Domestic Violence Prevention Act: forced marriage

People facing forced marriage, including an attempted or legally invalid marriage, can seek domestic-violence protections before or after a ceremony. Courts may address coercion by relatives or others who help arrange, fund, officiate, or facilitate the marriage.

What the law does ​

• Defines forced marriage as compelling a person who does not or cannot consent to enter, attempt to enter, or remain in a marriage through force, fraud, coercion, duress, abuse of power, or coercive control.
• Allows all people involved in arranging, officiating, financing, or facilitating a forced or attempted forced marriage to be named in one protective-order case.
• Treats forced-marriage-related threats, document confiscation, isolation, travel arrangements, financial control, and other facilitation as conduct that disturbs a person's peace.
• Allows courts to grant protection whether or not a marriage occurred or would be legally valid, and bars denial because conduct is claimed to be customary, religious, cultural, or lawful elsewhere.
• Authorizes orders to stop a marriage from being arranged or facilitated, require return or surrender of travel and identity documents, protect school and appointment access, and prevent removal from the court's jurisdiction for a forced marriage.
• Treats interference with or threats intended to prevent a party or witness from participating in court proceedings as coercive control.

Who it affects ​

• People subjected to, or at credible risk of, a forced or attempted forced marriage.
• Family members, partners, and other people who arrange, officiate, finance, or facilitate a forced marriage.
• California courts handling domestic-violence protective-order requests.

Context ​

Violating a protective order remains a crime, and the law expands the circumstances in which such an order may be issued.