Mom Can Relocate with Kids to CA for Kinkos Acct Mgr Job

Tennessee parental relocation law case summary in Tennessee divorce and family law from the Tennessee Court of Appeals.  Mother allowed to relocate with children.

Connell v. Connell – Tennessee Parent Relocation Case – Granted

The Connells’ marriage was dissolved in December 1996. The trial court awarded custody of the minor children to Mother and granted Father visitation.  The custodial parent, Kelly Connell (“Mother”), filed a motion seeking the trial court’s permission to move to California with the couple’s two minor children.  Brian Connell (“Father”), resisted Mother’s motion and also filed a petition seeking a change of custody.  The trial court granted Mother’s request and, following a hearing, denied Father’s petition.  The court found that Father had failed to prove a change of circumstances warranting a change of custody.

After the divorce, Mother began working in Chattanooga as a salesperson for Kinko’s.  In her first year of employment, she earned $33,000.  By 1998, her salary had increased to about $80,000 a year, but had no opportunities for advancement or promotion in the area (except for possible promotion to regional sales management position, which she would not consider because it would necessitate traveling three weeks each month).

While attending a training seminar in California, Mother was offered a position as an account manager for Kinko’s in Los Angeles.  Mother testified that the job offered the potential for greater income based on commissions, but did not require the traveling that a sales position entailed.  She also testified that she would be within three hours of her immediate family in Las Vegas.  Mother called Father and advised him of the job offer.  He objected to the children’s relocation to California.

The trial court granted Mother’s request to move with the children. The court noted that its ruling on Mother’s motion was not pre-determinative of any of the issues raised in Father’s petition seeking a change of custody.  Following a hearing, the trial court held that Father had not carried his burden of proof on the issue of a material change of circumstances that would warrant a change in custody.

Father appealed, arguing that the trial court erred:  (1) in permitting Mother to move with the children; and (2) in finding that he had failed to prove a change of circumstances such as to require a change in custody. Specifically, he argued that the trial court erred in finding that the time spent by the parties with the children was not substantially equal.  Father asserted that his visitation with the children has consistently been more than 40%, and that by the time of the hearing on Mother’s motion for permission to move, he was with the children nearly 50% of the time.  Mother disagreed with Father’s calculations of his time spent with the children and asserts that Father never received any more visitation, in gross, than that specified in the divorce judgment. The hearing on Mother’s motion was held one day after the new statute went into effect.

Having determined that the trial court did not err in finding that the parties did not spend substantially equal time with the children, the court of appeals had to determine whether any of the three grounds set forth in relocation statute existed to justify the denial of Mother’s request to relocate with the children.  The trial court found that the relocation had a “reasonable purpose,” that the relocation did not “pose a threat of specific and serious harm to the children,” and that Mother’s motive for relocating was not “vindictive.”  The court of appeals found no error in these determinations.  First, the evidence clearly showed that Mother’s relocation to California had a reasonable purpose, i.e., Mother’s acceptance of a job that would provide an opportunity for advancement within the corporation as well as greater income potential.  Second, Father did not show, nor did he even allege, except in the most general of terms, any threat of specific, serious harm that would result from the children’s removal to California.  Although the appellate court was mindful that such a move may be disruptive to the children, it agreed with the Tennessee Supreme Court’s observation that a move in any child’s life—whether he or she is raised in the context of a one- or two-parent home—carries with it the potential of disruption.  However, such a common phenomena (both the fact of moving and the accompanying distress) did not constitute a basis for the drastic measure of a change of custody.

Father argued that several factors—his recent remarriage, Mother’s relocation to California, and Mother’s conduct since the final divorce judgment—taken in conjunction with each other constitute a material change of circumstances.  Specifically, in regard to Mother’s conduct since the divorce, Father complained that she failed to adequately care for the children’s needs; that she blocked his phone calls; that she cursed at him on the phone in the children’s presence; and that she made derogatory remarks about him to the children.  While Mother admitted that she sometimes blocked his phone calls and cursed at him in the children’s absence, she denied making any derogatory remarks about him to or in the presence of the children.  While Mother’s conduct was not always laudable, the court of appeals did not think that the evidence preponderated against the trial court’s finding that these incidents did not rise to a level of a material change of circumstances that warranted the drastic remedy of a change of custody.

The judgment of the trial court was affirmed.

Connell v. Connell, 2000 WL 122204 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2000).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, buy Miles Mason, Sr.’s book, Tennessee Parent Relocation Law, available on Amazon and Kindle and see Tennessee Parent Relocation Statute Law | Modifying the Parenting Plan and the MemphisDivorce.com Tennessee Family Law Blog with more detailed cases sorted by relocation cases granted and denied.

Memphis divorce lawyer, Miles Mason, Sr., JD, CPA practices family law exclusively and is founder of the Miles Mason Family Law Group, PLC, which handles Tennessee family law matters.