Piqui’s Law is California Senate Bill 331, signed in October 2023 and effective January 1, 2024. It is California’s version of the federal Kayden’s Law. It requires family court judges to receive training on domestic violence and child abuse, and it bars courts from ordering reunification camps and similar programs that work through forced transport, no-contact orders, or custody transfers.
A note on the abuse boundary, first
Estrangement caused by genuine abuse is not parental alienation, and the two must never be conflated. Piqui’s Law exists because a court failed to protect a child from a dangerous parent. Nothing on this page should be read as minimizing that risk. If a child may be unsafe, contact local law enforcement or a child-protection agency before anything else.
Disclaimer. This page is general education about a state law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and it does not tell you how the law applies to a specific case. Anyone with a live custody matter should consult an attorney licensed in their own state.
The boy behind the law
Piqui’s Law is named for Aramazd “Piqui” Andressian Jr., a five-year-old boy from South Pasadena, California. In April 2017, during his parents’ contentious divorce and custody dispute, Piqui’s father killed him after a trip to Disneyland. His father later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced in August 2017 to 25 years to life in prison, as reported by CNN and other outlets.
Piqui’s mother, Ana Estevez, had raised safety concerns in the family court system before her son’s death. After it, she became one of California’s most visible advocates for family court reform, working with legislators for years to pass a law in her son’s name. This page handles the case briefly and with restraint, because that is what the family’s loss deserves. The details that matter for understanding the law are these: a parent warned the system, the system allowed unsupervised access, and a child died.
It took multiple legislative sessions for the bill to pass. The version that became law, SB 331, was authored by State Senator Susan Rubio, cleared the Legislature in September 2023, and was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 13, 2023, as covered by ABC7 Los Angeles. It took effect on January 1, 2024.
What Piqui’s Law is
Formally, the statute is titled “Piqui’s Law: Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act.” The full bill text is available on the California Legislative Information site. That long title is not an accident. It deliberately echoes the federal Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act, better known as Kayden’s Law, which Congress passed in 2022 as part of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization.
Where the federal law is a grant incentive that invites states to act, Piqui’s Law is a state actually acting. California wrote its own version of the federal blueprint directly into state law. The law has two main pillars: mandatory training for the judges and court professionals who decide custody cases, and firm limits on a category of court-ordered “reunification” programs that critics describe as coercive.
Pillar one: judicial training
The first pillar addresses what advocates saw as the root failure in Piqui’s case: decision-makers who did not recognize danger when a protective parent described it.
Piqui’s Law directs that judges and relevant court personnel who hear child custody matters receive training on domestic violence and child abuse, including coercive control and the ways abuse patterns show up in custody litigation. The law also establishes reporting requirements, so that training completion is tracked rather than assumed. The goal is a bench that can tell the difference between a parent raising a genuine alarm and a parent using the court as a weapon, in both directions.
Training provisions rarely make headlines, but practitioners tend to consider them the part of the law with the broadest reach. Every custody case in California passes in front of a judicial officer. Reunification-program orders, by contrast, arise in a small fraction of cases.
Pillar two: limits on reunification programs
The second pillar is the one most relevant to parental alienation disputes. Piqui’s Law prohibits California courts from ordering family reunification treatments, programs, or services, including camps, workshops, therapeutic vacations, and educational programs, when they require or result in any of the following: the use of private youth transporters or private transportation agents, a no-contact order between the child and a parent, or a transfer of physical or legal custody of the child as part of the program.
In plain terms, a California court can no longer order the package of remedies associated with the most aggressive intensive reunification interventions: a child picked up by transport agents, cut off from the favored parent for a period, and sent to a multi-day workshop with the rejected parent. Programs of that type, such as the four-day workshop model described on the Family Bridges page, report strong results in developer-affiliated studies, but those results have no control group, and safety critics have documented accounts of children who describe the experience as traumatic. Piqui’s Law resolves that dispute, for California, on the side of caution.
What the law does not do matters just as much. It does not prohibit reunification therapy in general. Ordinary outpatient family therapy aimed at repairing a parent-child relationship remains available, as explained on what is reunification therapy and court-ordered reunification therapy. It does not bar courts from finding that alienation occurred, and it does not change California’s custody standards. It removes a specific set of coercive mechanisms from the court’s toolbox.
How Piqui’s Law relates to Kayden’s Law
The two laws are parent and child, in legislative terms. Kayden’s Law is the federal statute, Title XV of the 2022 VAWA reauthorization, named for Kayden Mancuso of Pennsylvania. It does not order any state to change its custody laws. Instead it offers enhanced federal STOP grant funding to states that adopt a package of reforms: protecting a child’s bond with a safe parent, restricting unproven reunification treatment, raising expert-qualification standards, and training judges. The federal text is on congress.gov.
Piqui’s Law is California’s response to that invitation, and it makes California one of the early states with a conforming statute, alongside Colorado’s HB23-1178, Pennsylvania’s Act 8 of 2024, and Utah’s Om’s Law, as of mid-2026. Each state writes its own version, and the versions differ. California’s law concentrates on the judicial-training and reunification-program provisions of the federal framework; it is a California statute with California’s own scope and definitions, not a copy of the federal text.
One naming note prevents a common confusion. Kayden’s Law is federal and named for a Pennsylvania child. Piqui’s Law is a California statute named for a California child. Both carry the same formal title, Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act, which is why the two are so often mixed up. The state-by-state picture, including bills that move in the opposite direction, is tracked on the Legislation hub.
What it means for families
For a parent in a California custody case who fears the other parent is dangerous, the law adds two protections. The judge hearing the case is required to have training in domestic violence and child abuse, including coercive control. And no California court can order a child into a reunification program built on transport agents, custody transfer, or a no-contact order, whatever label the program carries.
For a parent who believes their child is being turned against them, the picture is more mixed, and honesty requires saying so. Genuine alienation cases exist, and in the most severe of them, some clinicians and researchers have argued that strong remedies are the only ones that work. Those remedies are now off the table in California. A targeted parent can still document the behavior, still present it to the court, still seek custody modifications and conventional therapy. What they cannot get is a court-ordered intensive program of the restricted type. Whether that trade-off protects more children than it harms is exactly the debate described below; what is not debatable is that the legal landscape changed on January 1, 2024.
Families outside California are not directly affected, although Piqui’s Law is widely cited as a model, and similar bills have appeared in other legislatures.
What it means for practitioners
For attorneys, the practical points are narrow but significant. Requests for intensive reunification interventions in California must now be checked against the statute’s prohibitions, and proposed treatment orders need to avoid the restricted mechanisms. Out-of-state orders and programs that involve transporting a California child raise their own questions that belong with qualified counsel.
For clinicians, the law draws a line between treatment models. Office-based reunification work, co-parenting therapy, and family therapy continue. Practitioners affiliated with intensive workshop models cannot receive California court orders that depend on transport, custody transfer, or no-contact provisions. Clinicians working with resist-refuse dynamics in California now operate in a protection-first statutory environment, which aligns with the screen-first consensus position reflected in the AFCC and NCJFCJ joint statement on parent-child contact problems.
For evaluators and expert witnesses, the judicial-training provisions also shift the audience: the bench hearing their testimony is, by design, more literate in domestic violence, coercive control, and trauma than before.
The debate, briefly
Piqui’s Law passed with strong support, and domestic-violence-protective advocates regard it as a landmark. In their view, courts had been ordering children into unregulated, unproven programs over the objections of protective parents, and the law ends a documented harm.
Some alienation-affirming clinicians and parents raise the opposite concern: that in the rare severe case where a child has been profoundly turned against a safe parent, the now-prohibited remedies were sometimes the only ones that changed anything, and that a genuinely alienating parent can shelter behind the new restrictions. Centrist scholars point out that both risks are real and that the hard problem is accuracy, telling justified estrangement apart from engineered alienation case by case. That larger question is covered on is parental alienation real.
This site does not take a side on the policy balance. It reports what the law says, why it exists, and where reasonable people disagree.
Frequently asked questions
What is Piqui’s Law?
Piqui’s Law is California Senate Bill 331 (2023), formally titled Piqui’s Law: Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act. Effective January 1, 2024, it requires training on domestic violence and child abuse for judges who hear custody cases and prohibits courts from ordering reunification programs that rely on private transport agents, no-contact orders, or custody transfers.
Who was Piqui?
Aramazd “Piqui” Andressian Jr. was a five-year-old boy from South Pasadena, California, killed by his father in April 2017 during a custody dispute. His father pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life. Piqui’s mother, Ana Estevez, led the multi-year advocacy effort that produced the law named in his memory.
Does Piqui’s Law ban reunification therapy in California?
No. It bans a specific category of court-ordered reunification programs: those that require or result in private youth transporters, a no-contact order with a parent, or a transfer of custody as part of the program. Ordinary outpatient reunification therapy and family therapy remain available to California courts and families.
How is Piqui’s Law different from Kayden’s Law?
Kayden’s Law is the 2022 federal statute that offers states extra grant funding if they adopt child-safety reforms in custody cases. Piqui’s Law is California’s own statute implementing that framework, centered on judicial training and restrictions on coercive reunification programs. Both share the formal title Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act.
Does Piqui’s Law mention parental alienation?
The law is written as a child-safety and domestic-violence statute rather than a ruling on alienation science. Its reunification-program restrictions, however, directly limit remedies that courts had used in alienation cases, so it shapes how severe alienation claims can be addressed in California even though it does not decide whether alienation is real.
Sources and further reading
- California Legislature. SB 331, Piqui’s Law: Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act (2023). leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
- U.S. Congress. H.R.2471, Title XV, Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence Act (VAWA Reauthorization Act of 2022, Public Law 117-103). congress.gov
- CNN (August 23, 2017). California father sentenced to 25 years to life in son’s death. cnn.com
- ABC7 Los Angeles (October 2023). Piqui’s Law: Newsom signs bill aimed at keeping children safe in custody disputes. abc7.com
If you or your child are in crisis
Help is available right now.
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988. 988lifeline.org
- Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline. 1-800-422-4453. childhelp.org
- NAMI HelpLine. 1-800-950-6264. nami.org/help
Last reviewed: 2026-06-10. Author: Alex Buckles (PAC Founder). Editorial review: held to the PAC Editorial Standards (balance, primary-source citation, reader safety); an independent expert review board will be appointed.
