Court Opinion

ID: 9726034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:28:35.505993+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:23.081706
License: Public Domain

KIRSCH, Judge,
dissenting.
How can depriving children of the presence of their loving and caring father in their daily lives be in their best interests?
My colleagues conclude that Father failed to carry his burden that Mother’s relocation to Texas was not in the best interests of his children without raising or answering this question. To me, it is of paramount importance. These children’s father will not be there to attend their birthday parties, school functions, recitals, concerts, science fail's, athletic contests, and extracurricular events. Their father will not be there for parent-teacher conferences. Their father will not be there to take them to school in the morning or to pick them up in the afternoon. Their father will not be there for them doctor and dentist appointments. Their father will not know their teachers, and he will not know them friends. Their father will not be there as they move into and through adolescence with all of its attendant challenges.
The choice before the trial court and here is not a custody determination between parents who live in different places. Mother said she would not move if the trial court denied it. Rather, the choice is between whether the children should live in the same community as both of their parents or should live with one parent several hundred miles away from their other parent. To me, the better choice is obvious.
The preamble to the Indiana Parenting Guidelines states that the Guidelines “are based on the premise that it is usually in a child’s best interest to have frequent, meaningful and continuing contact with each parent. It is assumed that both parents nurture their child in important ways, significant to the development and well being of the child.” Mother’s move to Texas will make such contact and such nurturing impossible.
I respectfully dissent.