No Right of First Refusal Visits For Dad Just Because Mom Is at Work

Tennessee child custody case summary on right of first refusal in divorce.

Charles Michael Kincade v. Amanda Wooldridge Kincade

The parents in this Williamson County, Tennessee, case were married in 2008 and had one son, who was born in 2010.  The father filed for divorce in 2015.  After mediation, the parents agreed to a marital dissolution agreement.  The agreement included a parenting plan under which the mother received 225 days of parenting time and the father, 140 days.

The father quickly got cold feet about the plan, and began repudiating it the next day.  In 2017, the court held a hearing and approved the plan with some modifications.  Among the changes was a right of first refusal provision under which each parent was allowed parenting time on dates scheduled to the opposite parent, but noted that there would be certain exceptions to this right.  The father brought an appeal to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

He raised various issues, including the wording of the right of first refusal provision.  After addressing other matters, the appeals court turned to that issue.  In particular, the father argued that the mother had already agreed that his proposed wording of the provision was acceptable, and that the trial court should not have modified it without any request by the parties.

In particular, the provision as originally submitted by the father had stated that it would be triggered whenever a parent was going to be away from the child for more than six hours.  The mother noted that this would be triggered any time she was at work, and that this was not the intention.  Therefore, the trial court had inserted cautionary language to this effect.  The trial court had resolved this by changing the time to twelve hours, so that normal workdays would not trigger the provision.

The appeals court agreed that this was a reasonable modification, and that the father’s arguments were therefore unavailing.  It specifically found that the trial court had not abused its discretion in making this change.

After reviewing some other issues, the appeals court affirmed the trial court’s ruling and assessed the costs of the appeal against the father.

No. M2017-00797-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 4, 2018).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Child Custody Laws in Tennessee.

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.