Court Opinion

ID: 9788817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:19:11.96979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:16.831211
License: Public Domain

FABE, Chief Justice,
with whom CARPENETI, Justice, joins, dissenting.
I disagree with the court's conclusion that David Potter had inadequate notice of Shelly Brewster's desire to modify the visitation schedule to reflect the parties' current visitation practice. I also disagree that the superior court's decision modifying visitation surprised Potter or deprived him of his right to due process. Potter was well aware of Brewster's motion to modify the visitation schedule and, in fact, he characterized her attempt to modify child support to reflect current practice as "a de facto request to modify the child custody agreement." Moreover, in light of the majority's affirmance of the trial court's child support modification, its decision to remand this case for the sole purpose of requiring a new hearing on whether the visitation schedule should be modified is a waste of the trial court's valuable resources. Sunny is now within four months of her eighteenth birthday. She is long past the point of ceding any real authority in matters of visitation to any of the adults involved. To remand this case for further litigation at this point will accomplish more harm than good.
There are a number of places in the trial court record that reflect Potter's awareness that the visitation schedule was at issue. On January 20, 2000, Brewster filed a motion to modify visitation to reflect the parties' de facto modification of the visitation schedule as well as a motion to modify child support to reflect the actual visitation schedule. Judge Neville explicitly stated at the initial hearing on January 27, 2000 that Brewster's motion for modification squarely raised the issue of whether Brewster had primary physical custody of Sunny, thus requiring calculation of child support under the primary physical custody schedule of Rule 90.8(a). "[Tlhe real issue is going to end up being the sole or shared custody formula, which is, in large part, a legal issue as well as a factual issue." The trial court also noted in its preliminary decision that "[al fair reading of Brewster's statements in the documents she initially filed was sufficient to give Potter adequate notice that Brewster claimed to have primary physical custody of Sunny and wanted child support to be calculated on that basis." If Potter disagreed, Judge Neville gave him the opportunity to prove otherwise at the second hearing: "Potter's current child support obligation should therefore be determined on [primary physical custody] unless he can establish that there has been a de facto permanent modification based on Sunny spending at least 110 overnights per year with him." Finally, as Potter recognized in a February 4, 2000 memorandum on the law to be applied in the case:
Before the Court are two interrelated issues; a motion to amend the level at which the child support payments originally were set as well as a de facto request to modify the child custody agreement. While Shelly undoubtedly will quarrel with the latter statement, it in fact is correct because she is contending that David voluntarily has waived his rights of visitation and further is assuming that he will continue to do so in the future. Only under those cireumstances would amendment of the child support obligation be warranted. However, as will now be demonstrated neither proposition is well-taken, albeit for differing reasons.
(Emphasis added.)
In this memorandum, Potter further argued that Brewster had failed to make a prima facie showing of a substantial change in circumstances justifying a change in visitation and that rather than relying on a de facto change in visitation, Brewster "should be required to pursue that objective forthrightly and immediately."
We dealt with a similar situation in Siekawitch v. Siekawitch.1 There, the parents agreed to share legal custody of the children, give the father physical custody, and determine a reasonable visitation schedule.2 After the parents could not agree on visitation, the *732mother filed a motion for a specific custody schedule, and the court ordered each party to submit a visitation plan. The mother proposed that the children alternate between the parents weekly during the school year and every two weeks during the summer.3 The father proposed that the children spend three weekends per month and one night per week with their mother during the school year, and spend alternating weekends and one week per month with their mother during the summer.4 Following a hearing, the court ordered that each parent would have the children fifty percent of the time.5
The father appealed, arguing that the superior court violated his due process rights by failing to notify him of its intention to modify custody.6 He contended that "he believed the sole purpose of the hearing was to establish a visitation schedule, and that he was therefore denied the opportunity to call witnesses and present evidence on the issue of physical custody."7 We rejected the father's argument, because the father had sufficient notice that the mother sought equal time with the children: In her proposed visitation schedule and reply to the father's opposition to the motion, she requested equal time with the children.8 Moreover, the father expressly acknowledged that the mother sought equal custody in his opposition. We concluded:
Although there may have been confusion about whether to characterize the time that [the mother] sought with the children as visitation or physical custody, the record discloses that [the father] had notice at the time of the hearing that she sought equal time. In light of these facts, we conclude that [the father's] right to due process was not violated.9
In January 2000 Brewster filed a motion to both modify visitation to reflect the parties' de facto modification of the visitation schedule and modify the child support to reflect that schedule modification. Brewster's purpose was to ensure that a motion to modify visitation was in place in case the trial court felt that formalization of the de facto visitation schedule was necessary to modify child support. Judge Neville's statements at both hearings, her preliminary decision, and Potter's comments demonstrate that he had sufficient notice that resolution of the child support issue rested upon the court's determination whether Brewster had exercised primary physical custody of Sunny in the past and whether continuation of such a custody arrangement and visitation schedule and modification of child support should oceur in the future. I therefore respectfully dissent from the court's opinion.

. 956 P.2d 447 (Alaska 1998).

. Id. at 448.

. Id. at 449.

. Id.

. Id.

 . Id. Unlike the father in Siekawitch, Potter was never awarded primary physical custody.

. Id.

. Id. at 450.

. Id. (footnote omitted).