HB2350

HB2350 changes standing—the legal ability to start or join a case affecting the parent-child relationship. Having standing lets someone ask a court for relief; it does not mean that person wins custody, adoption or termination of parental rights. The act applies to suits filed on or after September 1, 2025; earlier suits remain under the law in effect when filed. Final law, Sections 1–8; official history.

Caregiver routes become more restricted. The six-month route in Section 102.003(a)(9) now requires “exclusive,” rather than “actual,” care, control and possession, ending no more than 90 days before filing. It excludes the specified foster parents, relatives and designated caregivers of children placed by the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). The separate DFPS-placement route now expressly covers those three types of caregivers when the child was placed in their home for at least 12 months ending no more than 90 days before filing. That route is unavailable if the child has been returned to a parent under the monitored-return statute, or placed with a parent and the DFPS suit dismissed under Section 263.401. The time need not be continuous and uninterrupted; the court considers the child’s principal residence. The existing special adoption route for an approved foster parent of an adoptable child remains. Final law, Section 1; monitored return; DFPS dismissal provision.

The act deletes the separate six-month shared-residence route that applied when the child’s co-resident parent, guardian or managing conservator had died. It expands the route for relatives when the child’s parents are deceased from the third to the fourth degree of consanguinity. That degree system counts generations through a common ancestor and treats an adopted child as a child of the adoptive parent; first cousins are within the fourth degree. Other existing standing categories are retained and cross-references are renumbered. Final law, Sections 1–2; relationship rule; degree calculation.

Relatives and other people have different rules for joining a pending suit. A grandparent or other relative within the child’s fourth degree may seek managing conservatorship—the main legal responsibility for a child—on satisfactory proof of significant impairment to the child’s physical health or emotional development, or the specified parent/conservator/custodian consent or participation. For intervention in an existing case, such relatives must show that appointing one parent as sole managing conservator or both as joint managing conservators would significantly impair the child’s physical health or emotional development. The separate route for other people retains the substantial-past-contact requirement and the significant-impairment showing, and now also requires each parent’s consent. A foster parent, relative or designated caregiver relying on that latter route must also meet the DFPS-placement standing rule. The consent condition is not imposed on the separate fourth-degree-relative intervention route. Final law, Sections 3–4.

Adoption and post-termination routes also change. Section 102.005 loses two independent bases for an adoption-only suit or a termination suit joined with adoption: possession/control for two of the preceding three months, and a court finding of substantial past contact. It retains the stepparent route, the recent placement-for-adoption route and the specified sibling-adoption/foster-parent route. This does not erase other standing supplied elsewhere in law. Section 102.006(c)’s exception to post-termination filing limits now covers a relative within the fourth degree of the former parent, replacing its former list of particular relatives of the child. The person must still file for managing conservatorship within 90 days after termination in the specified DFPS suit. The reference person here is the former parent, not the child; the exception removes that statutory filing barrier rather than awarding custody. Final law, Sections 5–6; post-termination limits.