Court Opinion

ID: 9561354
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:08:28.923716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:44.944769
License: Public Domain

Fletcher, Presiding Justice,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part.2
I have no hesitation concluding that a trial court abuses its discretion when it awards permanent and sole custody of a five-year-old girl to the father who is the subject of an ongoing, active investigation into allegations that he molested that child. The “any evidence” standard is a highly deferential standard. Deference in the face of the extreme decisions of the trial court in this case, however, amounts to an abdication of our responsibility to reverse the trial court when there has been a clear abuse of discretion.
1. Six weeks before the award of custody was made, the trial court heard testimony from a special agent from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation who stated that the father was the subject of a criminal investigation into whether he had abused his child when she was in North Carolina for court-ordered visitation. The agent testified that the investigation began in September 1994, was *498ongoing, and the agent planned to present a case to a grand jury. Additionally, the agent testified that while the mother had first contacted North Carolina authorities in August 1994, she had no role in their continuing investigation. The trial court allowed the agent to testify regarding only the status and not the details of the investigation. Therefore, it cannot be said that the trial court weighed the evidence held by the North Carolina authorities and found it lacking or that the mother’s allegations were the sole basis of the investigation.3
2. The trial court’s disdain for the North Carolina investigation is shown in two other respects.
(a) Prior to entering the final decree and judgment, the trial court issued an order requiring the North Carolina investigatory and social services agencies to seek permission from the trial court before conducting any interviews of the child. A court of this state clearly has no authority to direct authorities in another state who are investigating possible criminal behavior committed within their jurisdiction.4
(b) Finally, the trial court actually approved the father’s flight from North Carolina with the child to avoid the police. In March 1995, the child was in North Carolina for court-ordered visitation that was to take place “at his home in Asheville, North Carolina.” During that visitation, the father and child were in a nearby park when he observed police approaching his house. Believing that the police had a court order to remove the child from his house or an indictment against him, he hid for several hours and sent the child off with neighbors so she would not be found. Then later that night, without informing the child’s mother or her counsel, he took the child and the two fled North Carolina. He and the child spent the night on the road, drove to Atlanta, and then took the child to his mother’s home in Missouri. Incredibly, following an emergency hearing5 the trial court validated the father’s actions in spiriting the child away under cover of darkness to evade police by placing temporary custody with his relatives in Missouri.
3. While the trial court shut its eyes to an ongoing, active investigation in another state, and approved the father’s intentional avoidance of that investigation, it relied on a court-appointed psychiatrist who testified that he spent no more than one hour alone with the child and who was “convinced right off the bat” that there was no abuse when he observed the child and father together in his office.
*499Decided March 15, 1996 —
Reconsideration denied March 28, 1996.
Patricia B. Ball, for appellant.
Stern & Edlin, George S. Stern, Janis Y. Dickman, for appellee.
Evidence of the father’s “wholesome family life”6 cannot overshadow the reality of an ongoing, active criminal investigation. Clearly, the trial court’s custody determination was not based on then existing facts, but on the court’s hopeful assumption that the father would be cleared. Under these extreme and unusual circumstances, I would find that the trial court abused its discretion and would remand for additional evidence and a new determination of custody.
4. Finally, I cannot agree that the trial court was authorized in its final order to allow custody to shift from the grandmother in Missouri to the father based solely on the father’s notification to his relatives that the North Carolina proceedings were over. This Court has never before approved a self-executing change of custody based on a parent’s unverified assertion that he has been cleared in a child abuse investigation and we should not do so now.
I am authorized to state that Justice Hunstein joins in this partial concurrence and partial dissent.

 I concur in the holding in Division 3 that the trial court abused its discretion in allowing a therapist to suspend or modify visitation.

 The trial court did hear testimony that the North Carolina authorities had insufficient evidence to proceed against the father for molesting his live-in-lover’s child.

 The North Carolina Attorney General filed an amicus brief that discusses the constitutional and statutory provisions in that state regarding investigation of child abuse and the protection of minor child who may be abused.

 The emergency hearing was initiated by the father who was in violation of the court’s prior order at the time he brought the emergency motion for a change of custody.

 Prior to obtaining a divorce, the father began living with another woman and fathered a child out of wedlock.