Court Opinion

ID: 9579969
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:00:29.473681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:56.055368
License: Public Domain

SEARS, Presiding Justice,
dissenting.
Today, the majority opinion improperly curtails the tools available to trial courts to protect the best interests of children in cases involving difficult visitation issues. The majority does so by precluding, except in extremely narrow circumstances, the use of provisions permitting self-executing changes of visitation. In addition, the majority adopts a new rule restricting such provisions, but unfairly fails to remand the case to the trial court to give the court and the parties an opportunity to address the application of the new rule to this case. For these reasons, I dissent to the majority opinion.
Unlike the majority opinion, Justice Thompson’s dissent outlines an approach that gives trial courts the flexibility to fashion provisions for self-executing changes of visitation in divorce decrees and thus permits trial courts to ensure that a visitation order protects a child’s best interests. In Scott v. Scott,7 this Court adopted a rigid rule prohibiting automatic modifications of custody. Relying on Scott, *737the majority improperly adopts a new, restrictive rule for determining the validity of self-execution visitation provisions. As outlined by Justice Thompson, given the more flexible rules governing visitation, as opposed to custody, trial courts should be permitted to impose automatic modifications of visitation if, in the trial court’s discretion, such provisions are warranted by the evidence. In the present case, because the appellant had contemplated moving to Alabama, and because the trial court had the discretion to conclude that, under the existing visitation arrangement, such a move would not be in the best interests of the parties’ children, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in providing for automatic changes to the visitation plan in the event of such a move.
Moreover, the majority requires that a non-custodial parent must have firmly committed to a future move before a trial court may adopt a self-executing provision regarding visitation. The majority adopts this requirement purportedly to protect the child’s best interests. The child’s best interests, however, are not determined by the level of commitment by the non-custodial parent to a move, but by the degree to which the move, if it happens, will have an impact on the child. And, in this regard, the impact on the child is the same whether the non-custodial parent is firmly committed to moving or has, less firmly, merely contemplated doing so. Thus, trial courts should be permitted to fashion provisions for self-executing changes of visitation in cases, such as the present one, where the non-custodial parent has indicated a desire to move to a different location, and where that move will clearly make the initial visitation provisions a hardship for the children involved.
For the foregoing reasons, I completely join in Justice Thompson’s dissent.
I also dissent for a reason not addressed by Justice Thompson. In this case, the majority creates a new rule concerning questions of visitation rights, and that rule requires findings of fact and the exercise of discretion by the trial court. It is unfair to the appellee to adopt such a new rule, and then not to remand the case to the trial court to give it and the parties an opportunity to address the application of the rule to the present case.8
For all of the foregoing reasons, I dissent to the majority opinion. I am authorized to state that Justice Carley and Justice Thompson join in this dissent.

 276 Ga. 372 (578 SE2d 876) (2003).

 See Warehouse Home Furnishings Distrib. v. Davenport, 261 Ga. 853, 854 (413 SE2d 195) (1992).