The General Assembly recognizes that children are defenseless and that there is no greater moral obligation upon the General Assembly than to provide for the protection of our children and that our child welfare system needs to be strengthened by establishing a clear policy of the state that the best interests of the children must be paramount and shall have precedence at every stage of juvenile court proceedings. The best interest of the child shall be the standard for juvenile court determinations as to whether a child should be reunited with his or her family or removed from or remain in a home wherein the child has been abused or neglected.
Ark. Code Ann. § 9-27-102
Best interest of the child
Applied in 14 court decisions — leading case J.T. v. Arkansas Department of Human Services (1997)
Most recently applied in 2023 Ark. App. 400 - Ashley Wagner v. Arkansas Department of Human Services and Minor Children (September 2023)
Acts 1995, No. 1337, § 1; 2011, No. 591, § 4.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: Arkansas General Assembly. Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Arkansas statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.