TN Mom Gets Order of Protection After Homework Altercation

Tennessee case summary on orders of protection in divorce.

Andrea Kay Honeycutt ex rel. Minor Child, Alexander H. v. Jonathan Honeycutt

In 2015, the wife in this Davidson County, Tennessee, case filed a petition for an order of protection against her husband on behalf of herself and her son and daughter.  The wife disclosed that a divorce case was pending.  The trial court heard the case, but acknowledged that it should have been heard by the divorce court.  Therefore, it granted the order of protection, but only for 45 days, in order to give the parties time to “get to the divorce court down at the end of the hall as quickly as possible.”  In so ruling, the court noted that “one thing is for sure, the parents need a divorce,” as well as a “boatload of counseling.”  The court found that the most significant danger would be “the possibility the nine year old—and you see it in the newspaper—could actually take the life of one of his parents just as much as something could happen from one of the parents to him.”  The court noted that the order could be modified only by the divorce court.

The father then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals and argued that the wife had not proven the allegations of abuse by a preponderance of the evidence.  The wife asked for her attorney’s fees for the appeal.

The appeals court reviewed the evidence, which was based on an incident that took place in March 2015.  The parties’ son wanted to play with his nephew rather than do his homework.  After the son “smarted off,” the father allegedly dragged him ten feet across the floor and placed him on the stairs in an attempt to put him in a “time out.”  The wife claimed that the husband used such force that the son hit his head on the back of the staircase, while screaming, crying, and trying to hit the husband.  When the son ran away, the husband put him in a bear hug.  At some point, the son grabbed a knife from the kitchen, but the mother took it away from him.  The husband went outside, and the son hid in the bathroom.

When the husband returned, the wife claimed that he was screaming first at her, and then at the son.

After the wife’s sister-in-law called the police, the police investigated the next day, but no arrests were made.

The appeals court noted that the wife was not required to show actual physical abuse.  She was merely required to show fear of physical harm, and the court held that she had met this standard.  The inquiry is fact driven, and the court found that the lower court had properly credited the wife with testifying credibly.

The court further found that the wife was entitled to her attorney’s fees on appeal, since the statute provides for an award of costs, including attorney fees.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s order, and sent the case back for a determination of the amount of attorney fees.

No. M2015-00645-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. June 30, 2016).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Domestic Violence in Tennessee.