Opinion ID: 1777779
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Christine Jones's move to Little Rock

Text: Ms. Jones challenges the chancellor's finding that her move from Conway to the Hillcrest area in Little Rock constituted a material change in circumstances. At the final hearing, Dr. Jones presented the testimony of Jim King, a private investigator he had employed to complete a crime-statistical comparison of his and Ms. Jones's respective neighborhoods. King looked at a ten-block area of Ms. Jones's Hillcrest neighborhood and a ten-block area of Dr. Jones's Pippinpost neighborhood in Conway. Having gathered statistics from the Arkansas Crime Information Center, King testified, over Ms. Jones's objection, that a person was 99 percent more likely to become a victim of crime in the Little Rock area than in the Conway neighborhood. Finally, King characterized the Hillcrest neighborhood as a war zone. While the chancellor was evidently persuaded by Dr. Jones's argument, we find it lacking in both legal and factual support. Under Dr. Jones's theory, the parent living in the statistically safer neighborhood, town, or city should have an advantage in custody disputes. This has never been the law in Arkansas, and we refuse to make such an inequitable principle part of our jurisprudence. In determining support awards, we have encouraged divorced spouses to acquire financial independence. For example, we have held that a court, under proper circumstances, may impute an income to a spouse according to what could be earned by the use of his or her best efforts to gain employment suitable to his or her capabilities. Grady v. Grady, 295 Ark. 94, 747 S.W.2d 77 (1988). In this case, Ms. Jones, in an effort to support herself and her child, moved to Little Rock after obtaining a job there. Thus, it would be inconsistent for us to allow our courts to impose a custody penalty as a price of compliance with our policy of encouraging economic autonomy. In Ising v. Ward, 231 Ark. 767, 332 S.W.2d 495 (1960), we reversed a chancellor's decision denying a divorced wife's application for permission to take her three-year-old child to Oklahoma where she and her new husband wished to establish their home. The chancellor's disapproval was based solely on the trailer home's location, as the trailer sat on a hill or ridge some fifty to one hundred yards from the edge of Tenkiller Lake. We wrote: If one is inclined to be fearful the threat of danger can be discovered everywhere, in the crowded streets of the city or, as here, in the comparative seclusion of the countryside. We know, however, that in Arkansas and throughout America thousands and thousands of children, representing many generations, have grown up from infancy next to rivers, to lakes, to mountain slopes, and to countless other natural conditions fully as hazardous as those existing near Tenkiller Lake. An attempt to shelter a growing child from every possible danger is manifestly futile, and it is certain that complete security cannot be achieved by means of a court decree. In practice the responsibility for choosing a child's environment must ordinarily rest upon the parent having custody of the child. The normal love of a parent, especially of a mother, for her child provides the best possible assurance that the infant will not be needlessly exposed to danger. We find in this record no proof to persuade us that the appellant cannot be relied upon to look after her daughter in the new home that she and her husband wish to occupy. 231 Ark. at 770, 332 S.W.2d 495. Other jurisdictions have recognized the inherent flaws in Dr. Jones's argument. We find the case of Fitzsimmons v. Fitzsimmons, 104 N.M. 420, 722 P.2d 671 (App.1986), particularly instructive. In that case, the husband, in seeking an original award of custody, argued that, while he remained in the small town of Grants, New Mexico, the wife's new residence in Albuquerque posed a danger to their children. While the trial court was persuaded by the husband's argument, the New Mexico Court of Appeals reversed: The logic of [husband's] argument is faulty. A person, through no fault of his own, can be a crime victim in any American community ... To accept husband's argument would require us to find that living in Albuquerque is inherently dangerous, and custody should never be awarded to a parent residing there. To state the proposition is to expose its fallacy. 722 P.2d at 678. See also King v. King, 10 Or.App. 324, 500 P.2d 267 (1972)(husband's claim that wife lived in a neighborhood with a high incidence of crime rejected as a change of circumstances justifying a change in custody). Similarly, we are not persuaded that Ms. Jones's move to Little Rock, in and of itself, was a material change in circumstances. To the extent the chancellor relied on this faulty premise in making his decision on the permanent custody issue, his ruling was in error.