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Legal Information: Hawaii
Laws current as of November 15, 2024 Who can get custody?
Generally, one or both parents of a child have the right to custody. The only way someone other than a parent can get custody is if the judge finds that:
- it’s in the child’s best interests to give custody to a non-parent; and
- the non-parent:
- has “de facto custody,” which means s/he has already been acting as the child’s caretaker;
- lives in a “stable and wholesome” home; and
- is a “fit and proper” person to have custody.1
1 Haw. Rev. Stat. § 571-46(a)(2)
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