Source: https://familylaw.typepad.com/virginiafamilylawappeals/child_custody_relocation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:07:18+00:00

Document:
Zurita: CUSTODY MODIFICATION – RELOCATION – CONSTITUTIONAL LAW – SEPARATION OF POWERS – SCHOOL PLACEMENTS.
A trial judge’s attempt to find a novel way of undercutting a father’s case for custody modification on the occasion of a mother’s move out of the original school district led to a constitutional ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court because it caused this judge to tangle with the local school board. In an opinion involving constitutional law principles rather than custody law issues, the Supreme Court vacated an order that the school authorities enroll the child in a district where neither one of the parties any longer lived. One of the couple’s two sons, in the mother’s custody, was getting special education. The father had moved out of the district first and the mother later. Upon her move he sued to modify custody, saying that he would be glad to move back to the original school district if he could have primary custody of the two boys. This threat to the mother’s continued custody was met by a circuit court order for the school board to enroll the child in the old district this year, despite no residency, even though the school board’s rule is that the child must attend in the district where the parent with primary custody lives. The school board managed to get immediate appeal of this injunctive order under §8.01-626 as an appeal from an injunction. The school board argued not only that the judges can’t issue injunctions usurping the school board’s constitutional authority over pupil assignments, but also that the issue matters a lot because 9% of the county’s students have parents with different home addresses, and making the school board a participant in any of the thousands of divorce and child custody cases litigated there would be impractical and burdensome in the extreme, and it should have a right to use the simple rule of primary custodial residence. The Court vacated the injunction in a two-page order. Fairfax County School Board v. Zurita, 25 VLW 453 (9/28/10).
Judd v. Judd: CUSTODY – RELOCATION.
The husband and father thought that he had a good technical-procedural, or even constitutional, argument against letting his wife, in the initial custody determination in a divorce case, argue her relocation issue (that she wanted to move the children from Warrenton to Wisconsin). His argument was that since there is a statute requiring 30 days notice of intent to relocate, and there was a pendente lite custody order with the same statutory requirement recited, the wife had no business coming into court and arguing her relocation case. However, to the trial judge in Culpeper County it seemed a highly artificial way to go about this thing if he made the wife try the initial custody determination case with the relocation elephant standing in the corner and everyone pretending it wasn’t there. This is indeed what the husband apparently wanted the judge to make her do, and then she couldn’t move until she had given 30 days notice from at least the time of the new final order -- and then she’d be seeking an instant modification. That just didn’t persuade the trial judge, and it didn’t persuade the Court of Appeals. The judge explained very simply and clearly why he wanted to take a practical approach for the sake of judicial economy, common sense and everything else. And since he gave this full explanation, and the judge’s position was rational, and his decision awarding the mother custody and allowing her to move the children out of state, will stand. The Court of Appeals goes to some rather complex efforts to explain its approval of this procedure, which is a lot more appealing than the Supreme Court’s position in Parrish v. Spaulding was, and some of its reasoning going beyond all that may be regarded by some as questionable, but the result reached would seem in any case to be fairly sound. Judd v. Judd, 53 Va. App. 578, 673 S.E.2d 913 (3/17/09).
Demuth: CUSTODY – RELOCATION – PREVENTIVE CONDITIONAL CUSTODY AWARD.
It can conceivably be all right, in the proper procedural context, to deny a mother’s relocation of the children out of state. But woe betide a trial court that holds it’s in the best interests of the children to live with the mother, provided she stays here. As the Court of Appeals points out in the unpublished opinion in Demuth v. Demuth, 23 VLW 527 (10/7/08), it is absolutely forbidden for a judge to indulge in “pure speculation” that the move, at such time as it might come, would not indeed be just fine and dandy for the best interests of the children. This judge, the Court of Appeals says, should have prohibited the permanent removal of the child from Virginia if he didn’t like it. Setting up an automatic change in custody should a mother move cannot be lawfully done. To the father’s argument that there was nothing speculative at all about the mother’s moving the children to Texas, since she had specifically stated her intent to do that when they went into court in the first place, the Court of Appeals says that there was nothing in the record establishing that the mother was in fact moving, and in fact she had indicated that she would rather stay here than “lose custody.” It is impermissible to assume that the mother will move without filing the relocation notice that the divorce decree required her to file, and should she in fact file and serve that paper, the father can then go into court and seek a custody modification, no matter how recent the last order was. This circuit court abused its discretion by supposedly prejudging the issue.
Westreich: CUSTODY – FACTORS – RELOCATION PLANS – FALSE CPS REPORTS.
CUSTODY – FACTORS – RELOCATION PLANS – FALSE CPS REPORTS. Some things that can go wrong for even a mother in a child custody fight are illustrated by the unpublished opinion in Westreich v. Westreich, 23 VLW 588 (10/14/08), in which the Court of Appeals upheld a decision giving the father primary physical custody. The trial court had based its decision on what it euphemistically called “instability and poor judgment calls.” Which included mother’s plan, and her later attempt in court to deny that plan, to marry another man and move the children to Maryland. The facts which came out included an e-mail to her mother about seeking a Maryland job, which also said and that there were more opportunities for the children in Maryland and the religious environment was more congenial to her. Other evidence the court relied on included the mother’s filing a false Child Protective Services report against the father about inappropriately touching the children, which CPS found unfounded and which the mother then tried to deny that she had made. It also considered the mother’s relationship with the boy friend, considered by the trial judge “confusing” for the children. The Court of Appeals said that the judge did not abuse his discretion by looking at these matters, that the evidence itself showed that the judge had considered all of the applicable statutory factors, and (over mother’s objection) that the judge did not have to state which weight each factor was given.
CUSTODY -- RELOCATION -- ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN.
Sometimes a trial judge will actually deny a mother permission to remove a child to a distant state, and in Young v. Forrest, unpublished, 16 VLW 118 (5/29/01), the Court of Appeals upheld such a decision from Chesterfield County.
CUSTODY — RELOCATION — FACTORS — ADULTEROUS COHABITATION — NO NOTICE.
While it has looked for quite a while now as though mothers who relocate the children, even without the statutorily required notice, can do no wrong, there is at last a Court of Appeals opinion upholding a trial judge who transferred custody of a three-year-old to the father after the mother moved to Florida with a man she had met in a bar while the Virginia National Guard husband was deployed overseas. The Court’s unpublished opinion, Vanderveer v. Vanderveer, 19 VLW 462 (9/28/04), does point to some variables that might be helpful to know about if the Court of Appeals ever thinks about these issues the same way in some other case.
CUSTODY – RELOCATION – BURDEN OF PROOF, PERSUASION, ETC.
The subtle reasoning of a case from Fairfax allowing a custodial mother's relocation of the four kids to New Jersey is a bit hard to follow. The mother wanted to move the kids to New Jersey, and there's no question that's a superior environment to Virginia (quality of the schools, generally good environment of the community, the Court of Appeals explains), and the young age of the children counted for the mother, as did the improvement in her ability to provide financially if she moved north, and the role she has played in the children's lives heretofore. Yet the Court of Appeals holds that the Fairfax trial court erroneously placed on the father the burden to prove that the mother's relocation would not substantially impair his relationship with the children. But while that was error, the Court of Appeals says, apparently derived from a misreading of Scinaldi v. Scinaldi, 2 Va. App. 571 (1986), the error was harmless. Let's see why. The mother's burden of proof was nothing but best interests, which she had to show by a preponderance of the evidence. Because she established her prima facie case, the Court of Appeals says, the error of placing an affirmative burden of proof on the father [sic] was harmless. Apparently in this case, Stockdale v. Stockdale, 15 VLW 272 (8/8/00), the father presented no evidence that his relationship with the children would not be substantially impaired. That being so, it couldn't be erroneous to put an improper burden on him. Did he incur the erroneous burden ruling, and then decide to present no evidence so as to stand on his rights and save them for appeal? The opinion doesn’t appear to say.
CUSTODY – RELOCATION – "UNITY OF INTERESTS" DOCTRINE – JOINT CUSTODY CASES.
Defying the trend merchants, the Court of Appeals in Cloutier v. Queen, (5/8/01), issued a 20-page relocation opinion that may seem to stand only for the proposition that in these cases the decisions will continue to be extremely fact-specific, and that the Court of Appeals will nearly always uphold the trial judge. The father and mother had originally agreed on a very specific and careful joint legal custody arrangement (parenting plan) with somewhat more time to the mother, which father apparently concededly gave her "primary physical" custody. The mother filed in court for permission to move the children to Pennsylvania, the father cross-filed for a change of custody, and the trial judge ended up denying both petitions, on the ground that the present two-parents-close-by arrangement was in the best interests of the children.

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