Mom Failed to Adhere to Relocation Statute But Gets 2nd Trial

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

Quinn v. Quinn – Tennessee Parent Relocation Denied

Rutherford and Tina Quinn were married in 1992 and divorced in 1996.  They were the parents of a three-year-old daughter.  They made a Marital Dissolution Agreement in which each parent initially had physical custody for six months of the year.  After the daughter started school, the father would have custody during the school year, and the mother would have custody during the summer.  This arrangement was to continue until the mother no longer worked at out-of-state job sites.  At that point, the mother would have custody during the school year, and the father would have custody during the summer.

In the summer of 1999, the mother moved to Alabama with the daughter, but did not notify the father.  The father filed a petition for contempt and change of custody.  The trial court granted the petition for change of custody, finding that the move constituted a material change in circumstances, since the father’s visitation was no longer possible.  The mother appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals first noted that the mother had not complied with the Tennessee Parental Relocation Statute, since the statute requires that the parent seeking to relocate must give 60 days notice.  But since the father learned of the move, the remainder of the statute still came into play.

Under that statute, the court first had to determine whether the parties were spending substantially equal periods of time with the child, since different standards apply based upon whether that condition is met.  It determined that the parties were not spending substantially equal periods of time, because the mother had primary custody during the school year.  For this reason, the Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court had based its decision on the wrong part of the statute.

According to the Court of Appeals, the trial court should have first determined whether the relocation had a reasonable purpose.  The burden of proof was on the father to show that there was not a reasonable purpose.  The Court of Appeals also noted that the trial court really hadn’t considered the best interest of the child, other than looking at the distance involved.

The Court of Appeals acknowledged that the Parental Relocation Statute sometimes “creates what looks like a maze.”  But nevertheless, it vacated the lower court’s order, and remanded the case for the court to apply the proper factors under the statute.

Quinn v. Quinn, No. M2001-01118-COA -R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. 2002).

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), see Tennessee Parent Relocation Statute Law | Modifying the Parenting Plan, and read our 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.