“Does the Alec & Lydia Act Apply to a Pending Case?”
The Alec & Lydia Act: Deep Dive #2
A. Introduction
This blog will tackle a question both complicated and important. Specifically, how on Earth does the new Act apply in cases that were already active and waiting for trial on June 22, 2026—when the governor signed H.B. 2995 into Arizona law? Well, no one knows, and no one can claim to be sure who is speaking honestly, thoughtfully, and cautiously. This is for several reasons.
First, the Alec & Lydia Act itself does not say. It did include an “emergency” clause to guarantee immediate operation upon executive signature. But just because an amended statute applies right away moving forward doesn’t mean that it also reaches back in time to regulate activity that occurred before. It just means the Act didn’t require the usual waiting period (September 2026) before it took effect.
Second, even if the Act had announced an intent to sweep across the timeline without restraint, our court of appeals and supreme court still would have possessed the right (and duty) to make sure that strategy didn’t violate the United States or Arizona Constitution. They will eventually have to decide whether “reaching back” on any level causes problems. But even if the Act had insisted …
This law shall apply retroactively to all existing cases.
… that would not have ended the debate.
Third, no Arizona appellate court has ever outlined how to apply a law like the Alec & Lydia Act to existing cases. This new legislation requires a trial judge to consider a wide range of bad or seemingly innocent behaviors—sometimes separated by months or years—and then decide if they collectively transform into something far worse than the sum of its parts.
I am referring, of course, to coercive control.
That concept is scripted right into ARS § 25-403.03(M)(1):
‘Coercive control’ means a pattern of violent, threatening, coercive or emotionally abusive conduct by one parent against the other, without consent or justification.
In other words, we cannot point to a single incident and say: “That was the ‘real’ coercive control! That was the date when it all happened!” The Alec & Lydia Act forbids such a narrow focus. In fact, that was the whole point: to move family courts away from analyzing misdeeds piecemeal, deciding that no one event was ‘all that bad’, shrugging off the incident as ‘situational’ or nothing more complicated than a ‘high conflict’ relationship … and then losing the forest for the trees. This was especially a problem in cases where a DV victim was forbidden to testify about behaviors occurring ‘before the last decree’.
It was like watching a 3-D movie with one eye closed and no 3-D glasses.
Fourth, because § 25-403.03 now expects comprehensive review of an offender’s misconduct, it does complicate how to apply the new rules to people struggling through an active case. There is a good answer, but it’s not just about a petition’s ‘filing date’. Worse, our shared task is not even as simple as deciding whether all or none of the Act will apply. Some parts can be applied to everyone—right now, active case or not. Other subsections almost certainly cannot.
Now that we suspect that things are not as simple as they seem, let’s break down the rules we do know. But remember … this is simply my own view. It is an educated analysis of how I believe the Arizona appellate courts should (will?) resolve these complex questions. No more, no less.
Those appellate courts do not owe deference to a single lawyer or trial judge across the State of Arizona, and they won’t be calling any of us on the telephone to ask for our opinion! That includes Patricia and me, even though we authored the Act. It includes the amazing legislators and nonprofit advocates who sponsored or championed the Act. It includes the governor, too, who approved and signed it. And it includes any number of Arizona lawyers who have written their own blogs, hosted podcasts, or posted other multimedia content—some of it excellent—that offer their own views.
But that’s okay.
That’s the beauty of our system.
We give our sweat and tears for legislation that is bigger than ourselves … and then we step back and watch because now it belongs to the People.
It is part of being American.
B. Trash
Imagine you and I are Trash Bandits.
(Yes, I am going somewhere with this.)
Imagine that you and I love trash so much that, once a month, we steal armfuls of trash from residential homes all over Arizona. We take that trash and craft it into really cool sculptures, figurines, and other fine trashworks. Then we sell that amazing trash and give all the profits to charity.
We do this because we are kind, civic-minded professionals. We would never commit a crime. It’s not in our nature.
Unfortunately, we are also obnoxious and don’t mind showing it. So, every time we run from a house carrying all that stolen trash, we leave a calling card. We pull out all the gnawed chicken bones and dump them in a pile at the entrance of each driveway.
This cements our legend.
🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜
One day, we are caught and charged with burglarizing all those houses. We snitch on each other during police interrogation (which helps a little), but we’re both still looking at a good decade in prison. However, before our cases can go to trial, the Arizona Legislature unanimously passes a new law. It declares …
Any person who leaves chicken wings on a residential driveway while committing a felony shall not be eligible for probation or early release. That person must serve their entire sentence plus an extra ten years for each felony. During this extra prison term, the department of corrections shall restrict the inmate’s diet to chicken. Dark meat only.
Eager to teach us a lesson, the prosecutor upgrades our charges to include these new rules.
Now, you may be thinking: “Um, yeah. Serves you right. Next time, stop chucking trash on people’s driveways and stick to straight burglary”.
Hopefully, though, you’re also scratching your head (at least a little) and quietly asking yourself: “We can do that? We can heap on extra punishment authorized by a new law written after a crime has already occurred?”
The answer, of course, is “no”. We can’t do that. Such a policy would violate the “Ex Post Facto” Clause of the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 10) and our own Arizona Constitution (Article 2, Section 25). This is an important protection that emphasizes fair notice, even if we all have a pretty good idea that any one offender on our minds would have behaved exactly the same way—with or without that fair notice.
Said another way, this rule was never really meant for the determined, hardcore wrongdoer who loves to hurt people, no matter the consequence. It exists for the rest of us, including members of our society whose names we will never hear. We will not hear their names precisely because they did think twice about bad behavior when they learned a given law had changed.
This protection also, incidentally, protects all of us from being selectively prosecuted by the government out of political motivation—with crimes invented ‘after the fact’ and then used to arrest and jail us.
C. Application to Family Court
This takes us to the final step: applying all these fairness rules to the Alec & Lydia Act.
So, what parts of the Act can be used right now in all cases? And which cannot? I will answer three different ways.
First, I will just answer.
Second, I will outline the general rules that our Arizona appellate courts have already enforced for years. Nothing elaborate. Just two or three sentences apiece that give you a starting point for your own investigation.
Third, for readers who are legal professionals or just enjoy reading legal content, I will include citations to case law that back up what I am saying.
🦉 Short Answer
Except for the new definition of ‘coercive control’ and its inclusion in the (related) definition of ‘domestic violence’, every aspect of the Alec & Lydia Act can—and should—be applied to all current and future litigation.
🌋 (Mostly) Safe Conclusions
🌵 Arizona requires fair notice for new “civil” legislation, too, including family law. It’s not just a protection for criminal court. The fair notice associated with civil legislation is guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to our U.S. Constitution. A new law cannot interfere with a person’s “vested, substantive rights” by tacking on new legal consequences for behavior that occurred before that law was introduced.
San Carlos Apache Tribe v. Superior Court, 193 Ariz. 195, 205, ¶ 15 (1999), citing Hall v. ANR Freight Sys., 149 Ariz. 130, 139 (1986); see also St. Joseph’s Hosp. & Med. Ctr. v. Superior Court, 164 Ariz. 454, 456 (App. 1990)
🌵 Raising one’s own child is a fundamental, substantive right.
Brionna J. v. Dep’t of Child Safety, 255 Ariz. 471, 476, ¶ 18 (2023), citing Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 753 (1982)
🌵 The “filing date” of a petition means almost nothing, and it doesn’t help to “dismiss and refile” those papers. Otherwise, people could manipulate due process far too easily. The real question is when the acts in question occurred and which law was in play at the time.
Garcia v. Browning, 214 Ariz. 250, 252-53, ¶¶ 9-14 (2007); see also State v. Montes, 226 Ariz. 194, 196, ¶¶ 10-11 (2011), citing State v. Rios, 225 Ariz. 292, 299-300, ¶¶ 25-26 (2010)
🌵 Arizona law, including ARS § 1-244, does allow retroactive application of new provisions that merely introduce amended procedures.
St. Joseph’s Hosp. & Med. Ctr. v. Superior Court, 164 Ariz. 454, 455 (App. 1990), citing Bouldin v. Turek, 125 Ariz. 77, 78 (1979)
🌵 Parents do not enjoy a “vested right” to any given type of procedure. Legislation that alters only procedure, including a stricter “burden of proof” or what evidence is admissible at trial, can be safely applied to all cases. That includes family court cases that were already pending when the Alec & Lydia Act was approved by the governor.
Allen v. Fisher, 118 Ariz. 95, 96 (App. 1977), citing Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Co. v. Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, 387 U.S. 556 (1967) and United Sec. Corp. v. Bruton, 213 A.2d 892 (D.C. App. 1965)
D. Summary
Except for the new ‘coercive control’ and ‘domestic violence’ definitions, every other aspect of the Alec & Lydia Act either …
(i) repeated priorities already present in the old law;
(ii) took established rules from existing case law and scripted them into § 25-403.03 to make them more visible and better understood;
(iii) made it more difficult for proven DV offenders to overcome the barrier against receiving legal decision-making or parenting time by requiring more comprehensive evidence of their personal rehabilitation; or
(iv) added new requirements and prohibitions for judges who must decide domestic violence cases.
These amendments did not “disturb” or “infringe on” the fundamental right to parent. No doubt, they changed our courtroom procedures, what explanations must appear in a written judgment, how to more accurately assess claims of “mutual” violence, what to do with a parent whose abusive behavior is already established, and which popular excuses are no longer acceptable. But they did not change the definition of what behavior constitutes domestic violence in the first place.
There is no legal basis for refusing to apply these separate modifications to pending family court cases.
🛑 Important Note in Closing …
Up to this point, we’ve talked about when and how “retroactive” application of the Alec & Lydia Act is permitted … with one critical assumption. Specifically, we have assumed (for the sake of argument) that each instance of the abuser’s misconduct meeting the definition of ‘coercive control’ occurred before June 22, 2026. But all of that changes if the offender decides to keep pushing their abusive and controlling agenda moving forward.
When the Alec & Lydia Act became law, citizens were placed on fair notice for what coercive control was all about. They were warned that future misconduct might meet that definition, but—just as importantly—they were also tipped off that earlier misdeeds might have qualified, too. So, if an offender refrained from new misconduct after last June 22, they could cite their due process rights to prevent coercive control principles from being used against them in family court.
However, when an abuser decides to go out and do it again, they have just announced to the world “I’m not finished yet.” In other words, they have decided—all by themselves—that the series of “events” that seemed to begin and end before the Alec & Lydia Act became law is instead still an active chain.
Still an active pattern.
A person who does this has forfeited the right to complain about substantive due process because they did receive the fair notice that due process required but chose to ignore it. They can no longer protest the application of “new legal consequences to events completed before”, and they cannot cite that San Carlos decision mentioned above, for the obvious reason that the coercively controlling “events” are not “completed” after all. On the contrary, the offender is still at it.
When something like this happens, a victim is authorized by Arizona law to discuss the abuser’s earlier behaviors, not just because they’re part of that pattern, but also because they help prove that the new incident is truly nothing “new” at all. That victim’s right is expressly written into (new) ARS § 25-403.03(C)(6).
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Please remember
I intend all these blogs as educational … to promote fair discussion and encourage viewers to hesitate before trusting rumors about our laws. The blogs do not create an attorney/client relationship with our law firm, and they should not be treated as legal advice. The specific facts of any one person’s case might call for feedback very different from what I posted here.
Be careful about that, and take the sensible precaution of scheduling a meaningful consultation with a licensed Arizona attorney or legal paraprofessional who demonstrates a real understanding of intimate partner violence, including coercive control. We can certainly help you, but there are other good advocates out there, too!