Opinion ID: 2181602
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The effect of the orders of the trial court.

Text: Although we are presented in this case with three separate appeals, the first of which has been abandoned, a realistic approach to the controversy requires us to consider the cumulative impact of the three orders on the principal issue before us, i.e., whether what has turned out to be the effective extinction of the father's visitation rights may properly be sustained on this record. [11] In Order No. 1, the trial judge suspended the previous visitation regime, no doubt because arrangements based on the mother's residence in North Carolina simply did not fit the entirely new factual scenario  the mother and Myriam were to be living, at least temporarily and probably longer, in Portland, Oregon, some three thousand miles away. The judge did not, however, order any new visitation schedule. See Part I B, supra. As it turned out, the judge's suspension of visitation on February 17, 2000, had the consequence, whether or not intended, of terminating contact between father and daughter for years to come. Although the father and Myriam were about to live a continent apart, the court's order contained no mechanism for visitation in the foreseeable future. In Order No. 2, the judge declined to modify custody or visitation, concluding that there had been no material change of circumstances. The judge was obviously referring to the lack of any such change since the issuance of Order No. 1. The judge did not, however, compare the new scenario  mother and child in Oregon  with the previous situation  mother and child in North Carolina. Thus, although the father quite reasonably requested that a new custody or visitation arrangement be fashioned in order to accommodate the new reality, Order No. 2 left the situation as it was after the issuance of Order No. 1, without any provision made for visitation by the father. Moreover, the judge failed to comply with Super. Ct. Dom. Rel. R. 52(a), which requires the court to issue written findings of fact and conclusions of law when ruling upon a motion to modify a prior order of the court, [12] and the judge's statement in her written order that there had been no material change in circumstances did not reveal her reasoning with respect to the thorny visitation issue. The problem was further compounded by the entry of Order No. 3, in which the judge dismissed the case on inconvenient forum grounds. Although the judge held no hearing on the mother's motion to dismiss or stay, and although she issued no formal findings of fact or conclusions of law, [13] it may well be, in light of the change in circumstances since the suit was initiated, that under a reasonable application of the standards set forth in D.C.Code § 16-4507 (1997 Repl.), [14] the District of Columbia had indeed become an inconvenient forum and Oregon had become a more appropriate one. [15] This would be especially true if, as the mother claimed, the father no longer resided in the District. Indeed, it appears that on February 17, 2000, eight months before the case was dismissed, the transfer of the case to Oregon was foreseen as necessary not only by the judge, but by the father's attorney as well. [16] By the time that the District of Columbia action was dismissed in Order No. 3, it was not at all implausible to conclude that Oregon had become a more appropriate forum. [17] When the judge relinquished jurisdiction over the case under the inconvenient forum doctrine, however, the visitation issue, at least from the father's perspective, remained unresolved. There was still no arrangement for visitation, and that situation was compounded by the lack of any effective communication between the parties. Moreover, the judge dismissed the suit without arranging for the case to come before an Oregon court, as contemplated by former § 16-4507(h), and she did not condition the dismissal on a requirement that the mother institute a proceeding in Oregon. See § 16-4507(e). The father was now not only without visitation rights, but also without a forum in which the issue was pending.