HF3204 - Minnesota Family Law Changes

• Establishes public policy prioritizing frequent and substantial contact between children and both parents, while ensuring safe environments and shared parenting responsibilities.

• Modifies parenting time standards to presume each parent receives minimum 25 percent parenting time, and creates priority hearing procedures when a parent is denied parenting time for 14+ consecutive days.

• Changes spousal maintenance terminology from "temporary/permanent" to "transitional/indefinite" and establishes rebuttable presumptions based on marriage length: no maintenance for marriages under 5 years, transitional maintenance up to half the marriage length for 5-20 year marriages, and indefinite maintenance for 20+ year marriages.

• Creates new Chapter 257E establishing legal framework for assisted reproduction, defining rights of intended parents, donors, and procedures for establishing parentage of children conceived through assisted reproduction.

• Modernizes antenuptial and postnuptial agreement requirements by adding detailed procedural and substantive fairness standards, allowing for severability of unenforceable provisions, and updates statutory language to use gender-neutral terms.

• Effective date: August 1, 2024, for all provisions except parenting time changes which apply to proceedings commenced on or after that date.