Fam. Code, § 3140 · Chapter 9. Check to Determine Whether Child is Missing Person
Fam. Code, § 3140
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) Subject to subdivisions (b) and (c), before granting or modifying a custody order in a case in which one or both parents of the child have not appeared either personally or by counsel, the court shall require the parent, petitioner, or other party appearing in the case to submit a certified copy of the child’s birth certificate to the court. The court or its designee shall forward the certified copy of the birth certificate to the local police or sheriff’s department which shall check with the National Crime Information Center Missing Person System to ascertain whether the child has been reported missing or is the victim of an abduction and shall report the results of the check to the court.
(b) If the custody matter before the court also involves a petition for the dissolution of marriage or the adjudication of paternity rights or duties, this section applies only to a case in which there is no proof of personal service of the petition on the absent parent.
(c) For good cause shown, the court may waive the requirements of this section.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Enacted by Stats. 1992, Ch. 162, Sec. 10. Operative January 1, 1994.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=FAM§ionNum=3140.
- Text hash
- sha256 0c6c1075d569223524e34a42cc8029330ebf7ce4ebbca55def611053b7da7b25
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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Cited by 2 provisions
Provisions in this library whose text cites Fam. Code, § 3140. Each shows the citation as that text prints it.
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