Title: Guardianship of Kiara Lantigua et al.

State: maine

Issuer: Maine Supreme Court

Document:

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT 
Reporter of Decisions 
Decision: 
2016 ME 29  
Docket: 
Wal-15-135 
Argued: 
September 18, 2015  
Decided: 
February 11, 2016 
Corrected: 
May 26, 2016 
 
Panel: 
SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and 
HUMPHREY, JJ. 
 
 
GUARDIANSHIP OF KIARA L. LANTIGUA et al. 
 
 
GORMAN, J. 
[¶1]  Leopoldo A. Lantigua, the father of Kiara L. Lantigua and Bella A. 
Lantigua, appeals from a judgment of the Waldo County Probate Court 
(Longley, J.) appointing Dale C. Tempesta, the girls’ maternal grandmother, as 
limited guardian of the girls.  Lantigua argues that the court erred by granting 
Tempesta guardianship based on both her status as the children’s de facto guardian 
and the temporarily intolerable living situation created by Lantigua.  We affirm 
that portion of the Probate Court’s judgment that awards Tempesta a limited 
guardianship, but remand to the court to comply with 18-A M.R.S. § 5-105 (2015).   
I.  BACKGROUND 
 
[¶2]  The court made the following findings of fact, which are supported by 
competent evidence in the record.  Kiara and Bella are fourteen and nine years old, 
respectively.  When Lantigua and the girls’ mother were divorced in 2010, the 
District Court (Belfast, Worth, J.) awarded Lantigua and the mother shared 
 
2 
parental rights and responsibilities, and awarded the mother the right to provide the 
children’s primary residence.  Lantigua, who has served in the United States Navy 
for about seventeen years, was deployed at sea during the years following the 
divorce, and the girls lived with their mother in Maine. 
[¶3]  When concerns about the mother’s substance abuse, mental health, and 
ability to care for the girls arose in the summer of 2011, Lantigua moved to modify 
the District Court’s order.  At the time of Lantigua’s motion, he was stationed 
aboard a ship and the girls were living with Tempesta.  In his motion, Lantigua 
asked the court to “[a]ward residential care of the minor children to [Tempesta].” 
 
[¶4]  In December of 2011, before hearing Lantigua’s motion, the District 
Court (Tucker, J.) entered an ex parte order awarding Tempesta temporary custody 
of the children based upon a finding that the children were in jeopardy in the care 
of their mother.  See 19-A M.R.S. § 1653(2)(C) (2015); see also 22 M.R.S. 
§ 4002(6) (2015).  Soon thereafter, the court granted Tempesta’s request for 
intervenor status in the District Court action.  See M.R. Civ. P. 24, 111(c). 
[¶5]  After conducting a hearing in April of 2012 on Lantigua’s motion to 
modify, the District Court (Sparaco, J.) awarded Lantigua sole parental rights and 
responsibilities, see 19-A M.R.S. § 1657(1)(A) (2015), but also noted that Lantigua 
intended for the children to continue to reside with Tempesta; the court encouraged 
Lantigua to make guardianship arrangements with Tempesta:  
 
3 
[Lantigua] intends to and can make independent guardianship 
arrangement for the children while he is away through the Navy’s 
Family Care Plan.  [Lantigua] has a good relationship with 
[Tempesta].  If awarded sole parental rights and responsibilities, 
[Lantigua] intends to provide for the children to remain residing with 
[Tempesta] while he is away.  
 
[¶6]  This order, dated April 19, 2012, was the last order concerning these 
children issued by the District Court.  Notwithstanding the District Court’s advice, 
Lantigua never created a guardianship arrangement through the Navy’s Family 
Care Plan, nor did he petition the Probate Court to make Tempesta the guardian of 
his children.  Instead, Lantigua allowed the children to remain in Tempesta’s care 
in the absence of any legal guardianship. 
[¶7]  Although Lantigua’s deployment ended in June of 2012, the girls did 
not see their father until after their mother died in December of 2012.  Soon after 
returning to Florida after the funeral, Lantigua informed Tempesta that he did not 
want any information about his children because it was “too hard for him to hear 
what was going on in the children’s lives.”  The court found that as a result of 
these decisions, by the summer of 2014, “[b]ased on minimal participation, and 
long absences, [Lantigua] ‘barely knew’ his children anymore.”  Lantigua also 
 
4 
decreased his child support contribution from $700 to $400 per month—an amount 
insufficient to cover the cost of the children’s care.1 
 
[¶8]  On September 4, 2014, Tempesta filed two multi-page petitions—one 
for each child—in the Waldo County Probate Court seeking guardianship of the 
children pursuant to 18-A M.R.S. § 5-204 (2015).  Each petition was accompanied 
by five separate documents comprising ten pages—the three-page petition, a 
single-page acceptance, a two-page guardianship plan, a three-page child custody 
affidavit, and a single-page public assistance affidavit.  Tempesta incorrectly 
answered “no” to the question on each of the child custody affidavits that asked her 
if she had participated in “any other proceeding concerning the custody of or 
visitation with the child.”  By doing so, she failed to alert the Probate Court that an 
outstanding parental rights order governing these children existed in the District 
Court.  
[¶9]  By the time Tempesta filed these initial petitions, the girls had lived 
with Tempesta in Belfast for over three years.  Tempesta alleged as a basis for her 
petition that she was a “de facto guardian” of the children and that Lantigua had 
“demonstrated 
a 
lack 
of 
consistent 
participation 
with 
the 
minor[s].”  
See 18-A M.R.S. §§ 5-101(1-B), (1-C), 5-204(d) (2015).  She alleged that the 
                                         
1  The Probate Court found that Lantigua began sending less in child support when he learned that 
Tempesta was receiving $1,000 per month from the children’s Social Security survivor benefits. 
 
5 
children wished to continue living with her in Maine, that Lantigua refused to 
financially support the children, and that he had made no attempt to visit them in 
over a year.2   
[¶10]  After receiving notice of the guardianship petitions, Lantigua did not 
immediately file a response alerting the Probate Court about the District Court’s 
order awarding him sole parental rights and responsibilities.  Instead, he arrived 
without warning at the children’s schools on Friday, September 19, 2014, 
accompanied by his attorney and a deputy sheriff, and announced that he was 
taking them back to Florida with him.  The next morning, the girls were so upset 
that airport security officers refused to allow them to board the plane to Florida.  
Lantigua ultimately drove the children to Florida in a rental car.  According to 
Lantigua, he opted to remove his children from the person who had been their 
primary caretaker for over three years, without notice to them or her, in order to 
avoid the “hassle” of working with Tempesta. 
[¶11]  Within weeks after Lantigua moved the children to Florida, Tempesta 
filed petitions in the Probate Court seeking to be appointed the temporary guardian 
                                         
2  The court found that from December of 2012 to September of 2014, Lantigua saw his children only 
three times. 
 
6 
of the children pursuant to 18-A M.R.S. § 5-207(c) (2015) (providing that 
temporary guardianships “may not last longer than 6 months”).3   
[¶12]  In a proper exercise of its jurisdiction, the Probate Court conducted 
hearings in November of 2014 and February of 2015; the children lived with 
Lantigua in Florida during this time.  At the hearing, Lantigua acknowledged that 
his daughters were having behavioral problems while in his care and that he was in 
an “uphill battle” with them.  The girls remained sad and angry because they had 
been removed from their home in Maine. 
[¶13]  After the second day of testimony, by judgment dated 
February 12, 2015, the Probate Court appointed Tempesta the limited permanent 
guardian of the children.  See 18-A M.R.S. §§ 5-105, 5-204(d), 5-207(b) (2015).  
The court required Tempesta to arrange for the children to return to Maine 
immediately.  It also established a plan for contact with Lantigua, and ordered 
Tempesta to allow Lantigua and the children “ample opportunities to develop their 
extremely important father-daughter bonds.” 
                                         
3  It is not clear why Tempesta determined that it was necessary to file for a temporary guardianship, 
unless it was because the statute seems to allow for a hearing after only five days of notice.  
See 18-A M.R.S. § 5-207(c) (2015).  The Probate Court took no action on the petitions for appointment of 
a temporary guardian, and its judgment appoints Tempesta based on her original September of 2014 
petitions for guardianship pursuant to 18-A M.R.S. § 5-204 (2015) rather than her October of 2014 
petitions for temporary guardianship pursuant to 18-A M.R.S. § 5-207(c). 
7 
[¶14]  On Lantigua’s motions to reconsider and for further findings of fact 
and conclusions of law, the Probate Court issued a judgment with additional 
findings and conclusions.  The court stated that it had relied on two separate legal 
theories to award the guardianships to Tempesta.  First, the court concluded that 
Tempesta had proved that, as she alleged in her original petitions, she was the 
children’s de facto guardian and that Lantigua had “demonstrated [a] lack of 
consistent participation” with the children.  See 18-A M.R.S. §§ 5-101(1-B), (1-C), 
5-204(d).  As part of this determination, the court found that in the years that 
Tempesta had been caring for the children, she had not been doing so as a result of 
any guardian’s powers delegated to her by Lantigua pursuant to 18-A M.R.S. 
§ 5-104 (2015).  The court specifically found that although Lantigua asserted that
he had “at some point” given a power of attorney to Tempesta, that assertion was 
not credible because Lantigua failed to provide any details of any such power of 
attorney.  See 18-A M.R.S. § 5-101(1-B) (excluding from the definition of “[d]e 
facto guardian” an individual who has been delegated guardianship powers 
pursuant to section 5-104).   
[¶15]  Second, the court found, by clear and convincing evidence, that 
Lantigua’s treatment of his children—including the abrupt manner in which he 
removed them from what had been their home for the last several years—created a 
 
8 
temporarily intolerable living situation.  See 18-A M.R.S. § 5-204(c).  Specifically, 
the court found, 
Despite all the above, the father also has continued to fail to realize 
that he has negatively affected and further harmed his children in 
ways that have been both dramatic and traumatic by insisting on his 
sudden, [forced] removal of these twice-already deeply hurt children 
from the stable home and care of their primary caregiving maternal 
grandmother. 
 
(Footnote omitted.)  Lantigua appeals.4 
II.  DISCUSSION 
[¶16]  Jurisdiction over cases involving the custody, care, and control of 
children is divided between the District Court and Probate Court.  Pursuant to 
19-A M.R.S. § 103 (2015), the District Court has “original” jurisdiction over cases 
involving parental rights,5 but the Probate Court has exclusive jurisdiction to 
appoint guardians for minors pursuant to 18-A M.R.S. § 5-102(a) (2015).  More 
and more frequently, family litigation causes these two court systems to exercise 
concurrent jurisdiction, and the “marriage” caused by this concurrent jurisdiction is 
very rocky.  Although 19-A M.R.S. § 1654 (2015) confers on the Probate Court 
concurrent jurisdiction to award parental rights and responsibilities “[i]f the father 
                                         
4  After Tempesta’s appointment as guardian, the children returned to Maine and have continued to 
reside with Tempesta during the pendency of this appeal. 
5  In Guardianship of Jewel M. (Jewel II), we did state that the District Court was the court with 
“primary” jurisdiction over cases involving parental rights and responsibilities.  2010 ME 80, ¶ 50, 
2 A.3d 301.  The statute we referenced, however, clearly states that the District Court has “original” 
jurisdiction over these cases.  19-A M.R.S. § 103 (2015). 
 
9 
and mother of a minor child are living apart,”6 see Marin v. Marin, 2002 ME 88, 
¶ 7, 797 A.2d 1265 (recognizing that the Probate Court may “determine issues of 
parental rights and responsibilities as they relate[] to the guardianship proceeding 
in which they arose”), in actuality, the Probate Courts deal with guardianships, 
while only the District Courts, which do not have jurisdiction over title 
18-A guardianships, deal with parental rights and responsibilities.  When, as here, 
there is an outstanding parental rights and responsibilities order by the District 
Court and a non-parent seeks a guardianship over the children affected by that 
order, chaos and confusion reign. 
[¶17]  In this case, after considering all of the evidence presented at trial, and 
after explicitly acknowledging the existence of the District Court’s orders, the 
Probate Court found, by clear and convincing evidence, that Tempesta was entitled 
to be named the children’s guardian based on her status as the children’s de facto 
guardian and Lantigua’s lack of consistent participation, and also based on the 
temporarily intolerable living situation created by Lantigua.  See 18-A M.R.S. 
                                         
6  In Jewel II, we recognized the principle that the Probate Court impermissibly invades the District 
Court’s jurisdiction over matters involving parental rights when the Probate Court takes on, in the form of 
marginal guardianship proceedings, matters that create an undue risk of separate yet simultaneous 
proceedings involving the best interest of children.  2010 ME 80, ¶ 51, 2 A.3d 301.  The case before us is 
not such a proceeding. 
 
 
10 
§ 5-204(c), (d).  Lantigua challenges both conclusions.7  Based on our de novo 
review of the court’s legal conclusions, and after reviewing the court’s factual 
findings for clear error, Estate of Miller, 2008 ME 176, ¶ 9, 960 A.2d 1140, we do 
not find any of Lantigua’s challenges persuasive and do not discuss them in detail.  
Because we agree with the Probate Court that only a limited guardianship was an 
appropriate response to Lantigua’s temporary and/or partial “unfitness,” however, 
we remand the case to the Probate Court with instructions to amend its judgment to 
list those specific duties and powers that are awarded to Tempesta and those 
parental rights and responsibilities that are retained by Lantigua.  See 18-A M.R.S. 
§ 5-105.  Given the court’s requirement that Tempesta provide Lantigua and the 
girls with “ample opportunities” to develop their parent-child bonds, and if the 
parties have been complying with the court’s current order, the amended order may 
also include specific actions and timeframes for the return of these children to 
Lantigua. 
[¶18]  Tempesta has cared for these children, without much input or 
assistance from Lantigua, for several years.  Based on those circumstances, she 
was entitled to ask for and receive a guardianship over them.  We acknowledge 
that Lantigua has made some bad choices about whether to maintain relationships 
                                         
7  Lantigua also challenges the court’s use of a report made by a guardian ad litem.  Because the court 
specifically stated that it did not rely on that report, we do not further address this claim. 
 
11 
with his children, whether to support them, and how to respond when Tempesta 
filed for a guardianship.  Our concern is that the guardianship ordered by the court 
is a blunt instrument8 that will not improve the very nuanced and delicate 
relationship among the four individuals whose lives are affected here.   
[¶19]  Title 18-A M.R.S. § 5-209 (2015) states that the guardian of a minor 
“has the powers and responsibilities of a parent who has not been deprived of 
custody of a minor.”  Pursuant to 18-A M.R.S. § 5-105, however, a Probate Court 
may, in any case in which a guardian could be appointed, “appoint a limited 
guardian with fewer than all of the legal powers and duties of a guardian.”  That 
such limited guardianships are available for minors is reinforced by section 5-204, 
which explains that a court may appoint a limited guardian for a child so long as 
the court specifies “the duties and powers of the guardian, as required in section 
5-105, and the parental rights and responsibilities retained by the parent of the 
minor.”  18-A M.R.S. § 5-204 (emphasis added).   
[¶20]  Here, where Lantigua’s “unfitness” was due to his failure to stay in 
contact with his children and his inappropriate handling of Tempesta’s filing of 
guardianship petitions, the court appropriately responded by granting Tempesta a 
                                         
8  If Tempesta and Lantigua were the parents of these children and the same facts had been presented 
to the District Court, that court would have been able to fashion an order that allowed the adults to share 
responsibility for the children.  Although the children might very well have been ordered to be returned to 
Maine, it is very unlikely that Lantigua would have been completely shut out of the right to make any 
decisions about his children. 
 
12 
limited guardianship.  The court’s error was its failure to specify the parental rights 
and responsibilities retained by Lantigua.  
The entry is: 
Judgment affirmed to the extent that it appoints 
Tempesta as the children’s limited guardian.  
Remanded to the Probate Court with instructions 
to amend the order to specify which duties and 
powers are granted to Tempesta and which 
parental rights and responsibilities are retained by 
Lantigua. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
On the briefs and at oral argument: 
 
Sarah Irving Gilbert, Esq., Elliott & MacLean, LLP, Camden, 
for appellant Leopoldo A. Lantigua 
 
Joseph W. Baiungo, Esq., Belfast, for appellee Dale C. 
Tempesta 
 
 
 
Waldo County Probate Court docket number 2014-198 and 2014-199 
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY