Tennessee Dad Allowed to Move Away After Getting Laid Off & Finding New Job in Georgia
Tennessee case summary on parent relocation after divorce.
Heather Dawn Lyons Hilig v. Robert Todd Heilig – Tennessee parent relocation granted
The mother and father in this Chattanooga, Tennessee, parental relocation case were married in 1998. They cared for two foster children, born in 2000 and 2002. Prior to the divorce, the father legally adopted them, but the mother did not. A third child was born in 2004, and all three boys lived together as brothers. The mother and father divorced in 2009, and the youngest child’s permanent parenting plan initially named the mother as primary residential parent, with each parent spending 182.5 days. The plan was amended a number of times, and ultimately, the father was the primary residential parent with 233 days of parenting time, the mother having 132 days.
In 2013, the father notified the mother of his intent to move with the children to Toccoa, Georgia, which is about 3-1/2 hours from Chattanooga, for a new job. The mother opposed the move and went to court to disallow it. The trial court agreed with the father and allowed the move. Dissatisfied, the mother appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
The lower court had found that the father spent more time with the children than the mother did. Therefore, under the relevant section of the Tennessee parental relocation statute, a move should be allowed unless the mother showed that the move was vindictive or did not have a reasonable purpose.
The father testified that the move had a reasonable purpose in that he had taken a position as a pastor of student ministries in Georgia after being laid off from his employment in Chattanooga. The lower court had agreed with the reasonableness, and that there had been no vindictive purpose.
On appeal, the mother first argued that the lower court had used the wrong section of the statute. She argued that she actually spent substantially equal time with the children, which would cause the section of the statute more favorable to her to be applicable.
The mother argued that the son was very involved in sports, and that she spent considerable time with her son, including serving as the “team mom.” She believed that her actual time spent was about half the parenting time. She argued that on the days she was involved with sports, her sleeping time and working time shouldn’t be counted. Instead, she reasoned that she spent most of the non-working waking hours with her son on those days.
The appeals court first noted that sleeping hours should not be discounted, because the parent is responsible during those times. And the court went on to find that miscellaneous hours could not be “lumped together” for the purposes of adding them up to a full day. Based upon this analysis, the appeals court agreed with the lower court that the son was spending greater amounts of time with the father.
Because the lower court had already found that the move had a reasonable purpose and was not vindictive, it affirmed the lower court’s order that the move to Georgia would be allowed.
No. E2014-00586-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. June 15, 2015).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
To learn more, see Tennessee Parent Relocation Statute Law.
