ordering supervision, or what supervision should entail. The new statute requires the court to include written guidelines regarding supervision in all cases where supervision is ordered. There is now a presumption that court-ordered supervision will be conducted by a professional; however this presumption can be overcome if the court finds that there is a lay person who has demonstrated that they are capable and committed to protecting the child, and that the parent is unable to access professional supervision due to either geographic isolation or financial indigency. The new statute also has increased guidance for expectations to keep supervision safe, and remedies for when supervision rules are not followed. These changes are incorporated into Attachment C: Supervised Visitation Rules of the new mandatory parenting plan form. Attachment C includes best practices from what many counties were already doing by requiring an Oath of Supervisor. As with other aspects of the bill, some practitioners and courts were already following these principles, so the extent to which this will change practice depends on the jurisdiction.

Conclusion

While the mandatory forms and structure of the statute look quite different than they did a year ago, the overarching substance of the laws governing parenting plan restrictions is still largely the same. The law is now much easier to read, and we now have more detailed definitions and guidance for certain situations. This should help ensure that the law designed to protect children in separated families is applied more consistently by judicial officers across Washington state. 

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