Opinion ID: 1918350
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Amount of Time Spent in Caregiving

Text: First and foremost, the court erred in its findings related to how much time the children spent with each parent. The court believed that little had changed in the years since the divorce and that the schedule outlined in the divorce order was still essentially being followed. Under that order, father, who worked a night shift, cared for the children during the day and mother cared for them at night. Uncontested evidence established that in the year before the hearing the children lived with mother, saw her before and after school, took the school bus to and from her house, [2] and slept there every night. They saw father for dinner three nights a week and spent alternate weekends with him. While this was not the schedule specified in the divorce order, both parents testified that this was the schedule they had been following for at least a year. The schedule had changed, both parents testified, because father got a day job and no longer was available to take care of the children before or after school. Although father claims that he objected to the changes and the court credited his testimony that he was not happy about the changes, it is undisputed that he went along with them. In the court's words, he lived with it. Whatever his private feelings may have been, as a matter of law, father acquiesced in the changes and cannot now object. See Brown v. Brown, 134 Vt. 412, 414, 365 A.2d 248, 249 (1976) (acquiesced-in change in custody cannot form basis to modify court's order because it was not outside plaintiff-parent's control). He cannot rely on his unhappiness to preserve his rights under the original order. See also deBeaumont, 162 Vt. at 94, 644 A.2d at 845 (where court found that neither parent was primary, de facto custody arrangement controlled, rather than court order of sole custody to mother). The court's mistaken understanding of the schedule led to its erroneous finding that the children spent more of their waking time, the time between the end of the school day and bedtime, with their father. This finding also uses the wrong measure of waking hours by looking only at the after-school hours rather than at all the children's waking hours. Based on the undisputed evidence, it is apparent that father spent about nine hours per week with the children (excluding his weekends, which time was equal to mother's weekends). Mother spent more than twenty waking hours with the children every week. Even assuming they saw mother only for one hour before school, one hour after school, and an hour before bedtime (conservative estimates of the time needed to ready children for school and for bed), those hours total fifteen. Those fifteen hours must be added to dinners on Sundays and Tuesdays, for a total of at least twenty waking hours per week (excluding mother's weekends). No possible construction of the evidence can support a finding that father had more waking-hours time with the children than mother. This critical finding is therefore clearly erroneous. As dictated by our decision in deBeaumont, the family court must look at the actual contact situation in its determination. See deBeaumont, 162 Vt. at 96 n. 3, 644 A.2d at 846 n. 3. Instead, the court decided, erroneously and under an inappropriate standard for deciding the case, which parent had a slim majority of custodial time. The court's findings focus on which parent was slightly more involved in routine daily parental responsibilities and which parent had a slightly more active engagement in the children's lives. Then, it used this fictional primacy of the father to find a quasi-custodial parent and create a presumption that the custodial parent should retain custody. [3] In reality, the reduction of contact with father down to nine hours per week has fundamentally altered the joint custody that existed at the time of divorce. Mother appears to have become the primary parent, with the children having significant visitation with father. Title 15, § 665(a) refers to the court's duty to award parental rights and responsibilities primarily or solely to one parent where the parents cannot agree on joint custody. The statute thereby explicitly recognizes what we have further acknowledged in our cases, that some sharing of responsibilities, short of joint custody may exist. See Gazo v. Gazo, 166 Vt. 434, 443, 697 A.2d 342, 347 (1997). That is the situation evident here; the children lived with mother, saw her before and after school and were put to bed by her. She arranged for medical care, communicated with their schools, helped them with homework, and for nine hours a week they visited with father. This arrangement of actual contact ought to have been granted deference by the family court under deBeaumont, and its failure to do so was error. The schedule testified to by both parents at the hearing suggests that mother may indeed, as she claims, have become the primary care giver during the years after the divorce.