Court Opinion

ID: 9771232
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:37:28.109067+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:27.245007
License: Public Domain

John Mauzy Pittman, Judge, dissenting. I respectfully dissent. I have no disagreement with Judge Robbins’ dissenting opinion. I write only to address factors pertaining to the best interest of the child. The original decree is a final adjudication that one parent or the other was a proper person to have care and custody of the child and before that order can be changed there must be proof that conditions have so materially changed as to warrant modification or proof of material facts which were unknown to the court at the time. Watts v. Watts, 17 Ark. App. 253, 707 S.W.2d 777; see Thigpen v. Carpenter, 21 Ark. App. 194, 730 S.W.2d 510. There would appear to be no disagreement on the part of the trial court or the members of this court that appellant met the above standard. Watts v. Watts, supra. Even so, any modification of custody must also be in the best interest of the child. The court looks to a variety of factors to determine what is in the child’s best interest: moral fitness of each parent; the age, gender, and health of the child; the attitude of each parent toward the child; the psychological relationship between the parents and the child; the physical and mental health of the parties; the child’s need for stability and continuity in her relationship with parents and siblings; whether the child’s social or family relationship would be disrupted by one parent having custody rather than the other parent; the relationship between the parents and the child as revealed by the parents’ past conduct and by the strength and sincerity of the parents’ desire to have custody; the reasonable preferences of a child the parents’ affection and guidance and a continued religious education, if any. Clearly, these examples are not intended to be exhaustive, nor will each be applicable in every case. In custody litigation, some factors weigh more heavily than others; at times, only the aggregate influence will make the difference. While such factors do not mechanically decide cases, they do tell counsel and trial courts what to look for. When the applicable criteria are applied to the specifics of this case, I believe that the chancellor’s findings are clearly against the preponderance of the evidence and that custody of the child should have been placed with her father. Jennings, C.J., and Robbins, J., join in this dissent.