Source: https://familylaw.typepad.com/virginiafamilylawappeals/child_custody_modification/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:22:29+00:00

Document:
CHILD SUPPORT – AGREEMENTS – RETROACTIVITY OF SUPPORT-PROVISION CHANGE – CHILD’S MOVE TO FATHER’S HOUSE. A case from Loudoun County involving a “Parenting Agreement” between two apparently divorced spouses has perhaps been media-hyped as something more than it is. The question in Voltz v. Voltz,____ Va. App.____, ____SE2d____, (3/27/12), was not whether the agreement was enforceable as to child support (a matter never in dispute), but how the agreement should be interpreted. For the Court of Appeals it involved interpretation of the language of a crucial clause as to retroactivity of support-amount changes and also the statutory power of courts to grant such remedies. Father contended that the trial court erred and was not faithful to the written agreement when it refused to modify the child support amount retroactive to the actual day their daughter’s residence changed from mother’s house to his house. The Court of Appeals also had to interpret the arbitration decision that resulted from the parties’ dispute, since the agreement provided that the dispute should be arbitrated. That decision, helpfully or unhelpfully, but somewhat oddly, determined a child support amount, and said that future modifications would be justified in the event of “a material change in the Parenting Agreement,” which would seem to be a circular way of saying never. The father certainly had not slept on his rights: the day after the daughter moved in with him full time, he moved to modify the custody order, and the trial court then awarded him physical and legal custody. When he moved to modify child support, the dispute was over the date the new amount should start. The trial court held that the new amount should start only from the date the new custody order was entered. That meant that he still had to pay for the entire year 2008 despite the daughter’s living with him a significant part of the year. On appeal the father claimed that the trial court had thereby modified in non-compliance with the agreement, since there was certainly a “material change,” in the sense used by that contract when the daughter moved. Support payments become judgments as they become due, so generally courts can modify only retroactive to the time of filing for modification, but courts are allowed to impose a solution reflecting the parties’ agreement about future modifications, as such provisions are “valid and enforceable,” under §20-109.1. And that leaves the arbitrated agreement, which did include a provision binding them to modified child support immediately if one of the children moves to the other’s residence. Here, in arguing for the earlier modification affecting this date, the father relied on the “if there is a material change in the Parenting Agreement …” language of the arbitrated decision. Now obviously, as the appellate court noticed right away, that decision calls for changes in the agreement itself, not in the residence of the child. A modification of the agreement took place when the circuit court modified it by changing the daughter’s custodial residence by Order dated April 17, 2009, but there hadn’t been a change to the agreement before that. Changes in the language of a written agreement are certainly not the same thing as a change in actual physical location of a child’s home. The Court goes on to make the matter even more abstract by more deeply analyzing the agreement itself, but that didn’t change the result. After his first argument understandably failed, the father went on to invoke another paragraph of the agreement saying that “child support payments shall continue to the … cessation of his or her residence with either parent.” In a bit of reasoning that may leave some readers struggling behind, the appellate court says that that language meant when the family support obligation ended rather than the time physical residence ended. But it’s obvious that neither one of the parties intended to end the child support obligation entirely upon this change of residence, since that would contradict the earlier agreement paragraph stating that modification would happen if both children ended up residing primarily with one party, and if the agreement itself changed. Obviously, this appeal was not a frivolous one, and the father’s argument had been “fairly debatable,” so such fees are denied. The trial court did not violate the terms of the Parenting Agreement and therefore the decision is affirmed.
CUSTODY – THIRD-PARTY CUSTODY – NATURAL-PARENT VISITATION –APPEALS – SPECIFICITY OF PLEADING – WAIVER OF ARGUMENTS – PERSISTENT PRO-SE LITIGANTS – SANCTIONS. The unfortunate Mr. Switzer, who had his child taken away to be placed with a (then) unmarried cohabiting couple, has managed to infuriate the trial and appellate judges again with his tenacious – some might say masochistic – persistence. The Court of Appeals, in Switzer v. Fridley, unpublished, 26 VLW 504 (9/27/11), with a level of wrath as well as frustration which must be fairly high by now, gives what appears to be a patient and orderly consideration to a great many of the legal issues that this pro se appellant determinedly continues to raise. (This father has been fighting the various custody, visitation and record-access decisions for the past 11 years. On May 29, 2010 the Augusta County Circuit Court issued an Order “ending all cases” and remanding everything to the juvenile court, and the current appeal challenges all aspects of that decision, as well as past decisions, most of which the appellate courts have already ruled upon.) The decision to allow the third parties to seek and obtain custody of his child was upheld against this father’s constitutional and statutory arguments, and that matter is res judicata. The same is true of Switzer’s appeal of the denial of his modification motions. The emergency protective order against release of the child’s academic or health records to the father was also upheld on a previous appeal by summary affirmance since Switzer had no transcript or statement of facts to provide a written record, and that is also res judicata. As for the appellant’s arguments that all of this constitutes a refusal to rule on valid constitutional questions, that too has been determined before. The trial court had turned down the father’s modification motions and petitions, inter alia, for failure to show a change of circumstances. Though he now argues on appeal that the trial court erred by using an improper date to determine what was new evidence and what was old evidence to show change of circumstances, the way the appellate argument came up (the last time he appealed this) the father was not arguing that the date was wrong, but rather, that it was unnecessary for him to prove a change of circumstances at all (citing a 1962 U.S. Supreme Court case, which the trial court and the appellate court held does not apply here.) This time, though, the Court of Appeals does go through the original facts of this custody decision against Mr. Switzer, showing the rather dubious factual picture which originally persuaded the trial court to make those orders and then deny the father anything but extremely limited visitation. These decisions were, however, within the discretion of the trial judges, and a closer look at the original (and evolving) facts does show the father being his own worst enemy in this unseemly drama. The trial court’s denial of his motions to change custody and visitation, after hearings in June and August of 2010, did not exceed the judge’s discretion. Mr. Switzer also argued that it was error and an abuse of discretion for the trial court to consider the amount of time his son had lived with the new custodians as a bar to his ever regaining custody. He elaborated on this by saying there were no expert opinions stating that the son would be harmed by a change of custody back to him. The trial court had found the father to be unfit, and nothing that the father cited showed that the trial court indeed had relied on the length of time involved. As to the lack of expert opinions, there had been no assignment of error, as such, about that. (Visitation supervision and grandparent visitation were really non-issues.) The trial court had declared in its opinion letter that it imposed a sanction in order to “limit his ability to continue to pursue this case” on matters already decided. It made a finding that he had abused the judicial system by asserting meritless claims and wasted valuable and limited resources in frivolous litigation, and harassing the other parties by dragging them into court. The sanction imposed was to order Switzer not to file anything without obtaining court permission for the filing. He argued on appeal that the previous Switzer ruling from the Supreme Court, Switzer v. Switzer, 273 Va. 326, 641 S.E.2d 80 (2007), forbids any trial court or Court of Appeals action that might compromise his rights of appeal, and that the court does not have jurisdiction to impose that kind of sanction. Quoting the statute, §8.01-271.1, the Court of Appeals explained that there really is no limit on what kind of “appropriate sanction” a judge is authorized to impose in order to accomplish the purposes stated in the statute. Sanction decisions are reversible only if judicial discretion in imposing the sanctions, or in the choice of sanction, was exceeded. The Supreme Court Switzer case held, not that the Court of Appeals lacked the authority to dismiss the appeal as a sanction, but only that dismissal under the circumstances was an unduly severe sanction, not properly tailored to correct the problem involved. In fact, when the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals on this particular point as to Switzer, it specifically said that a trial court does not have to use “the ultimate sanction of dismissal” when the same might be accomplished by a lesser sanction such as pre-filing permission requirements. The Court of Appeals said this lesser sanction was justified given Switzer’s history of filing numerous documents for over a decade, most of which were frivolous or harassing.
An unpublished Suffolk County case from the Court of Appeals might otherwise be undistinguished from the common run of custody appeals, except that it shows a father having come from behind to get a modification of custody, and an award of primary physical custody, to him after making an all-to-common mistake in the emotional heat of the moment at the time of separation, which mistake was apparently treated by everyone involved like a crime. Having threatened suicide at that time, and accordingly having received only supervised visitation in the original order, he underwent “treatment” as well as psychological evaluation, and was totally cooperative with the new regime, whereas the evidence was that the mother was not. When the husband tried to get visitation with the revised court order that allowed him to visit unsupervised, the mother “tended to” deny visitation. The trial judge, weighing all the factors and all the evidence – as to some of which he found the mother’s not credible and credited husband’s evidence instead – found that the husband’s evidence and arguments prevailed. The Court of Appeals is not about to disturb this as it affirms in the opinion styled David v. Belcher, unpublished, 24 VLW 1214 (4/13/10), since the trial judge specifically stated that he took each statutory factor into account, and assigned no factor more weight than any other, apparently recited the facts set forth above, and based the decision on all of them.

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