Support Leavy’s Law: The Trauma-Informed Custody Reform Act

Protect Children by Protecting Survivors

Family courts are meant to protect children and families. Yet families affected by domestic violence, coercive control, custodial interference, post-separation abuse, and other forms of family violence can encounter court processes that fail to recognize or adequately respond to the harm they are experiencing.

Parents who follow court orders may find themselves confronting unlawful custodial interference or unexpected changes to established arrangements. Children can become caught in prolonged legal conflict. Survivors may fear that reporting abuse will be used against them. And when court decisions or processes lack transparency, families may be left without a clear and legitimate justification for life-changing decisions that affect their children and families..

This must change.

Leavy’s Law is a proposed trauma-informed custody reform initiative intended to strengthen fairness, transparency, accountability, and child-centered practice in family court proceedings.

Why This Matters
Families navigating high-conflict and abuse-related custody cases may encounter serious procedural and safety concerns, including:

Unlawful withholding of children
Custody changes without adequate process or explanation
Retaliatory or abusive litigation tactics
Repeated legal harassment or intimidation
Financial consequences arising from unresolved custody disputes
Emotional and psychological harm to children and families
These experiences can harm children.
They can retraumatize survivors.
They can undermine public trust in the institutions families depend upon.

No family should have to endure preventable harm because the systems intended to serve them failed to recognize or responsibly respond to what was occurring.

What Leavy’s Law Seeks to Do
Leavy’s Law proposes reforms designed to:

✔ Strengthen enforcement and accountability when existing custody orders are violated
✔ Prevent unlawful custodial conduct from creating an advantage in subsequent custody proceedings
✔ Require written explanations for significant custody changes and deviations from existing orders
✔ Improve recognition of coercive control and post-separation abuse
✔ Strengthen safeguards against abusive or retaliatory use of legal processes
✔ Promote safe, child-centered custody transitions
✔ Advance trauma-informed education and standards within custody proceedings
✔ Expand appropriate access to survivor advocacy and support
✔ Strengthen transparency, reporting, and accountability

The goal is not to predetermine custody outcomes. It is to promote lawful, transparent, trauma-informed processes in which child safety, procedural fairness, and professional accountability matter.

Who Benefits From These Reforms
Leavy’s Law seeks to strengthen protections and procedural fairness for:

Children affected by custody disputes
Parents complying with lawful custody orders
Survivors of domestic violence and coercive control
Families experiencing custodial interference or post-separation abuse
Families navigating high-conflict custody proceedings
Communities that depend upon fair and trustworthy courts
Every child deserves stability.
Every survivor deserves fairness.
Every family deserves lawful process.

Why I Started This Petition
I created this petition after experiencing firsthand how failures within court processes can tear families apart.

Through unlawful custodial retention and a lack of trauma awareness, my family experienced harm that revealed how profoundly failures in professional judgment, accountability, and process can affect children and parents long after a case ends.

That experience became a catalyst for something larger.

I founded Trauma-Informed Support Advocates, Inc. (TISA) to help advance education, advocacy, and systemic reforms intended to reduce preventable harm to people navigating complex systems.

This petition is about turning pain into protection—and lived experience into constructive systemic reform.

Our Call to Action
We urge lawmakers, judicial leaders, policymakers, and other stakeholders to examine and advance meaningful family-court reforms through legislation, court policy, professional standards, trauma-informed education, transparency, and appropriate accountability mechanisms.

We call upon leaders to:

Support the principles advanced through Leavy’s Law
Strengthen family-court procedures
Advance trauma-informed standards
Improve transparency and accountability
Protect the safety and well-being of children
No child should be taken from a safe home without lawful process.
No survivor should be punished for speaking up.

How You Can Help
By signing this petition, you are adding your voice to a call for family-court practices that better protect children, respect lawful process, recognize the dynamics of abuse and coercive control, and hold institutions accountable for the tremendous responsibility entrusted to them.

Please sign and share.

Together, we can help build systems worthy of the families who depend upon them.

Email: contact@traumainformedsupportadvocates.com