Opinion ID: 1918350
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Mother's Relocation

Text: In its decision, the court revealed that its greatest concern was the way the mother dealt with the move to Connecticut. This set of errors relates to the court's findings about how mother told the children and father about the move, the significance of the divorce order provision regarding relocation, and the fact that the parents did not mediate the issue of the move. The court's disapproval of mother's behavior toward the children flows from a central mistake. The court believed that mother put the children in the middle because it believed she told the children about the move before she talked to father about it. The only evidence about the timing of these conversations was that they took place around the same time; [5] therefore, there is no support for the court's finding that she put the children in the middle or was somehow deceitful. Regarding mother's conduct toward father, the court blames mother for the fact that she moved without reaching an agreement with father. The court fails to consider, however, that their divorce order simply required the moving party to give sixty days' notice of a planned move and permitted the nonmoving party to request modification. Mother notified father of the move in April, months before the move sometime in late July or August. That was all she was required to do. Father had the right to ask the court to change custody, and he did not avail himself of that right until July. Furthermore, the court mistakenly blames mother for refusing to mediate the move when in fact it was father who had repeatedly refused to mediate. He admitted at trial that he thought there was nothing to mediate, that he had no intention of negotiating. The court then put these words into mother's mouth and found that mother thought there was nothing to mediate. Instead, mother had tried repeatedly to talk to father but he simply ignored her. It is hard to imagine what more mother could have done in this situation; she gave notice well in advance of the move, and she attempted to mediate. She played by the rules and father refused to abide by the divorce order to mediate, yet the court blames mother. The errors in findings resulted in errors of law. By erroneously finding that the parties had a shared custody arrangement, rather than mother as custodial parent and father as noncustodial parent with visitation, mother was not given the benefit of our holdings in the two leading relocation cases we have decided. In Lane, 158 Vt. 489, 614 A.2d 786, we established certain principles with respect to relocation cases. In Lane, a mother with sole custody who decided to move to Iowa for law school was ordered by the court not to move more than four hours drive away from the noncustodial parent. See Lane, 158 Vt. at 491, 614 A.2d at 787. We reversed, finding that although the court had been correct in finding a real, substantial and unanticipated change in circumstances, courts must grant some level of deference to a custodial parent's decision to relocate. See id. at 495, 614 A.2d at 789 (citing Auge v. Auge, 334 N.W.2d 393, 399 (Minn.1983)). Therefore, we held that where a custodial parent wants to relocate and the noncustodial parent shows changed circumstances, the noncustodial parent must further show that the move would so undermine the best interests of the children that a transfer of custody is necessary. See id. at 499, 614 A.2d at 792. In Lane, we reversed the court's prohibition on the mother's move and remanded for the court to find whether the move so undermined the best interests of the children that a transfer of custody was needed. See id. In essence, Lane stood for the proposition that when a custodial parent shows a good-faith, legitimate reason to move, courts ought to defer to the custodial parent's decision and ought not to reopen the custody determination. This formulation is not unlike that of the majority of states. See, e.g., Ireland v. Ireland, 246 Conn. 413, 717 A.2d 676, 684 (1998) (custodial parent must prove relocation is for a legitimate purpose, then burden shifts to noncustodial parent to prove relocation is not in the best interests of the child); In re Marriage of Burgess, 13 Cal.4th 25, 51 Cal. Rptr.2d 444, 913 P.2d 473, 482-83 (1996) (change of custody not justified when custodial parent relocates for good faith reason); Holder v. Polanski, 111 N.J. 344, 544 A.2d 852, 856 (1988) (any sincere, good-faith reason will suffice to support custodial parent's decision to relocate). We modified Lane 's holding in deBeaumont, 162 Vt. 91, 644 A.2d 843. There, a mother with sole custody provided generous visitation beyond what the divorce order required. As a result, when she sought to relocate with the children, this Court relied on the de facto shared custody arrangement that had evolved since the divorce to find that the mother's move was a changed circumstance. See id. at 98, 644 A.2d at 847. Thus, deBeaumont established that the de facto custodial arrangements should control the court's analysis, rather than a schedule outlined in a court order. See id. at 96, 98 & n. 3, 644 A.2d at 845, 847 & n. 3. In this case, we have the reverse situation from deBeaumont. The parties moved from a shared custody arrangement to a de facto custodial parent with visitation with the noncustodial parent. As noted above, this was due to father's change of job, with a subsequent limitation on the time he could spend with the children. Like the parties in deBeaumont, no change to the divorce order was ever made; the parties simply acquiesced in the change. The change is critical, however, because under Lane, the noncustodial parent challenging the move of a custodial parent must show that the move would so undermine the best interests of the children that a transfer of custody is necessary. See Lane, 158 Vt. at 499, 614 A.2d at 792. Assuming, under our current law, that a move out of state by one parent automatically triggers the threshold for changed circumstances and a reconsideration of custody, the father was required to make a showing that the move was so detrimental as to require a transfer of custody. Father did not make a showing that came close to meeting this burden. Father's evidence, aside from providing evidence of the schedule of childcare that was consistent with mother's, was devoted to rehashing issues of the divorce, reciting incidents of mother's conduct from many years earlier, expressing his feeling that mother was not as involved as she could be with one of the twin's baseball games, his dissatisfaction with the move, and his refusal to mediate. Having made no showing, the father's motion should have been denied. Even if we considered this case to present one of joint custody, in which each parent's time with the children was sufficient to trigger reconsideration of custody in the face of a move by one of the parents, the court's failure to consider mother's evidence deprives us of comparison between the parents, which is required before we affirm the court's holding.