Opinion ID: 2626490
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Denial of Motion To Reconsider Legal Custody Award

Text: Ginn-Williams initially challenges the superior court's order denying her motion to reconsider the court's decision awarding joint legal custody, resting her challenge on the evidence she presented below to show that Williams had a history of domestic violence. Ginn-Williams argues, as she did below, that the court was required to consider this evidence because recently enacted amendments to AS 25.24.150 create a rebuttable presumption that a parent who has a history of perpetrating domestic violence against the other parent ... may not be awarded ... joint legal custody[.] [2] Our review of the record convinces us that this argument is unpersuasive. [3] At the outset of the January 2005 hearing, the superior court and the parties informally discussed custody and visitation issues with a view toward reaching an agreement. Neither party had expressed any interest in altering the existing physical custody arrangement, under which Ginn-Williams exercised primary custody of both children. Ginn-Williams and Williams eventually agreed upon a detailed visitation schedule for Williams. The court then informed the parties that they also needed to address the issue of legal custody, which neither Ginn-Williams nor Williams had evidently specifically addressed. After the court described the concept of legal custody and explained what it actually entails, the parties agreed upon shared legal custody. Since the parties seemed to have agreed on all custody and visitation issues, Judge Gleason proceeded to summarize the agreement's terms. The judge then formalized the agreement by placing Ginn-Williams and Williams under oath, asking each of them separately whether they understood the agreement, and inquiring whether both parties believed that it would serve the children's best interests. Williams answered yes to both questions. Ginn-Williams initially hesitated, expressing some reservations regarding Williams's ability to abide by the visitation schedule; but after discussing her concerns with Judge Gleason and receiving further clarification, Ginn-Williams assured the judge that she understood the agreement, was willing to try it, and believed that it would serve the children's best interests. Judge Gleason then addressed the parties once more to ensure that they understood the agreement and accepted its terms; the judge emphasized that, once the court accepted the agreement, it would be pretty much in concretefinal and binding. Ginn-Williams and Williams both reassured the court that they understood, and believed that the agreement would be in the children's best interests. Judge Gleason then gave the court's formal approval: All right, then, it sounds like you've got ... a final and binding agreement of the custody issues. Five days after the January 26 hearing, Ginn-Williams filed a motion to reconsider the order granting shared legal custody. Although neither party had previously mentioned any domestic violence problems and their pleadings were silent on the issue, [4] Ginn-Williams alleged that the parties had a history of domestic violence in their relationship and that under the recently enacted provisions of AS 25.24.150(g), the court should have considered this history before entering the shared-legal-custody order. Judge Gleason addressed Ginn-Williams's motion at the next hearing, on March 7, 2005. After noting Alaska's traditional preference for keeping both parents involved in the limited types of basic decisions encompassed by the right to exercise legal custody, the judge asked, I guess my question is: why do you think that you and Mr. Williams couldn't make that type ofthose types of decisions together? In response, Ginn-Williams disclosed that, upon recently visiting the family law self help center, she had realized that, because Williams had a history of domestic violence, the new law would not allow him to have legal custody. Ginn-Williams went on to say that the trouble she foresaw with shared legal custody was that, during the period of their separation, Williams had been hard to reach and slow to answer when questions arose concerning the children: Now, we do not get along. If I call him, it takes him three or four days to return the phone call. For any decision. Judge Gleason expressed doubt as to whether the recently amended law would apply, noting that the alleged incidents of domestic violence had occurred before the amendment's effective date. The judge then proposed a middle-ground arrangement that would enable both parents to participate in decisions concerning the children's school and their medical care, while giving Ginn-Williams authority to make those decisions on her own if Williams proved to be non-responsive or unavailable. When asked, Is that something you might see as workable here? Ginn-Williams replied, That might be workable, `cause, I mean, in past and present I have called him, tried to involve him, and it just takes him days to be back with me[.] But when pressed to decide whether she might be willing to try a shared legal custody arrangement that would give her the final say if you tried to reach him and ... you couldn't ... hear back from him, Ginn-Williams answered that she would rather just be able to make the decision myself. After considering Ginn-Williams's position, Judge Gleason decided to deny the motion to reconsider the legal custody order. In reaching this decision, Judge Gleason pointed out that her order incorporated an agreement that both parties had accepted as a workable resolution of the legal custody issuea resolution that would be in their children's best interests. At the same time, the judge emphasized that she would be willing to revisit the issue if she saw any sign that the shared custody arrangement might actually be turning out to be problematic: [W]hat I've said is that, if this doesn't work, we're going to change it. But if it can work, your children are going to be better off. And I am going to rely on your testimony that you thought it could work. And it, and it effectively has.... [T]he two of you have been separated for two and a half years, and I can only assume there've been difficulties, I mean most people separating have had difficulties. But ... what I see from the two of you is very little which ... means that I have higher hope for your ability, for your children's sake, to work things out. But if you can't, we're going to make changes. That'sthat's what I am saying here. Judge Gleason further expressed the opinion that AS 25.24.150(g) did not preclude this conclusion. In the judge's view, the new statute did not automatically override the parties' agreement and, in any event, it might not apply to domestic violence occurring before its enactment. [5] On this record, we conclude that Ginn-Williams's belated attempt to invoke AS 25.24.150(g), did not require the court to reopen the legal custody issue. At the January 26 hearing the court had resolved all pending custody issues based on an agreement that both parties believed would be workable and would serve their children's best interests. When the court incorporated the agreement in its custody decision, Ginn-Williams understood that the custody ruling would be final and binding. Her subsequent motion for reconsideration did not dispute this point; nor did it assert that she had acted involuntarily or that she had been pressured, confused, or misled in any respect. To be sure, Ginn-Williams did contend at the March hearing that she had been unaware of the new domestic violence provision when the agreement was accepted. But the new law's existence did not by itself amount to a changed circumstance requiring the court to revisit its decision. As already mentioned, before filing her motion for reconsideration, Ginn-Williams never alleged that domestic violence played any role in the parties' divorce or that it might have any effect on the pending custody issues. Moreover, as the superior court noted, during their two-plus years of pre-divorce separation, the parties had managed to share legal custody of their children on an informal basis without ever encountering an insurmountable problem. And even after alleging that Williams had a history of domestic violence, Ginn-Williams never established any obvious link between Williams's alleged history of violence and her reasons for wanting to have sole legal custody. To the contrary, the potential problems Ginn-Williams predicted at the March 7 hearing were essentially the same ones she described before agreeing to share legal custody at the January 26 hearing: during their two years of separation, Williams had simply been hard to reach and slow to respond when questions concerning the children arose. Considering the totality of these circumstances, we see no legal error or abuse of discretion in the superior court's refusal to reopen its custody determination on the sole basis of the new statute's existence. Alaska law has traditionally encouraged parties to resolve custody disputes amicably, [6] and we have rarely hesitated to enforce parties' custody agreements when they appeared to further the children's best interests. [7] Based on a careful consideration of the evidence before her, Judge Gleason had expressly found that the parties' agreement in this case would serve the children's best interests. Having made that decision, Judge Gleason could properly find that, absent any apparent connection between Williams's alleged history of domestic violence and Ginn-Williams's reasons for seeking sole legal custody, her late invocation of AS 25.24.150(g) did not justify restructuring the parties' final and binding agreement. [8]