TN Mom Gets to Move Away to Work in Spa in Hilton Head, SC
Tennessee parental relocation law case summary in Tennessee divorce and family law from the Tennessee Court of Appeals. Mother allowed to relocate with children.
Leach v. Leach – Tennessee parent relocation case – relocation granted
This was a post-divorce dispute over the mother’s desire to relocate with the parties’ two minor children. Denise Leach (“Mother”) and Jack Leach (“Father”) were divorced in 1997. They had two minor children. The parties’ marital dissolution agreement (MDA) said that Mother would have sole custody of the children and the Father was to have visitation. Since the divorce, the relationship between the parties has been acrimonious, with many petitions and counter petitions filed since the final divorce decree.
The mother sought to relocate after receiving a job offer in South Carolina, contending that the move was for career advancement. The father opposed the relocation. He argued that the real reason for the move was vindictive or to interfere with his visitation rights. The trial court agreed with the mother and allowed relocation. It ordered the father to pay a portion of the children’s travel expenses.
At the trial court hearing in January 2000, Mother testified that she was a licensed aesthetician, performing facials and skin care procedures. For the last five years, she had owned and operated an aesthetician business. She testified that she had reached her maximum earning capacity in Memphis, and accepting the position in Hilton Head would result in increased income because she would have less competition and could charge more per treatment, sell more skin care products, and decrease her overhead expenses. She testified that, in Hilton Head, she was guaranteed an existing client base, could perform consultations with the doctors at the spa, could conduct workshops, and would benefit from the spa’s advertising. Mother acknowledged that she had not been guaranteed a specific amount of money from the spa, nor had she signed a contract.
The trial court found that Mother’s motive for the proposed relocation was not vindictive and there was no attempt to defeat or deter Father’s visitation rights, as evidenced by Mother’s proposal to modify visitation to give Father more access to the children. The trial court determined that the Mother’s purpose for relocation was career advancement, a reasonable purpose. In light of this holding, the trial court modified the visitation agreement set forth in the MDA. Father appealed this order.
On appeal, Father argued that the trial court erred in permitting Mother to relocate with the children because her relocation did not have a reasonable purpose. He contended that her real reason for relocating was vindictive and intended to deter or defeat his visitation rights.
Father maintained that Mother’s relocation did not have a reasonable purpose in that Mother’s new employment in Hilton Head did not constitute career advancement because Mother was abandoning a successful, secure, and growing business in Memphis for new employment with an unknown client base and no guarantee as to the amount of compensation. He argued that she would essentially being doing the same type of work in Hilton Head as she did in Memphis.
In this case, Mother testified that the position in South Carolina, though similar to her current job, would offer career opportunities not currently available to her, as well as the potential for greater income. Mother’s testimony was un-rebutted that, in her new employment, she would have less competition, and would be working at a facility which was renowned in her field, and could offer services not available in Memphis. Under all of these circumstances, the evidence did not preponderate against the trial court’s finding that Mother’s relocation to South Carolina had a reasonable purpose.
Father next argued that the true motive for Mother’s relocation was vindictive, intended to defeat or deter his visitation rights. In support of his argument, Father pointed to Mother’s acknowledgment that life would be easier in South Carolina without Father around. He claimed that this statement, in conjunction with Mother’s disregard to certain conditions in the parties’ MDA regarding the children’s education and her unilateral decision-making regarding the children’s medical treatment, show that the true motive for her relocation was vindictive. Father contended that, because Mother’s reason for relocating was vindictive, the trial court should have determined whether Mother’s proposed relocation was in the best interest of the children.
Mother acknowledged that she believed that life would be easier without Father around. However, she proposed a revised visitation schedule which would allow Father to spend more time with the children than the visitation schedule prior to the move. In addition, Mother testified that Father’s extended family could visit the children anytime they wanted to see them, and that the children could have reasonable telephone visitation with Father. I n light of this evidence, the trial court found that the purpose of the proposed relocation was not vindictive. The evidence did not preponderate against this finding. Consequently, the trial court did not err in not reaching the issue of whether the relocation was in the children’s best interest.
The judgment of the trial court was affirmed in part and modified in part.
Leach v. Leach, No. W2000-00935-COA-R3-CV, 2001 WL 720635 (Tenn. Ct. App. Jun. 25, 2001).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
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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 including contested relocation matters.
