Judicial Recusal Required After Refusing to Sign Order in Tennessee Visitation Case

Tennessee law case summary on judge’s recusal in divorce from the Court of Appeals.

In re Adison P. – Tennessee divorce judicial recusal

Adison P. was born in 2002 to unwed parents.  A paternity and custody action followed, and the father was granted visitation.  The father claimed that he had been consistently denied visitation, and he filed a petition for contempt against the mother in 2011.  The parties eventually settled their differences in 2013.  The mother was allowed to relocate to Texas, and the father was given visitation on certain dates.   But the mother didn’t cooperate, and the father filed another petition before Judge Steve Beal.  The father alleged that the judge refused to hear the matter, and the father retained an attorney.

The judge again refused to hear the matter, since the mother’s attorney hadn’t consented to the hearing and the mother hadn’t been personally served.  The Circuit Court eventually reversed this ruling, but only after the father had filed a judicial complaint against Judge Beal.  The hearing was set, but the father filed a motion asking Judge Beal to recuse himself from the case.  This motion was denied.  The father then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The appeals court first noted that it reviewed such appeals de novo, and that the right to a fair trial before an impartial tribunal is a fundamental right.

In this case, the judge had made an oral ruling and asked the father’s lawyer to draft an order, which the lawyer did.  The judge, however, had refused to sign it, and instead drafted an order that did not include any reference to the father’s right to temporary visitation.  The judge denied the subsequent motion for recusal because he reasoned that the issue had already been addressed.

The appeals court held that this was simply incorrect.  The first recusal motion had recited completely different facts.  The second motion was distinct, and the judge had a duty to consider it independently.

The appeals court also agreed with the father that the judge’s actions gave rise to a reasonable basis for questioning his impartiality.  The father’s lawyer had drafted an order the accurately reflected the judge’s ruling, but the judge redrafted it and excluded the parts favorable to the father.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision, and remanded the case to be assigned to a different judge.

Judge Gibson dissented from the ruling.

No. W2015-00393-COA-T10B-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 21, 2015).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Tennessee Divorce Laws.