Mother Named Primary Residential Parent After Assault

Tennessee child custody case summary in divorce.

Alice Faye Powers v. Stephen Edwin Powers

The mother and father in this Humphreys County, Tennessee, case, were married in 2013 after the birth of their child in 2012.  They separated in 2016, after a physical altercation in a shopping center parking lot.  After the incident, the father pled guilty to domestic assault, and the mother filed for divorce.

The final hearing was held in 2019, and the mother was named primary residential parent.  The father was given parenting time every other week from Friday through Wednesday morning, for a total of 156 days per year.  The father then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.  He argued that he should have been named primary residential parent, and that he should have been granted more parenting time.

The appeals court analyzed the two issues together, and noted that they were governed by the statutory factors for custody cases.  The father claimed that the lower court had improperly applied these.  But the appeals court reviewed the lower court’s findings and agreed with them.  The trial court had placed the greatest weight on the father’s assault against the mother.  It also had noted that the mother had been the primary caretaker during the marriage.

The trial court had noted that many of the factors equally favored both parents, but the appeals court pointed out that it was not necessary to simply mechanically apply the factors.  As the trial court had done, the appeals court noted that the father had assaulted the mother in the presence of the child, and this weighed heavily in favor of not having to maximize the father’s parenting time.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling and taxed the costs of appeal against the father.  The court’s opinion was authored by Judge Carma Dennis McGee, and Chief Judge D. Michael Swiney and Judge Frank G. Clement, Jr., joined.

No. M2019-01512-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 7,  2021).

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.