Iowa Code

Iowa Code § 232.81 (2026)

Complaint

✓ current as of July 2026

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1. Any person having knowledge of the circumstances may file a complaint with the person or agency designated by the court to perform intake duties alleging that a child is a child in need of assistance.

2. Upon receipt of a complaint, the court may request the department, juvenile probation office, or other authorized agency or individual to conduct a preliminary investigation of the complaint to determine if further action should be taken.

3. A petition alleging the child to be a child in need of assistance may be filed pursuant to section 232.87 provided the allegations of the complaint, if proven, are sufficient to establish the court’s jurisdiction and the filing is in the best interests of the child. [SS15, §254-a15; C24, 27, 31, 35, 39, §3621; C46, 50, 54, 58, 62, §232.5; C71, 73, 75, 77, §232.3; C79, 81, §232.81] 83 Acts, ch 96, §157, 159; 2011 Acts, ch 98, §6; 2023 Acts, ch 19, §613 Referred to in §232.21, 232.83 \n

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 1 case, 1995–1995 · leading case: In Re the Marriage of Mitchell, 531 N.W.2d 132 (Iowa 1995).

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In Re the Marriage of Mitchell, 531 N.W.2d 132 (Iowa 1995). · cites it 2× “See Iowa Code § 232.81 . Children affected by a dissolution decree are not unprotected merely because strangers to the dissolution may not initiate modification proceedings.”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.