Modifying Custody or Support Orders in Texas

Final orders in Texas family cases are built to hold. A parent who needs a different schedule, a different conservatorship arrangement, or a different support amount cannot simply outgrow the old order; a court has to sign a new one, and chapter 156 of the Family Code decides when it may. The design is easy to state and hard to satisfy: change is possible, the party asking for it carries the burden, and the grounds are specific.

Section 156.001 grants the power in a single sentence. The court with continuing, exclusive jurisdiction over the child may modify its orders for conservatorship, support, or possession and access. Section 156.002 says who may ask: a party affected by the order, a person or entity who at the time of filing has standing to sue under chapter 102, and the sibling of a child who is separated from the child because of the actions of the Department of Family and Protective Services, who may file requesting access to the child. Filing carries a cost of its own for the wrong case. Under section 156.005, when a court finds a modification suit frivolous or designed to harass, it must say so in the order and assess the attorney's fees, court costs, and expenses it finds reasonable and necessary against the person who filed it.

Three grounds to change conservatorship or possession

The general gate is section 156.101(a). Modification must be in the child's best interest, and the person asking must establish at least one of three things.

First, the circumstances of the child, a conservator, or another party affected by the order have materially and substantially changed. The comparison point is precise. Change is measured from the earlier of the date the order was rendered or the date the parties signed the mediated or collaborative law settlement agreement the order rests on. The chapter never defines the phrase in general terms, and it lists no everyday qualifying events; what counts is worked out by the courts case by case. What the chapter does instead is declare certain specific events sufficient by statute, described below.

Second, a child who is at least 12 years old may tell the judge in chambers, through the interview procedure in section 153.009, which person the child prefers to determine where the child primarily lives. The conversation in chambers opens the door. Best interest still decides what walks through it, because 156.101(a) makes the interview a ground for modification, not a command to grant it.

Third, modification is available when the conservator who holds the residence designation has voluntarily turned over primary care and possession of the child to another person for at least six months. Section 156.101(b) writes in one exception: the six-month ground does not apply when the time away was a temporary arrangement during that conservator's military deployment, mobilization, or temporary military duty.

Changes the statute names itself

Several events are a material and substantial change as a matter of law, no argument required. Under section 156.104, a conservator's conviction for an offense under Penal Code section 21.02, or a conviction or an order deferring adjudication for an offense involving the abuse of a child under Penal Code section 21.11, 22.011, or 22.021. The same for a conviction or an order deferring adjudication for an offense involving family violence, under section 156.1045, to conform the order to the requirements of section 153.004(d). The death of a conservator, under section 156.106. And newest, effective September 1, 2025, section 156.107: a finding that a conservator is in contempt for denying court-ordered possession or access, after at least three earlier contempt findings for violating a possession order. The abuse and family-violence grounds bite back if misused. Filing on either while knowing the other person was never convicted and never received deferred adjudication is a Class B misdemeanor.

The one-year rule for the child's primary residence

The firmest gate in the chapter guards the residence designation during the order's first year. Under section 156.102, a suit seeking to change which person designates where the child primarily lives, filed within one year of the order (again measured from the earlier of rendition or the signing of the settlement agreement behind it), must arrive with a sworn affidavit attached. The affidavit must contain supporting facts and at least one of exactly three allegations:

• the child's present environment may endanger the child's physical health or significantly impair the child's emotional development;
• the person holding the residence designation is the one seeking or consenting to the change, and the change is in the child's best interest; or
• that person voluntarily gave up primary care and possession for at least six months, and the change is in the child's best interest.

The affidavit is the whole audition. Under 156.102(c), the court reads it first, and unless the facts stated are adequate to support one of the three allegations, the court must deny the relief and refuse to schedule a hearing. The six-month relinquishment ground carries the same military-duty exception found in 156.101, this time in subsection (d).

Two boundaries keep the rule in proportion. It reaches only suits aimed at the residence designation; other modification requests inside the first year proceed under 156.101 without any affidavit. And once the first anniversary passes, 156.102 falls away entirely.

A related restraint applies while any modification suit is pending. Section 156.006 bars a temporary order that creates or changes the residence designation, or creates, changes, or eliminates a geographic restriction, unless the change is in the child's best interest and the child's present circumstances would significantly impair physical health or emotional development, or the designated person relinquished care for more than six months, or a child 12 or older has named a preference in chambers. The significant-impairment route has its own affidavit screen in subsection (b-1), built like the one-year rule's. And under subsection (c), the relinquishment route does not apply to a conservator who temporarily relinquished care during the conservator's military deployment, military mobilization, or temporary military duty.

Changing child support

Support modification lives in its own subchapter with its own standards. Except as provided by subsection (a-1), (a-2), or (b), section 156.401(a) offers two independent branches.

Branch one mirrors the conservatorship test: the circumstances of the child or a person affected by the order have materially and substantially changed since the earlier of the order's rendition or the signing of the mediated or collaborative law settlement agreement it is based on. Here too the chapter declares some qualifying events outright. Incarceration of the paying parent for more than 180 days is a material and substantial change under subsection (c-1). Release from incarceration is one under subsection (d), provided the obligation was abated, reduced, or suspended during the confinement.

Branch two requires no changed circumstances at all. If three years have passed since the order was rendered or last modified, and the monthly amount under the order differs by either 20 percent or $100 from the amount the child support guidelines would produce, the order may be modified. The guidelines doing that math are the chapter 154 percentages, 20 percent of monthly net resources for one child on the standard schedule under section 154.125, a formula the child support guide unpacks in full. Incomes drift between orders; this branch exists so a guideline order can be trued up on arithmetic alone after enough time.

One carve-out protects bargains. When the parties agreed to an order setting support at an amount different from what the guidelines would award, subsection (a-1) closes the three-year branch for that order: it may be modified only on a material and substantial change in circumstances.

The guidelines then get a second job. Under section 156.402, the court may consult them to decide whether circumstances have changed at all, and where an existing order does not substantially conform to them, the court may modify it to bring it into line, if doing so serves the child's best interest.

Under 156.401(b), except as provided by sections 231.1015, 231.1016, and 231.1017, a modified amount reaches only obligations accruing after the earlier of service of citation or an appearance in the modification suit.

Two standards, one courthouse

Conservatorship and support are separate legal questions with separate tests, even when the same life event drives both. A move, a job loss, or a six-month relinquishment may satisfy one standard and not the other, and nothing requires a court to change both just because it changes one. Section 156.401(c) makes the cleanest version of the point: an order of joint conservatorship, in and of itself, is not grounds for modifying support. The connection runs through facts, never through labels.

Both requests can still ride in a single suit, and the chapter protects the parent who combines them. Under section 156.007, pleading a material and substantial change on one issue is not, on that basis alone, an admission that circumstances changed on any other matter. How rights and duties were allocated in the first place is the subject of the conservatorship guide, and the orders that surround a modification case, from possession schedules to enforcement, are mapped across the Texas family law guides.

What the chapter says is not enough

Chapter 156 spends a run of short sections closing off familiar arguments. Under section 156.105, a conservator's military deployment, mobilization, or temporary duty does not by itself amount to a material and substantial change for possession or access, though temporary orders under subchapter L of chapter 153 remain available. Under section 156.403, a history of voluntarily paying more than the order requires is not cause to raise the ordered amount. Under section 156.404, a new spouse's net resources stay out of the calculation in both directions: they cannot be added to a parent's resources, and the new spouse's needs cannot be subtracted. And under section 156.405, growth in the receiving household's needs, standard of living, or lifestyle does not by itself warrant an increase.

Each section number above carries a link to the enacted text itself, the sourcing standard kept across the full guide library.