On Sept. 1, 2025, Texas implemented one of the most consequential updates to its Family Code in decades. While family law reforms often arrive as incremental changes, this legislative package reshapes core questions that define modern family practice: Who qualifies as a parent? How aggressively should courts enforce parenting time? And what authority do parents hold over a child’s financial, educational and identity-related decisions?
Texas is a jurisdiction whose legislative choices frequently reverberate through national discourse, particularly in areas touching parental rights, conservative social policy and access to the courts.
The 2025 reforms are sweeping, philosophically distinct and designed to change the way families navigate divorce, custody and support for years to come.
Narrower Standing
The most far-reaching changes in the 2025 overhaul concern standing, the legal doorway that determines who may take part in a custody or access case. Texas moved decisively toward a system that privileges biological parenthood and sharply limits third-party intervention.
The clearest shift appears in the revision to standing based on prior involvement with a child. For years, Texas allowed individuals who had exercised actual care, control and possession of a child for six months to file a suit affecting the parent-child relationship. Under the 2025 changes, the standard becomes exclusive care, control and possession, a markedly higher threshold that disqualifies many people who previously had a path into court.
This seemingly small word change carries outsized impact. It restricts standing for step-parents who share daily caretaking responsibilities, for LGBTQ+ non-biological parents raising a child with a partner, and for long-term caregivers who support a parent in the household. If a biological parent was present—even intermittently—these individuals no longer meet the statutory definition of exclusive care.
A More Limited Path for Non-Parents
Another significant revision eliminates the longstanding ability of a step-parent or non-biological partner to file suit upon the death of the legal parent with whom they lived. That provision is now removed, closing the door on a safety valve that protected many blended and same-sex families.
Foster-parent standing also narrows. A foster parent who once qualified after 12 months of placement may now be barred if the child is returned to a biological parent under monitored return or if the Department of Family and Protective Services dismisses its case.
While these limits contract access for non-parents, the Legislature expanded standing in one direction: extended biological relatives. Texas now recognizes relatives within the fourth degree of consanguinity, allowing great-aunts, great-uncles and similarly distant kin to initiate certain actions. This expansion aligns with a broader policy preference for blood-relative placement in DFPS cases.
Procedurally, the overhaul adds two new requirements that set a higher standard for any non-parent seeking standing. First, every filing by a non-parent must now include an affidavit establishing the factual basis for standing and explaining how denying relief would significantly impair the child’s physical health or emotional development. This requirement applies to all cases pending on or after Sept. 1, even those filed months or years beforehand. Second, petitioners must attach a certified copy of the child’s birth certificate if one is available, or explain why they cannot do so.
Combined, these changes reflect a clear policy preference: Texas is narrowing the definition of who counts as a parent in the eyes of the court, reinforcing biological ties and raising procedural barriers to third-party involvement.
Immediate Expansion of Parenting Time
While the standing reforms restrict who may enter court, another set of changes significantly strengthens the position of parents who already have enforceable rights. Texas has entered a new era of robust enforcement, targeting visitation interference and increasing noncustodial parenting time through statutory defaults.
The most visible example is the shift to the Expanded Standard Possession Order (ESPO) as the default schedule when parents live within 50 miles of each other. Previously, a parent needed to affirmatively elect ESPO—an arrangement that includes Thursday overnights and extended weekend possession.
Under the 2025 update, courts begin with ESPO automatically unless evidence shows it would be impractical or inappropriate. This change normalizes greater involvement for noncustodial parents from the outset of litigation.
Updating Three Strikes
Texas also introduced one of the strictest possession-interference regimes in the country: the three-strikes law. A custodial parent who blocks visitation may now face escalating criminal consequences. A single act of interference can constitute a Class C misdemeanor for enticing or persuading a child away from the other parent. Upon a third conviction, the offense becomes a state jail felony carrying up to two years of confinement.
Repeated violations may be used as evidence in modification proceedings, enabling a court to change custody based on a demonstrated pattern of obstruction. This update also reverses the traditional enforcement imbalance. For years, noncustodial parents were the ones most likely to face penalties for withholding a child; the 2025 reforms impose symmetrical accountability.
Also notable is the Legislature’s prohibition on intensive deprogramming interventions sometimes used in parental-alienation disputes. These programs involved isolating a child from one parent for extended periods and placing them in reunification environments. Texas now forbids these practices, joining a growing list of jurisdictions rejecting such methods.
These measures signal a firm commitment to consistent enforcement, predictable schedules and increased oversight of behaviors that undermine court-ordered possession. The state’s approach is straightforward: courts should protect a child’s relationship with both parents, and violations should carry consequences that match the seriousness of the interference.
Child Support, School Choice and Clarified Parental Authority
A final set of reforms alters the financial and decision-making landscape for families, affecting child support, educational authority and the treatment of gender-identity conflicts under the Family Code.
The change attracting the most immediate attention is the increase to the child support cap. Texas raised the maximum net resources figure from $9,200 to $11,700, the largest adjustment in more than two decades. The resulting guideline support for one child now reaches $2,340 per month. The Legislature framed the increase as an overdue recalibration to account for rising childcare and living costs. However, the law maintains a critical boundary: existing child support orders do not adjust automatically.
Any modification still requires statutory grounds, such as a material and substantial change in circumstances or the passage of three years with at least a $100 variance between the old order and the guideline amount. This preserves judicial oversight and prevents routine litigation triggered solely by the new cap.
Educational decision-making saw a major shift as well. Texas now grants courts the authority to assign one parent the exclusive right to enroll a child in school and to determine the use of school vouchers. In a state where voucher policies carry significant political and financial implications, this provision ensures that one parent may act independently without requiring consensus or court intervention. For families navigating contentious educational disputes, this change provides clarity where joint decision-making once created impasse.
The 2025 reforms also address gender-identity issues directly, codifying that a parent’s refusal to use a child’s preferred pronouns or name does not constitute abuse under the Family Code. This clarification extends the direction set by prior statewide restrictions on gender-affirming care and reflects an explicit legislative stance on contested cultural questions.
A New Framework With National Implications
Texas’ 2025 family code reforms reveal a state drawing sharper lines about what kinds of family relationships the law will recognize and protect. That shift will feel abstract in legislative text but very concrete in people’s lives. It will show up in the step-parent who learns that years of daily caregiving no longer confer a foothold in court, in the parent suddenly navigating a new rhythm of overnights, and in the families who must restructure routines because the law now assigns authority differently than before.
The deeper question these changes raise is not whether the system works—courts will continue to process cases—but what vision of family Texas has chosen to elevate. It is a vision rooted in biological ties, firmer hierarchies of decision-making and stricter boundaries around who may speak for a child.
For some families, that clarity will feel stabilizing. For others, especially those built through remarriage, same-sex parenting, or informal caregiving, it may feel like the legal ground beneath them is narrowing.
The real work ahead falls not only to lawyers interpreting new rules but to families adapting to a system that now defines their relationships differently. These reforms will be felt most in the everyday moments—school choices, exchange routines, conversations about identity—long before appellate courts weigh in. And it is in those moments that Texans will come to understand what this new legal era truly asks of them, and what kind of family structures it ultimately supports.
