Provides relative to custody and child support

House Bill 473 amends Louisiana Civil Code Articles 131, 132, and 136(A), along with portions of Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 9, to establish a presumption favoring shared custody and to modify child support calculations. The bill creates a rebuttable presumption that shared legal and physical custody serves the best interest of a child in divorce and custody proceedings, which courts may overcome only by clear and convincing evidence. In the absence of parental agreement or when an agreement does not serve the child's best interest, courts must now award shared legal and physical custody to both parents jointly, subject to the same clear and convincing evidence standard. The legislation also revises the definition of non-custodial parents entitled to visitation rights to reference sole custody, shared custody, or joint custody specifically. Additionally, the bill removes an existing exception to child support imputation that had allowed courts to refrain from calculating earning potential for parties caring for a child under five years old, eliminating this carve-out from the voluntarily unemployed or underemployed party provisions.

The practical effect of this legislation reshapes custody determinations across Louisiana's family courts by shifting the default outcome toward shared parenting arrangements. Parents who previously might have negotiated or litigated for sole custody will now face a legal presumption requiring shared custody unless they can present clear and convincing evidence of infeasibility or contrary best interest findings. The removal of the child-care exception to earning potential calculations will particularly affect parents, predominantly mothers, who remain outside the workforce to provide childcare for very young children, as courts will now impute income to these individuals for child support purposes. Trial courts must also ensure that shared or joint custody decrees include implementation orders that mandate equal sharing of legal authority and decision-making responsibility unless infeasibility or best interest considerations dictate otherwise. Family law practitioners will need to adjust litigation strategies and settlement discussions to account for the heightened legal presumption in favor of shared arrangements.

House Bill 473 operates within Louisiana's existing family law framework established by the Civil Code provisions governing custody awards and the Louisiana Revised Statutes provisions governing child support and custody implementation. The bill builds upon existing provisions requiring courts to consider the best interest of the child as the paramount standard in custody decisions but subordinates that traditional inquiry to a new presumptive framework favoring shared custody. The legislation aligns with and modifies the joint custody implementation order requirements codified in R.S. 9:335, extending those procedural mandates to shared custody decrees as well. The child support modifications interact with the state's guidelines for income imputation contained in R.S. 9:315.11, which govern how courts calculate support obligations when parties are not fully employed. These amendments represent a substantive shift in custody policy from a best interest analysis that could result in various custody arrangements to a system that presumes shared custody as the default outcome, reflecting legislative preference for continued parental involvement while preserving judicial discretion to deviate upon clear and convincing evidence.