Opinion ID: 3155280
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Change of Circumstances Findings

Text: [¶15] The focus of the substantial change in circumstances inquiry is on the extent to which there are changed circumstances that affect the children’s best interests. Levy, Maine Family Law § 6.6[2] at 6-64 (8th ed. 2013). Generally, the substantial change inquiry is temporally limited to events following the most recent order governing the children’s residential care. Id. However, if the court determines that a substantial change in circumstances has occurred since the most recent order, it may consider events before that order to provide context for evaluating subsequent events, if the pre-order events are relevant to the issue of what parental rights arrangement will further the children’s best interests. See Fraser v. Boyer, 1998 ME 253, ¶¶ 10-12, 722 A.2d 354. [¶16] Here, there were multiple parental rights decrees in place before the final hearing on Versel’s motion to modify primary residence: (1) the stipulated divorce judgment awarding Aranovitch primary residence; (2) the September 2011 order prohibiting Aranovitch from allowing unsupervised contact between Blais and the children, and prohibiting Blais from consuming or being under the influence of alcohol in the residence or in the presence of the children; (3) the interim order of October 2013, prohibiting Aranovitch from allowing Blais to be at her residence; and (4) the interim order of December 2013, prohibiting Aranovitch from allowing contact between the children and Blais. 9 [¶17] Because the interim orders of 2013 were entered as temporary placeholders in advance of the final hearing in 2014, the court’s final analysis of any change should have concerned the events that occurred after the parental rights order of September 2011. Consistent with this limitation, the court allowed only brief testimony about the events preceding September 2011, and repeatedly emphasized that it was “only looking at whether there’s been a substantial change in circumstances since the entry of the last order and, if so, whether a change in custody is in the children’s best interest.” [¶18] To the extent that the court made findings about events that occurred before September 2011,3 it did not err in doing so, as these findings provided context for the court’s evaluation of events that occurred after September 2011. See Fraser, 1998 ME 253, ¶¶ 11-12, 722 A.2d 354. Moreover, the court’s findings are sufficient, as a matter of law, to support a determination that the circumstances of the children’s residence with Aranovitch had changed significantly since the prior parental rights order. The record demonstrates that Blais violated the order of September 2011 by continuing to drink in the garage, and that his condition worsened significantly in December 2013, when his drinking resulted in a medical crisis. The record also supports the court’s finding that Aranovitch failed to gain 3 The court’s findings do not specify any dates for the events in question. Instead, they refer generally to Blais’s long-standing addiction and Aranovitch’s entrenched refusal to protect the children from the effects of that addiction. 10 insight into Blais’s drinking and its effect on the children’s safety, despite the court’s admonitions regarding Aranovitch’s “naiveté” and “self-deception” in its order of September 2011. The court committed no error in determining that Aranovitch’s demonstrated inability to objectively evaluate and respond to Blais’s drinking after the September 2011 order constituted a change in circumstances that jeopardized the children’s best interests.