Supreme Court Allows Dad to Take Daughter to AZ for New Nursing Job
Tennessee parent relocation Supreme Court of Tennessee case summary.
Cassidy Lynne Aragon v. Reynaldo Manuel Aragon
In 2015, the Tennessee Court of Appeals decided the second appeal in this parental relocation case. The Court of Appeals had affirmed a ruling naming the child’s mother as the primary residential parent after the father had sought permission to relocate from Tennessee to Arizona. The father had recently earned a nursing degree, and asked to relocate to accept a nursing job offer in Arizona. The trial court and appeals court had ruled that the purpose of the move was not reasonable, largely because there was no evidence that comparable job opportunities were not available in Tennessee. The father then sought permission to appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.
The state high court noted that a primary residential parent’s decision to move is one of the most common post-divorce flashpoints, and that such cases are often wrenching, with profound competing considerations. The subject is governed by the Tennessee parental relocation statute, and the high court had noted that it had ruled on only one prior case addressing the statute, on a very narrow issue. It therefore used this case to address the statute.
The court began with some history of the statute. It noted that prior to its enactment, the non-residential parent had little protection if the residential parent decided to move. In 1998, the Tennessee legislature responded by adopting the relocation statute. The statute sets up two tests, depending on whether the parents are spending substantially equal amounts of time with the child. In this case, the parents were not spending equal amounts of time with the child. Therefore, the relevant portion of the statute provides that the parent with the greater amount of residential time “shall be permitted” to relocated unless the other parent proves at least one of three grounds. One of those grounds is that the move does not have a reasonable purpose. In this case, both the trial court and appellate court had agreed that the mother had met her burden of proving that the purpose was not reasonable.
The Supreme Court first noted that the burden of proof was an important issue in the case, and it quoted an earlier case noting that such procedural rules were very important in family law cases, because they were designed to limit the discretion of courts by requiring them to follow rules. It then reiterated how the statute in this case placed the burden of proof on the mother.
The high court then zeroed in on the trial court’s comment that there was “no proof in this case” that the father had better job opportunities in Arizona. The Supreme Court noted that the effect of this comment was to place the burden of proof on the father to show the move was unreasonable, whereas the statute dictated that the mother has the burden of proof to show unreasonableness.
The Supreme Court also criticized the Court of Appeals for interpreting the term “reasonable purpose” to mean a significant or substantial purpose. The Supreme Court held that this construction placed too light a burden of proof on the objecting parent, one contrary to that called for by the statute. For that reason, it overruled an earlier Court of Appeals decision in which the more stringent definition was found.
Since the Supreme Court found the reason for the move reasonable under its definition, it reversed the judgments of the trial court and the Court of Appeals, and allowed the father to relocate. It also recognized, however, that the child had been living with the mother for a long period of time while the appeal had been pending. Therefore, it authorized the trial court to devise an appropriate transitional plan for the child to move from the mother’s home in Tennessee to the father’s home in Arizona.
No. M2014-02292-SC-R11-CV (Tenn. Mar. 16, 2017).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
To learn more, see Tennessee Parent Relocation Statute Law.
See also Tennessee Parenting Plans and Child Support Worksheets: Building a Constructive Future for Your Family featuring examples of parenting plans and child support worksheets from real cases available on Amazon.com.
