Pen. Code, § 270.5 · Chapter 2. Abandonment and Neglect of Children
Pen. Code, § 270.5
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) Every parent who refuses, without lawful excuse, to accept his or her minor child into the parent’s home, or, failing to do so, to provide alternative shelter, upon being requested to do so by a child protective agency and after being informed of the duty imposed by this statute to do so, is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars ($500).
(b) For purposes of this section, “child protective agency” means a police or sheriff’s department, a county probation department, or a county welfare department.
(c) For purposes of this section, “lawful excuse” shall include, but not be limited to, a reasonable fear that the minor child’s presence in the home will endanger the safety of the parent or other persons residing in the home.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Added by Stats. 1984, Ch. 1616, Sec. 1.
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=PEN§ionNum=270.5.
- Text hash
- sha256 25bbff48a037ac4d46aefbe291ae65994e1e25252a6b2281e6bf6b6ea78e47b1
- 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
Cited by 1 provision
Provisions in this library whose text cites Pen. Code, § 270.5. Each shows the citation as that text prints it.
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