By Jason Kohlmeyer, Family Law Attorney
In Minnesota, a judge decides custody by working through 12 best interests of the child factors listed in Minnesota Statutes section 518.17. The factors cover the child’s needs, each parent’s history of caregiving, the child’s relationships, the effect of moving the child’s home or school, any domestic abuse, and how well the parents can cooperate.
No single factor decides the case. The court has to make written findings on all 12 and explain how each one shaped the custody and parenting time decision. The guiding question is never what the parents want. It is what supports the safety, stability, and healthy development of the child.
I have practiced Minnesota family law for 26 years, much of it in high-conflict custody cases, and I want to walk through what these factors actually mean once you get past the statutory language.
Here are the 12 factors a Minnesota court must consider under section 518.17, subdivision 1, paraphrased in plain language but tracking the statute closely.
That list is the heart of every custody dispute in this state, whether the parents are divorcing, were never married, or are returning to court years later.
Yes. Not that long ago, but it has changed in the last 10 years or so. This is the part many older articles get wrong. Effective August 1, 2015, the Legislature rewrote the best interests statute. The old version included 13 factors, plus 4 additional factors that applied only when a parent requested joint custody. The 2015 amendment, found at 2015 Minnesota Laws chapter 30, repealed that structure and replaced it with the single set of 12 factors above. Those same 12 factors now apply to every case, joint or sole custody alike.
The change was not just cosmetic. The old law leaned heavily on the idea of a primary caretaker, which in practice often favored the parent who had done more of the day-to-day parenting during the marriage. The current law drops that emphasis and tells courts to look forward at each parent’s capacity to care for the child, not just backward at who packed the lunches. If you read advice written before 2015, or written by someone who never updated it, you are reading about a law that no longer exists.
The 2015 rewrite added something the old statute lacked: explicit instructions to the court on how to apply the factors. A judge cannot pick one factor and ignore the rest, and the statute warns that the factors are often interrelated. The court has to make detailed written findings on each factor and connect those findings to the result.
The statute also tells judges to start from the premise that both parents can develop nurturing relationships with their children unless there is a substantial reason to think otherwise, and that parents may meet a child’s needs in different ways across different cultures and parenting styles. A judge may not weigh conduct that has nothing to do with the parent’s relationship with the child, and may not prefer one parent over the other based on gender. Disability alone is never decisive.
In practice, this means the contest is usually won or lost on a handful of factors, not all 12 equally. What I’ve seen in custody battles is the fight often centers on the history of caregiving, each parent’s stability and health, and the cooperation factor. In my experience, the cooperation factor quietly carries enormous weight, because a judge who sees one parent constantly undermining the other will read that conduct into several factors at once.
Domestic abuse, as defined in Minnesota Statutes section 518B.01, runs through this statute in two places. It is its own factor, and it also switches off the factor that asks whether a parent supports the child’s relationship with the other parent. The law does not expect an abused parent to cheerfully foster contact with an abuser.
Abuse also flips the joint custody presumptions, which I explain next. The court has to look closely at the nature and context of the abuse and what it means for the child’s safety, rather than treating a single allegation as automatically controlling.
You do need to be aware that simply claiming abuse is all that needs to be done; generally, you have to have some objective proof of physical abuse (not mental).
Minnesota distinguishes legal custody, which is decision-making authority over matters such as education, health care, and religion, from physical custody, which concerns where the child lives. If either parent asks for it, the court applies a rebuttable presumption that joint legal custody is in the child’s best interests. There is no such presumption for or against joint physical custody in most cases.
When domestic abuse has occurred between the parents, that presumption reverses: the court presumes that joint legal or joint physical custody is not in the child’s best interests. One more point that surprises parents. The statute says that simply disagreeing about whether custody should be joint or sole does not, by itself, prove that parents cannot cooperate. You do not lose the cooperation factor just by litigating.
People assume there is a magic age when a child gets to choose. There is not. The statute lets the court consider a child’s reasonable preference only if the judge finds the child has the ability, age, and maturity to express an independent and reliable preference. A thoughtful 14-year-old’s view may carry real weight. A coached 9-year-old may carry almost none. Judges are alert to a child who has been pressured, and a preference that looks rehearsed can hurt the parent who arranged it.
The statute is identical statewide, but it’s hard to underestimate the importance of local judges and how they apply the law. In Blue Earth County, where Mankato cases are heard in the Fifth Judicial District, contested custody matters typically move through an early evaluation process before they ever reach a trial.
Many southern Minnesota counties, like Dodge and Olmstead, suggest that parents try an Early Neutral Evaluation, where neutral evaluators give parents a candid read on how the 12 factors are likely to come out, often early enough to settle before legal fees mount. (I would verify the current ENE intake procedure with the specific county administrator, since the smaller districts adjust their programs periodically.)
What matters most here is scale. In a county the size of Blue Earth, Nicollet, or Le Sueur, the pool of guardians ad litem and custody evaluators is small, and the same handful of judges hear these cases year after year. The 12 factors are statewide, but how they get weighed is shaped by a small, consistent group of people who know each other and know the local resources. That is a genuine reason to work with a lawyer who regularly visits your county. Every county is just a little bit different.
Minnesota custody decisions come down to 12 best interests factors, applied to the specific facts of your family, with written findings that the judge has to justify. The law changed meaningfully in 2015, so the framework is forward-looking and applies the same factors to joint and sole custody alike. If you want to understand your own case, start by honestly assessing where you stand on caregiving history, stability, and your ability to cooperate with the other parent, because those are usually where these cases turn. The Minnesota Judicial Branch self-help center has a useful background, and the controlling law is always worth reading in full at section 518.17. If a future dispute arises, modification is governed by its own stricter standard under Minnesota Stat section 518.18.
About the author: Jason Kohlmeyer is a Minnesota family law attorney with over 25 years years of experience and a partner at Kohlmeyer Hagen Law Office in Mankato and Rochester. He has practiced family law exclusively since 2010 and has handled hundreds of custody cases across southern Minnesota. He is the author of The Divorce Survival Guide: Getting Divorced in Minnesota and has spoken on family law topics for the American Bar Association, Minn. State Bar associations and American Trial Lawyers Association. He is a member of the Minnesota State Bar Association and has been recognized by Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers of America for many years.
